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Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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(November 12, 1815 - October 26, 1902)
When Elizabeth Cady married abolitionist Henry Brewster Stanton in 1840, she'd already observed enough about the legal relationships between men and women to insist that the word obey be dropped from the ceremony.
An active abolitionist herself, Stanton was outraged when the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London, also in 1840, denied official standing to women delegates, including Lucretia Mott. In 1848, she and Mott called for a women's rights convention to be held in Seneca Falls, New York. That convention, and the Declaration of Sentiments written by Stanton which was approved there, is credited with initiating the long struggle towards women's rights and woman suffrage.
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
(click image for a larger version)
Courtesy
of the Library of Congress.
Modifications © 2003 Jone Johnson Lewis. Licensed to About.com. |
After 1851, Stanton worked in close partnership with Susan B. Anthony. Stanton often served as the writer and Anthony as the strategist in this effective working relationship. After the Civil War, Stanton and Anthony were among those who were determined to focus on female suffrage when only voting rights of freed males were addressed in Reconstruction. They founded the National Woman Suffrage Association and Stanton served as president.
When the NWSA and the rival American Woman Suffrage Association finally merged in 1890, Stanton served as the president of the resulting National American Woman Suffrage Association.
In her later years she added to her speech- and article-writing a history of the suffrage movement, her autobiography Eighty Years and More, and a controversial critique of women's treatment by religion, The Woman's Bible.
While Stanton is best known for her long contribution to the woman suffrage struggle, she was also active and effective in winning property rights for married women, equal guardianship of children, and liberalized divorce laws so that women could leave marriages that were often abusive of the wife, the children, and the economic health of the family.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton died in New York on October 26, 1902, with nearly 20 years to go before the United States granted women the right to vote.
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton on this site: |
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
Writings on this site |
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- Reminiscences: remembering her first
encounter with Susan B. Anthony, the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, bloomers
and more
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1848 Seneca Falls
Declaration: "We hold these truths to
be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal..."
- Solitude of Self: an 1892 speech
by Stanton, expressing her later understanding of the real need of women for
self-responsibility and self-fulfillment.
- The
Woman's Bible: Excerpt: an excerpt from the controversial 1895/1898
publication on the treatment of women by religion, produced by Stanton and
others.
- About
Olympia Brown: biography of a woman minister and activist includes a
short biography by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton Quotations: on
this site, some quotes from the woman's rights leader
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
Writings on the Web |
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
Biographies on the Web |
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Related topics on this site |
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- About
Susan B. Anthony: Stanton's name is linked in history with that of her
friend and colleague, Susan B. Anthony. Find out more about Anthony, too, on
this site.
- Woman Suffrage: more
resources on the woman suffrage movement, the life cause of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton.
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
Books, bibliographies |
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Text
copyright 1999-2006 ©
Jone Johnson Lewis.
