Queer Places:
Emma Willard School, 285 Pawling Ave, Troy, NY 12180, Stati Uniti
Stuart Apartment House, 250 West 94th Street, 10025, NYC, NY, USA
Woodlawn Cemetery, E 233rd St & Webster Avenue, Bronx, NY 10470, Stati Uniti
Elizabeth
Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American
suffragist, social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early
women's rights movement. Her Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the
Seneca Falls Convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, is often
credited with initiating the first organized women's rights and women's
suffrage movements in the United States.[1][2]
Stanton was president of the National Woman Suffrage Association from 1892
until 1900.
Before Stanton narrowed her political focus almost exclusively to women's
rights, she was an active abolitionist with her husband Henry Brewster Stanton
(co-founder of the Republican Party) and cousin Gerrit Smith. Unlike many of
those involved in the women's rights movement, Stanton addressed various
issues pertaining to women beyond voting rights. Her concerns included women's
parental and custody rights, property rights, employment and income rights,
divorce, the economic health of the family, and birth control.[3]
She was also an outspoken supporter of the 19th-century temperance movement.
After the American Civil War, Stanton's commitment to female suffrage
caused a schism in the women's rights movement when she, together with
Susan B.
Anthony, declined to support passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments to the United States Constitution. She opposed giving added legal
protection and voting rights to African American men while women, black and
white, were denied those same rights. Her position on this issue, together
with her thoughts on organized Christianity and women's issues beyond voting
rights, led to the formation of two separate women's rights organizations that
were finally rejoined, with Stanton as president of the joint organization,
about twenty years after her break from the original women's suffrage
movement.
In 1869, Mary Ann Shadd became the first woman to
enter Howard University’s law school. She was the first African-American
woman to obtain a law degree and among the first women in the United States to
do so. She fought alongside Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for
women’s suffrage, testifying before the Judiciary Committee of the House of
Representatives and becoming the first African-American woman to cast a vote
in a national election.
Stanton died in 1902, having written both The Woman's Bible and her
autobiography Eighty Years and More, and many other articles and
pamphlets about female suffrage and women's rights.
Prior to living in Seneca Falls, Stanton had become an admirer and friend
of Lucretia Mott, the Quaker minister, feminist, and abolitionist whom she had
met at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, England in the spring of
1840 while on her honeymoon. The two women became allies when the male
delegates attending the convention voted that women should be denied
participation in the proceedings, even if they, like Mott, had been nominated
to serve as official delegates of their respective abolitionist societies.
After considerable debate, the women were required to sit in a roped-off
section hidden from the view of the men in attendance. They were soon joined
by the prominent abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, who arrived after the
vote had been taken and, in protest of the outcome, refused his seat, electing
instead to sit with the women.[39]
Mott's example and the decision to prohibit women from participating in the
convention strengthened Stanton's commitment to women's rights. By 1848, her
early life experiences, together with the experience in London and her
initially debilitating experience as a housewife in Seneca Falls, galvanized
Stanton.
In 1848, acting on these feelings and perceptions, Stanton joined Mott,
Mott's sister Martha Coffin Wright, Jane Hunt and a handful of other women in
Seneca Falls. Together they organized the Seneca Falls Convention held in
Seneca Falls on July 19 and 20. Over 300 people attended. Stanton drafted a
Declaration of Sentiments, which she read at the convention. Modeled on the
United States Declaration of Independence, Stanton's declaration proclaimed
that men and women are created equal. She proposed, among other things, a
then-controversial resolution demanding voting rights for women. The final
resolutions, including female suffrage, were passed, in no small measure,
because of the support of Frederick Douglass, who attended and informally
spoke at the convention.[41]
Soon after the convention, Stanton was invited to speak at the second
women's rights convention, the Rochester Convention of 1848, in Rochester, New
York, solidifying her role as an activist and reformer. Paulina Kellogg Wright
Davis invited her to speak at the first National Women's Rights Convention in
1850, but because of pregnancy, Stanton chose instead to lend her name to the
list of sponsors and send a speech to be read in her stead.[42]
In 1851, Stanton was introduced to Susan B. Anthony on a street in Seneca
Falls by Amelia Bloomer, a feminist and mutual acquaintance who had not signed
the Declaration of Sentiments and subsequent resolutions despite her
attendance at the Seneca Falls convention.[43]
Although best known for their joint work on behalf of women's suffrage,
Stanton and Anthony first joined the temperance movement. Together, they were
instrumental in founding the short-lived Woman's State Temperance Society
(1852–1853). During her presidency of the organization, Stanton scandalized
many supporters by suggesting that drunkenness be made sufficient cause for
divorce.[44]
But the relationship between the women's suffrage movement and the temperance
movement was hardly accidental. The two movements had common interests, with
women's suffrage filling the role of cause and prohibition becoming the
effect. Later, in state after state, once women gained the right to vote, they
could press for various political measures to reduce drunkenness, perceived to
be largely a problem involving the male sex. Thus the two movement became
frequently allied.
Stanton and Anthony's focus, however, soon shifted to female suffrage and
women's rights, activities which inexorably brought them into acquaintance
with Alice Cary and Phoebe Cary; for a short time Phoebe Cary served as editor
of Anthony's newspaper, Revolution.
Single and having no children, Anthony had the time and energy to do the
speaking and traveling that Stanton was unable to do. Their skills
complemented each other; Stanton, the better orator and writer, scripted many
of Anthony's speeches, while Anthony was the movement's organizer and
tactician. Stanton once wrote to Anthony, "No power in heaven, hell or earth
can separate us, for our hearts are eternally wedded together."[45]
Likewise, when writing a tribute that appeared in The New York Times
when Stanton died, Anthony described Stanton as having "forged the
thunderbolts" that she (Anthony) "fired."[1]
Unlike Anthony's relatively narrow focus on suffrage, Stanton wanted to push
for a broader platform of women's rights in general. While their opposing
viewpoints led to some discussion and conflict, no disagreement threatened
their friendship or working relationship; the two women remained close friends
and colleagues until Stanton's death some 50 years after their initial
meeting. While always recognized as movement leaders whose support was sought,
Stanton and Anthony's voices were soon joined by others who began assuming
leadership positions within the movement. These women included, among others,
Matilda Joslyn Gage.[46]
Stanton died of heart failure at her home in New York City on October 26,
1902, 18 years before women were granted the right to vote in the United
States. She was interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City, the
grave upon which there is a monument for her and her husband.[98]
Although Elizabeth Cady Stanton had been unable to attend a formal college or
university, her daughters did. Margaret Livingston Stanton Lawrence attended
Vassar College (1876) and Columbia University (1891), and Harriot Stanton
Blatch received both her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Vassar
College in 1878 and 1891 respectively.[99]
Stanton is also connected with Theodate Pope.
My published books:
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