Stanton Turning Points

Turning Points

Marriage
In 1840, Elizabeth married Henry Stanton, an abolitionist. At Elizabeth Stanton’s wedding service she requested that the words obey be stricken from the ceremony. That same year Henry Stanton was appointed to the World Anti Slavery Convention which was held in London England. The newlyweds’ European tour sparked Elizabeth Stanton’s interest in women’s rights. The usually liberal abolitionists were split over the idea of feminism. Many believed they would lose support if they demanded equality for women as well as freedom for slaves. At the London convention, female delegates had to sit behind a curtain and were forbidden to speak (Murphy, 1999). What an outrage, she wrote, that abolitionists would defend the natural rights of slaves while denying freedom of speech to one-half the people of their own race (Stanton, 1898, Scholastic, 2009).
Her husband, even though an abolitionist, was a man of his day. He did not interfere with Stanton’s writing and lecturing but he still expected her to perform all the housework and childcare. Her seven children inspired many of her speeches. In 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton addressed the first women’s rights convention.
“But we are assembled to protest against a form of government existing without the consent of the governed-to declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in case of separation, the children of her love; laws which make her the mere dependent on his bounty. It is to protest against such unjust laws as these that we are assembled today, and to have them if possible, forever erased from our statute books, deeming them a shame and a disgrace to a Christian republic in the nineteenth century” (Stanton, 1848).

Women’s Movement
Stanton formulated the philosophical basis of the women’s movement. Stanton argued vigorously for women’s right to a higher education, to a professional life, and to a legal identity that included a right to own property and to obtain a divorce (Baker, 2005).
Elizabeth 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 women’s cause. Anthony often stated that Stanton was the brains of the new association, while she herself was merely its hands and feet. The two women worked well together, for Mrs. Stanton was a master of words and could write and speak to perfection of the things Anthony saw and felt but could not herself express (Baker, 2005).
Elizabeth Cady was educated at an all boys school, where she was permitted to learn Latin, Greek and mathematics. Barred from obtaining a college degree because of her gender, she continued her studies at a girl’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.
Stanton is believed to be the driving force behind the 1848 Convention and for the next fifty years played a leadership role in the women’s rights movement. She was the architect and author of the movement’s most important strategies and documents.
Elizabeth Stanton had an early introduction to reform movements, including encounters as a young woman with fugitive slaves at the home of her cousin Gerrit Smith. She met Lucretia Mott, the Quaker teacher who served in many of the associated Temperance, Anti-Slavery, and Women’s Rights organizations with which Stanton is associated. Denied her seat at the World Anti Slavery Convention, as were all women delegates, Mott discussed with Stanton the need for a convention on women’s rights. Stanton, Mott, Wright, Hunt and Mary Ann McClintock made the plan to call the first women’s rights convention in 1848, initiating the women’s rights movement in the United States. Stanton’s role in that convention was as a leader (Stanton, 2009).
Stanton met Susan B. Anthony in 1851. History records the lasting friendship between these two women as well as the strains that resulted from their different roles and priorities. Unwilling to commit to a vigorous travel schedule until her children were grown, Stanton wrote many of her speeches for delivery by Anthony. Through the years Anthony and Stanton remained close however Stanton did split with others over the idea that suffrage for black men after emancipation should take precedence over suffrage for women.
Stanton served as president of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association for a brief period. istorLater in her career Stanton focused increasingly on social reforms related to women’s concerns other than suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton died in 1902 and did not live to see women obtain the right to vote. She is regarded as one of the major forces in the drive toward equal rights for women in the United States.

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