Elizabeth Stanton life and biography

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, also known as: Mrs. Henry Brewster Stanton born November 12, 1815 in Johnstown, New York, United States - died October 26, 1902 in New York City, New York, United States was an American writer and woman rights activist.


The writer and reformer Elizabeth Cady Stanton was perhaps the most gifted and versatile feminist leader in American history. Elizabeth Cady was born in Johnstown, New York, on November 12, 1815. The daughter of a judge, she became a feminist while still a child after hearing her father inform abused women that they had no legal alternative but to endure mistreatment by their husbands and fathers. She had the best education then available to women. While completing her studies at the Troy Female Seminary, she experienced a nervous collapse on hearing the great revivalist James Finney preach; henceforth she had an intense hostility toward organized religion.

In 1840 Elizabeth Cady married the abolitionist leader Henry B. Stanton. Although he sympathized with her ambitions, he was not wealthy, and she remained home with her five children for many years. All the same, she was able to do some writing and speaking for the feminist cause. In 1848 she organized America's first woman's-rights convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, where the Stantons resided. She also composed a declaration of principles, which described the history of mankind as one of "repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her." Despite opposition, she persuaded the convention to approve a resolution calling for women's suffrage.

During the Civil War, Stanton and her friend and ally Susan B. Anthony created the National Woman's Loyal League to build support for what became the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Once the slaves were free, the two worked to ensure that women would be enfranchised along with the freedmen. However, their work was seen as a threat to the black franchise. If the struggle to enfranchise black males was associated with votes for women, it was thought, neither black men nor women of any color would get the vote. But this opposition only made the Stantonites more stubborn. Their campaign finally divided the women's suffrage movement into two camps: their own New York-based band of uncompromising radicals, the National Woman Suffrage Association, and a more conservative group, the American Woman Suffrage Association, which was centered in Boston and accepted the primacy of black suffrage. There were several ideological differences between the two organizations, and a good deal of personal animosity developed. By 1890, however, these were overcome, and the two organizations merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association with Stanton as president.

Although Stanton remained active into old age, she was less concerned with suffrage and more interested in divorce reform and other matters during her last years. A fluent and witty writer, she collaborated with Anthony and Matilda Gage on the first three volumes of the massive History of Woman Suffrage and edited The Woman's Bible . Mrs. Stanton also wrote articles on a variety of subjects for the best contemporary magazines. She died on October 26, 1902, in New York City.

PERSONAL INFORMATION

Family: Born November 12, 1815 in Johnstown, NY; died October 26, 1902, in New York, New York; daughter of Daniel and Margaret (Livingston) Cady; married Henry Stanton (an abolitionist), 1839 (died, 1887); children: seven. Education: Attended Johnstown Academy and Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary. Memberships: American Equal Rights Association, National American Woman Suffrage Association, National American Woman Suffrage Association.

CAREER

Editor, Revolution, 1968-70; Women's rights activist and writer.

WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:

* Letter to the Woman's Rights Convention, Held at Worcester, Oct. 1850 [and] Letter to the Woman's Rights Convention, Held at Syracuse, Sept. 1852, Master's Print (Syracuse), c. 1852.

* Address to the Legislature of New York, Adopted by the State Woman's Rights Convention, Held at Albany, Tuesday and Wednesday, February 14 and 15, 1854, Weed, Parsons & Company (Albany, NY), 1854.

* The Slave's Appeal, Weed, Parsons & Company, 1860.

* Free Speech: By Elizabeth Cady Stanton, at the Fourth Annual NY State Anti-Slavery Convention at Association Hall, Albany, NY, February 4th and 5th, 1861, [Albany], 1861.

* Address of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, on the Divorce Bill, before the Judiciary Committee of the New York Senate . . . Feb. 8, 1861, Weed, Parsons & Company, 1861.

* Address in Favor of Universal Suffrage, for the Election of Delegates to the Constitutional Convention Before the Judiciary Committee of the Legislature of New York, in the Assembly Chamber, January 23, 1867, on Behalf of the American Equal Rights Associations, Weed, Parsons & Company, 1867.

* Address of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Delivered at Seneca Falls & Rochester, NY July 19th & August 2d, 1848, Robert J. Johnston (New York City), 1870.

* Memorial of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Elizabeth L. Bladen, Olympia Brown, Susan B. Anthony, and Josephine L. Griffing, to the Congress of the United States, and the Arguments Thereon before the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate, by Isabella Beecher Hooker, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, Washington, January 12, 1872, Chronicle Publishing (Washington, DC), 1872.

* (Editor with Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage) History of Woman Suffrage, volumes 1-3, Fowler & Wells (New York, NY), 1881-86.

* The Pleasure of Age: An Address Delivered by Elizabeth Cady Stanton on Her Seventieth Birthday, c. 1885.

* Bible and Church Degrade Women (comprises the Effects of Woman Suffrage on Questions of Morals and Religion, The Degraded Status of Woman in the Bible, and The Christian Church and Woman), H. L. Green (Chicago), c. 1890.

* Woman Suffrage: Hearing before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives . . . February 11, 1890, U.S. Government Printing Office (Washington, DC), 1890.

* Suffrage a Natural Right, Open Court Publishing Company (Chicago), 1894.

* The Woman's Bible, two volumes, European Publishing Company (New York, NY), 1895-98.

* Eighty Years and More (1815-1897): Reminiscences of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, European Publishing Company (New York, NY), 1898.

* Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Her Life-long Friend and Co-worker Susan B. Anthony on Her Eightieth Birthday, February 15, 1900, 1900.

* Solitude of Self: An Address Delivered by Elizabeth Cady Stanton before the United States Congressional Committee on the Judiciary, Monday, January 18, 1892, edited by Harriot Stanton Blatch, [New York], c. 1910.

* Elizabeth Cady Stanton as Revealed in Her Letters, Diary and Reminiscences, Harper & Brothers (New York, NY), 1922.

* Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Arno (New York, NY), 1969.

* Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Correspondence, Writings, SpeechesSelections: 1981, Schocken Books (New York, NY), 1981.

* The Elizabeth Cady Stanton-Susan B. Anthony Reader: Correspondence, Writings, SpeechesSelections: 1992, Northeastern University Press (Boston, MA), 1992.

* The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. AnthonySelections: 1997, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1997.

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