I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to

The words of Susan B. Anthony — “I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” — are both a vow and a summons. They arise from the crucible of the women’s suffrage movement, when Anthony and her sisters in the cause demanded not charity, but justice. In her words we hear both the fire of the Revolution and the unyielding faith that liberty itself is sacred.

To call resistance to tyranny an act of obedience to God is to declare that justice is not merely political, but divine. Tyranny — whether of kings, of laws, or of customs — is an affront to heaven itself. Thus, for Anthony, the struggle for women’s rights was not rebellion against order, but obedience to a higher order, one that demands equality and freedom for every soul. Her voice tied the cries of her own century to the cries of 1776, reminding the nation that the unfinished work of liberty must continue.

History bears witness to this truth. The American Revolution itself was ignited by men who proclaimed that resistance to unjust rulers was a sacred duty. Later, the abolitionists of the nineteenth century lifted the same cry, declaring slavery to be a tyranny that mocked both man and God. Anthony, with unflinching clarity, extended that same principle to the struggle of women, insisting that the denial of their rights was no less a tyranny to be cast down.

Her persistence is itself a model of heroic endurance. Though ridiculed, arrested, and denied, she declared she would earnestly and persistently continue to urge the cause. Her voice became a trumpet for generations, and though she did not live to see the victory of women’s suffrage, her words lived on, carried forward until the ballot was finally placed into women’s hands.

Let the generations remember: freedom is not given, but claimed; not bestowed, but seized through courage. Resistance to tyranny is not chaos but faithfulness, not rebellion but reverence for the laws of heaven. Susan B. Anthony’s words are a call across the centuries: that every woman, and every man, must stand against oppression, for in doing so they walk not against God, but with Him.