Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Born in 1815 in Johnstown, New York • Father was a prominent attorney, congressman, and judge • Excellent education at Johnstown Academy Marriage
• Married Henry Brewster Stanton in 1840 • Refused to have word “obey” in ceremony • Refused to be known as Mrs. Henry Stanton • They had 7 children • Stanton was an active abolitionist • Active as well in the Temperance Movement 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention
• Met Lucretia Mott • Women forced to sit in roped-off area behind a curtain • William Lloyd Garrison, famous abolitionist • Refused his seat, sat with women instead Seneca Falls Convention, 1848 • Stanton helped organize convention • Drafted “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” adopted there • Met lifelong friend and collaborator, Susan B. Anthony in 1851
Collaboration with Stanton
• Anthony single, thus better able to travel and give speeches • Stanton often drafted these speeches 15th Amendment
• Granted suffrage to African American men • Both Stanton and Anthony argued against 15th Amendment w/o adding women • Split with Douglass Schism in the Women’s Movement
• Many leaders in the women’s movement, including Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Blackwell, and Julia Ward Howe disagreed. • By 1869, disagreement over 15th Amendment led to two separate women’s suffrage groups • The National Woman’s Suffrage Association (MWSA) included Stanton, Anthony • The American Woman’s Suffrage Association (AWSA) was led by Stone, Blackwell, and Howe • NWSA more radical • Focused on issues other than suffrage – Gender-neutral divorce and child custody laws – Women’s property rights – Birth Control – Right of women to serve on juries, etc. NWSA
• 15th Amendment 14th Amendment: passed, All persons born or unchanged, in 1870 naturalized in the United States, and subject to the • Later, Stanton and jurisdiction thereof, are Anthony took citizens of the United position that 14th States and of the State wherein they reside. and 15th 15th Amendment: amendments did The right of citizens of the give women the United States to vote shall right to vote. not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
• In 1872, Anthony arrested by a U.S. Marshall for illegally voting in presidential election. • Convicted and later fined. • Sojourner Truth also tried to vote in 1872 presidential election, but was turned away at the polling place in Michigan. Woman’s Bible
• Stanton, in later life, criticized sexism in Christianity. Wrote a feminist version of the Bible (further antagonized conservative, Christian members of the AWSA) • Continued to champion broader rights, including interracial marriage • Letter to Frederick Douglass Elizabeth Cady Stanton Died 1902 (Before ever seeing passage of 19th Amendment)