Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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Name	Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Caption	Stanton c. 1880
Birth date	12 November 1815
Birth place	Johnstown, New York
Death date	26 October 1902
Death place	New York City
Occupation	Abolitionist, Suffragist, Writer, Activist
Spouse	Henry Brewster Stanton (m. 1840; died 1887)
Known for	Women's suffrage, Women's rights

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a pioneering American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early women's rights movement. Her intellectual framework and relentless organizing for women's suffrage fundamentally shaped the struggle for gender equality. Alongside Susan B. Anthony, she co-founded pivotal organizations like the National Woman Suffrage Association and authored foundational documents including the Declaration of Sentiments.

Early life and education

Born in Johnstown, New York, she was the daughter of Daniel Cady, a prominent congressman and state supreme court justice, and Margaret Livingston Cady. The death of her only brother, Eleazar Cady, when she was eleven profoundly affected her father and exposed her to the legal limitations placed on women. She received an exceptional education for a girl of her era, attending the coeducational Johnstown Academy and later the Troy Female Seminary, founded by Emma Willard. Exposure to the religious fervor of Charles Grandison Finney during the Second Great Awakening at the seminary led to a lifelong religious skepticism. Her early understanding of gender inequity was deepened through conversations in the law office of her father, where she heard the pleas of women seeking legal redress.

Marriage and family

In 1840, she married Henry Brewster Stanton, a noted abolitionist orator and journalist. She insisted the word "obey" be omitted from the ceremony. Their honeymoon was a trip to London to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention, where the exclusion of female delegates, including Lucretia Mott, radicalized her commitment to women's rights. The couple eventually settled in Boston, and later Seneca Falls, New York, raising seven children: Daniel Cady Stanton, Henry Brewster Stanton Jr., Gerrit Smith Stanton, Theodore Weld Stanton, Margaret Livingston Stanton Lawrence, Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch, and Robert Livingston Stanton. Managing a large household in Seneca Falls provided direct experience with the domestic and legal constraints she sought to overturn.

Activism and suffrage leadership

Her activism formally launched with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention in the United States, which she organized with Lucretia Mott. For this convention, she drafted the revolutionary Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, which demanded civil, social, and religious rights for women. In 1851, she began her legendary partnership with Susan B. Anthony, combining her philosophical and rhetorical gifts with Anthony's organizational genius. After the American Civil War, she broke with former abolitionist allies over supporting the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments for granting voting rights to African American men but not women. This split led her and Anthony to form the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, opposing the more moderate American Woman Suffrage Association.

Writing and philosophy

A prolific writer and thinker, she believed suffrage was one of many necessary reforms. She co-authored the first three volumes of the seminal History of Woman Suffrage with Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage. She published the controversial The Woman's Bible, a critical examination of scripture's portrayal of women that alienated more religious suffragists. Through her lecture tours and articles in publications like Revolution, the newspaper she co-founded, she advocated for broad social change including liberalized divorce laws, married women's property rights, temperance, and reproductive rights. Her philosophy often prioritized individual autonomy and challenged religious and social institutions she viewed as oppressive.

Later years and death

In her later decades, she continued to write and lecture extensively, even as her health declined. She traveled to Europe and lived with her daughter Harriot Stanton Blatch in England. She collaborated with Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper on the final volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage. She authored her autobiography, Eighty Years and More, published in 1898. She died of heart failure at her home in New York City on October 26, 1902, nearly two decades before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Per her wishes, her brain was donated to Cornell University for scientific study.

Legacy and honors

She is recognized as the principal philosopher and intellectual leader of the 19th-century women's rights movement. Her home in Seneca Falls is part of the Women's Rights National Historical Park. In 1921, a monument sculpted by Adelaide Johnson depicting her, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott was placed in the United States Capitol rotunda. She was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1973. Along with Susan B. Anthony, she became the first woman honored with a portrait in the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection, represented by a statue in the Capitol Visitor Center. The Elizabeth Cady Stanton House is a designated National Historic Landmark.

Category:American women's rights activists Category:American suffragists Category:1815 births Category:1902 deaths