Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Women's Suffrage

The women's suffrage movement occurred from 1848 to 1920. The fight for women’s suffrage in the United States began with the women’s rights movement in the mid-nineteenth century. This reform effort encompassed a broad spectrum of goals before its leaders decided to focus first on securing the right for women to vote. The first attempt to organize a national movement for women’s rights occurred in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 1848. Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton Lucretia Mott to outline a direction for the women’s rights movement.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (one of the best-known women’s rights activists) was an Author, lecturer, and chief philosopher of the women's rights and suffrage movements that guided the struggle well into the 20th century. Born on November 12, 1815, Stanton was the daughter of Margaret Livingston and Daniel Cady, Johnstown's most prominent citizens. Also, Stanton married abolitionist lecturer Henry Stanton in 1840 and became active in the anti-slavery movement

In 1848, Stanton and Mott held the first Woman’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York. Here Stanton authored, “The Declaration of Sentiments,” which expanded on the Declaration of Independence by adding the word “women” throughout. This important document called for social and legal changes to elevate women’s place in society and listed 18 grievances from the inability to control their wages and property or the difficulty in gaining custody in divorce to the lack of the right to vote.

In that same year, Stanton circulated petitions throughout New York to urge the New York Congress to pass the New York Married Women’s Property Act. The women’s suffrage movement became her top priority when she met Susan B Anthony in 1851 the two of them quickly began collaboration on speeches, articles, and books. Their intellectual and organizational partnership dominated the woman’s movement for over half a century.

She and Anthony opposed the 14th and 15th amendments to the US Constitution and founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. Stanton edited and wrote for their journal The Revolution. As the group’s president, Stanton was an outspoken social and political speaker who debated the major political and legal questions of the day. Her speeches addressed such topics as maternity, child-rearing, divorce law, married women’s property rights, temperance, abolition, and presidential campaigns.

This is a picture of Elizabeth Cady Stanton taken in 1880 at the age of 65 around the same time She wrote three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage with Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage. In this, the authors documented the individual and local activism that built and sustained a movement for woman suffrage.

By this time Stanton focused more on writing rather than traveling and lecturing. Along with numerous articles Stanton published the Woman's Bible in which she urged women to recognize how religious orthodoxy and masculine theology obstructed their chances to achieve self-ownership.

She also wrote "Our Girls" her most frequent speech, where she urged girls to get an education that would develop them as persons and provide an income if needed She also wrote an autobiography, Eighty Years and More, about the great events and work of her life. Stanton died in October 1902 in New York City, 18 years before women gained the right to vote.

Bibliography

Michals, Debra, ed. “Elizabeth Cady Stanton.” National Women's History Museum, 2017. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/elizabeth-cady-stanton

Stanton, Elizabeth C. Eighty Years and More (1815-1897); Reminiscences of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Source Book Press, 1970.

Stanton, Elizabeth C. “The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolution.” National Women's History Museum, 1848. https://www.womenshistory.org/resources/primary-source/declaration-sentiments-and-resolution.