Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Leader in the Movement for Women’s Rights
I. Early Life
a. Elizabeth was born in 1815 in New York.
b. She was one of eleven children and only six survived past their youth. This caused her mother to go into deep depression.
c. Elizabeth received a good education for a woman and spent a lot of time of with her father who discussed books and legal issues with her.
d. When her only surviving brother from her childhood died, her father was very upset and told Elizabeth that he wished she were a boy.
e. She met her husband, Henry Stanton, through her involvement in abolition movements. The word "obey" was taken away from their ceremony.
II. Early Involvement with Women’s Rights
a. On the Stanton’s honeymoon, they went to the Anti-Slavery Convention in London.
b. At the convention, women delegates were denied seats and Elizabeth wanted to hold a convention demanding women their own rights.
c. The family moved to New York at first and had seven children.
d. When the family moved to Boston, they were very involved in the lives of active abolitionists.
e. When they moved back to New York, Elizabeth met with Lucretia Mott and three other Quaker women.
III. Seneca Falls Convention
a. Elizabeth participated in abolitionist, women’s rights, and sobriety communities while still raising her family. She felt that women should not be satisfied with only being a mother and a wife.
b. In 1848, Elizabeth, Lucretia Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, and many other women put together the first women’s rights convention.
c. The convention was held at Elizabeth’s home in Seneca Falls, New York.
d. Elizabeth wrote a Declaration of Sentiments, which was supposed to have the same outline as the Declaration of Independence, formally stating the equality of men and women and propose solutions, one being female suffrage.
e. About 300 people attended and 100 of people signed the Declaration of Sentiments.
IV. Suffrage Movement and Women’s Rights
a. Two weeks after the Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth was invited to speak at a second women’s rights convention in Rochester.
b. In 1850, Elizabeth was invited to speak at the first National Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester but she was pregnant. Instead of going to the convention, she was a sponsor and had her speech read.
c. Elizabeth later met Susan B. Anthony and they instantly bonded and created the Woman’s State Temperance Society. They joined female suffrage and African American suffrage together, creating the Woman’s National Loyal League in 1863 to support the Thirteenth Amendment.
d. Elizabeth and Susan also started the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 with Matilda Joslyn Gage. Elizabeth helped write the Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States. It was presented at the Centennial celebration in Washington in 1876.
e. Elizabeth started traveling and gave lectures, talking about more than just the suffrage acts like she had before. Her most famous speech, Our Girls, was about the education and socialization of girls.
V. Legacy
a. Elizabeth began to felt that Christianity was sexist, demoting women to a lower stand in humanity.
b. With Matilda Gage, she began writing The Woman’s Bible to translate the Bible from a woman’s point of view.
c. Stanton died of heart failure on October 26, 1902.
d. While she hadn’t been able to go to college, both of her daughters went and both recieved advanced degrees.
e. Elizabeth spent her life fighting for the right to vote, gender-neutral divorce laws, a woman’s right to refuse her husband sexually, increased economic opportunities for women, and the right of women to serve on juries.
VI. Sources
a. Historynet.com/Elizabeth-cady-stanton
b. Greatwomen.com
c. The Handy History Answer Book