On November 12, 1815, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, spokesperson for the rights of women, was born in Johnstown, New York. Stanton formulated the philosophical basis of the woman suffrage movement, blazing a trail many feared to follow.
In advocating suffrage for women as a central point in her manifesto of woman's rights, the "Declaration of Sentiments," Stanton forged ahead of Quaker minister, Lucretia Mott and other organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention of July 19 and July 20, 1848. As the suffragists gathered adherents to the cause, however, Stanton refused to limit her demands solely to the vote. She remained in the movement's vanguard, arguing vigorously for a woman's right to higher education, to a professional life, and to a legal identity that included the right to own property and to obtain a divorce.
Stanton's verbal brilliance combined with the organizational ability and mental focus of her lifelong collaborator Susan B. Anthony made the two women a formidable resource to the early cause.
Miss Anthony…invariably gave Mrs. Stanton credit for all that was accomplished. She often said that Mrs. Stanton was the brains of the new association, while she herself was merely its hands and feet; but in truth the two women worked marvelously together, for Mrs. Stanton was a master of words and could write and speak to perfection of the things Susan B. Anthony saw and felt but could not herself express. Anna Howard Shaw, The Story of a Pioneer, page 240.Although Stanton served as president of the "radical" National Woman Suffrage Association and its successor the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), she found it increasingly difficult to maintain her leadership role. Interestingly, her agenda was far more radical than that of many younger, more conservative feminists.
Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910
Stanton's belief that organized religion subjugated women alienated some supporters. In The Woman's Bible, she brought considerable notoriety upon herself by criticizing the treatment of women in the Old Testament.
Elizabeth Cady was educated at Johnstown Academy, where she was the only girl in the higher classes studying Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Barred from obtaining a college degree because of her gender, she continued her studies at Emma Willard's academy, where she discovered natural rights philosophy. She read law with her father, Judge Daniel Cady, but was not admitted to the New York Bar because women were excluded. Her legal and philosophical studies and her own experiences convinced her of the discriminatory nature of the laws regarding women, and she resolved to work for the reform of those laws.
In 1840, Cady married anti-slavery activist Henry Stanton, refusing to use the word "obey" in the ceremony. The mother of seven children, she lectured on the subjects of family life and child rearing, abolition, temperance, and women's rights until her death at the age of eighty-seven. Her daughter Harriot Stanton Blatch followed in her footsteps to continue the fight for women's rights.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton died October 26, 1902, before the Woman's Suffrage Amendment was passed by Congress in 1919 . Her papers were donated to the Library of Congress' Manuscript Division.
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