Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born to Margaret and Daniel Cady, wellknown residents of Johnstown, New York , on November 12, 1815. She obtained a high-quality education, excelling in Latin, Greek, and mathematics, and learned to debate and ride horses. She took a genuine interest in learning law from her father. Stanton would be considered well educated in any era of American society, but she was especially so for a woman in the early nineteenth century, when few women received formal schooling of any kind.

Marries and becomes active in politics

Stanton's early activism in two social movements, abolition (the antislavery movement) and temperance (a movement encouraging moderation in drinking alcohol or not drinking at all) brought her into contact with other like-minded people. She married abolitionist Henry B. Stanton (1805–1887) in 1840. Already an independent thinker, Elizabeth had the word “obey” removed from the couple's wedding vows. The Stantons had five sons and two daughters between 1842 and 1859.

The Stantons moved to Seneca Falls, New York, in 1847, where she cared for three children and a large house with no live-in help. Her activism was confined largely to writing, and she published articles in newspapers and magazines. In July 1848 Stanton met with Lucretia Mott (1793–1880) and three other friends. The women decided the time was right to hold the first women's rights convention, where they would discuss “the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman.”

Stanton, the writer of the group, developed the Declaration of Sentiments, which outlined the purpose of the convention. She put forth the idea that men and women were equal and listed eighteen ways in which men did not treat women as their equals. Stanton also developed eleven resolutions, one of which stated that women had the duty to secure the right to vote.

The Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention took place on July 19 and 20, 1848, at the local Wesleyan Methodist Church. Three hundred people, including forty men, attended. Ten of the eleven resolutions passed, but not the resolution on suffrage (the right to vote). Women's suffrage was still just too foreign a concept for most Americans in the mid-nineteenth century.

In 1851 Stanton met fellow activist Susan B. Anthony (1820– 1906), and the two formed a friendship that would last throughout their lifetimes. Stanton came up with ideas and the words with which to convey them, and Anthony took those ideas and words to the world.

After the Civil War (1861–65), Stanton focused her efforts on suffrage. Freed slaves had been given the right to vote, but women still could not. In 1869 Stanton, Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826– 1898), and other women activists founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). Stanton was the first president, and Anthony its first vice president.

A movement divided

Stanton and Anthony formed the NWSA for a price; they broke from their abolitionist supporters, who they claimed were more interested in getting rights for African Americans than for women. The NWSA, which allowed only female members, denounced the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted suffrage for African American men. In response, some activists from New England began a separate rights group (also in 1869), the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The AWSA focused only on getting the vote. The NWSA, on the other hand, included in its mission other issues that affected women, such as employer discrimination and divorce law. Later, in 1890, the two organizations joined forces to become the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Stanton was president until 1892, followed by Anthony.

Toward the end of her life, Stanton returned to exploring her interests in the relationship between organized religion and women's subordination (inferior position) to men. She wrote countless articles on the topic. In 1895 and 1898, she published two volumes of controversial biblical commentaries, Woman's Bible, in which she declared her beliefs that the Bible was partial to men and that women who held fast to traditional Christianity obstructed their own abilities to become independent. The press and clergy criticized her mightily.

Stanton died of heart failure on October 26, 1902, in New York City. On August 26, 1920, women were granted the right to vote.