Untitled Essay, Research Paper
I was one time called the most unsafe adult female in America because
I dared to inquire for the unthinkable- the right to vote. I challenged my civilization & # 8217 ; s
basic premises about work forces and adult females, and dedicated my life to the chase
of equal rights for all adult females. My name is Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
I was born in Johnstown, New York, on the 12th of November,
1815. My male parent is the outstanding lawyer and justice Daniel Cady and my female parent
is Margaret Livingston Cady. I was born the 7th kid and in-between girl.
Although my female parent gave birth to eleven children- five male childs and six girls-
six of her kids died. Merely one of my brothers survived to adulthood,
and he died out of the blue when he was twenty. At ten old ages old, my childhood
was shadowed by my male parent & # 8217 ; s heartache. I can still remember traveling into the big
darkened parlour to see my brother and happening the coffin and my male parent by
his side, picket and immoveable. As he took notice of me, I climbed upon his
articulatio genus. He sighed and said, & # 8221 ; Oh my girl, I wish you were a male child! & # 8221 ; I threw
my weaponries around his cervix and replied that I will seek my hardest to be all
my brother was.
I was determined to be brave, to sit Equus caballuss and
drama cheat, and analyze such manfully subjects as Latin, Greek, mathematics, and
doctrine. I devoured the books in my male parent & # 8217 ; s extended jurisprudence library and
debated the all right points of the jurisprudence with his clerks. It was while reading
my male parent & # 8217 ; s jurisprudence books that I foremost discovered the inhuman treatment of the Torahs sing
adult females, and I resolved to acquire scissors and nip off out every unjust jurisprudence. But
my male parent stopped me, explicating that merely the legislative assembly could alter or
take them. This was the cardinal minute in my calling as a adult females & # 8217 ; s rights
reformist.
As I grew older, my rational involvements and masculine
activities embarrassed my male parent. He told me they were inappropriate in a
immature lady, particularly the girl of a outstanding adult male. I was educated at
the Johnstown Academy until I was 15, and was ever the caput of my category,
even in the higher degrees of mathematics and linguistic communication, where I was the lone
miss. But when I graduated, and wanted to go to Union College- as my brother
had done- my male parent would non let it. It was unseemly, he said, for a adult female
to have a college instruction, for in 1830 no American college or university
admitted adult females. Alternatively, my male parent enrolled me in Emma Willard & # 8217 ; s Female Academy
in Troy, New York. Although I learned a great trade at the academy, I objected
to the rule of individual sex instruction and felt it was unreal and
unnatural. I believed cognition had no sex.
I graduated in 1833 and returned to my parent & # 8217 ; s place,
and this is when I entered the universe of reform. While sing my cousin,
Gerrit Smith ( the emancipationist ) in Peterboro, New York, I met with all sorts
of reformists. There, excessively, I met the adult male I was to marry- Henry Stanton, a
celebrated emancipationist talker and journalist. My matrimony to Henry, who was
10 old ages older than me, marked an of import turning point in my life, particularly
since my male parent objected to my pick. He strongly disagreed with Henry & # 8217 ; s
extremist political relations, and tried to deter me, but I was stubborn. So, on
May 1, 1840, we got married in my parents place in Johnstown. On the nuptials
twenty-four hours, we both agreed ( although the curate objected ) to take the word & # 8220 ; obey & # 8221 ;
from my vows. I refused to obey person with whom I was come ining an equal
relationship. We honeymooned in London where Henry combined concern with
pleasance and attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention. It was in London
that I met Lucretia Mott, when both of us were banished from the convention
because of our gender. We resolved the support in touch when we returned to
America, but eight old ages passed before this happened.
Meanwhile, after Henry and I returned to the United States,
Henry gave up the talk circuit and studied jurisprudence with my male parent to back up
our turning household. I had given birth to three boies in four old ages, and dullard
seven kids in all, five boies and two girls. This colored everything
that I did, for I was either pregnant or nursing or both during the formative
old ages of the adult females & # 8217 ; s motion. One consequence was that I learned to utilize my pen
alternatively of my presence. A 2nd consequence was that Susan Anthony spent so much
clip at our house that the kids called her & # 8220 ; Aunt Susan. & # 8221 ;
After Henry passed the saloon, we lived briefly in Boston
before settling for good at Seneca Falls, New York. From my place in the
little town near the Canadian boundary line, the start of the battle for adult females & # 8217 ; s
rights began. Lucretia Mott and I organized the first Women & # 8217 ; s Rights Convention
in Seneca Falls, along with the bill of exchange of the Declaration of Sentiments.
Susan B. Anthony and I grew to be the most confidant of
friends and the closest confederates in the conflict for adult females & # 8217 ; s right to vote.
Susan and I co-founded the Women & # 8217 ; s State Temperance Society for adult females married
to alkies. It was in an 1852 meeting of this adult females & # 8217 ; s society that I proposed
the right to disassociate bibulous hubbies. The response was indignation, for the
really thought of divorce was disgraceful, and even the comparatively advanced adult females
feared that my radicalism would endanger their cause. The main ground
for the suffering province of married womans of alkies was the deficiency of married adult females & # 8217 ; s
belongings right. So, in 1854 I made my first major reference to the New York
legislative assembly on behalf of a measure on this topic. The legisla
ture passed a
measure giving married adult females rights to their ain rewards and care of their
kids.
As the Civil War erupted, we moved to New York City. This
gave me greater entree to the populace. Again, I teamed up with Susan B. Anthony
and together we headed the Loyal League and collected 100s of 1000s
of requests for a constitutional amendment stoping bondage. A secondary benefit
was that the conference reinforced adult females & # 8217 ; s webs and fund-raising abilities.
When the war ended, I engaged in what was the biggest
of my many springs. In order to prove the Constitution & # 8217 ; s gender-neutral diction
on campaigner eligibility, I ran for Congress in 1866. Of some 12,000 work forces
who casted ballots, merely 24 were brave plenty to vote for me. The following
twelvemonth, I made my first major talking circuit. I accompanied Susan B. Anthony
to Kansas for a referendum on the enfranchisement of both ex-slaves and
adult females.
We lost the election, but won other support, including
funding that allowed us to get down printing the Revolution in January,
1868. I did most of the composing on adult females & # 8217 ; s issues for the newspaper. I published
columns on jury responsibility and harlotry every bit good as some standard subjects.
But in 1869, the newspaper collapsed in bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, Susan and I separated from our longtime associates
in the adult females & # 8217 ; s rights motion and we formed the National Women Suffrage
Association ( NWSA ) in 1869. I was the NWSA & # 8217 ; s president and Susan Anthony
was vice-president.
By 1871, I had gone talking all the manner to California,
where western adult females found my right to vote protagonism less flooring. In add-on
to suffrage, my main talk point was educational chance for misss.
The Centennial Exposition brought me to Philadelphia in 1876, and I besides
made regular trips to Washington to talk on behalf of the federal right to vote
amendment. I spent most of the 1880 & # 8217 ; s working on my book, The History of
Woman Suffrage. After Henry & # 8217 ; s decease in 1887, I spent increasing sums of
clip in England with my girl, Harriot Stanton Blatch. This, in bend,
helped trip my involvement in the International Council of Women that formed
in 1888. My address at that place celebrated the 40th day of remembrance of the Seneca
Falls Convention. In that same twelvemonth, I besides attempted to project a ballot in
a instance similar to other unsuccessful trial of the Fifteenth Amendment. Two
old ages subsequently, the right to vote associations reunited, and I served as president
of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1890-1892.
Though I ne’er attended another right to vote convention after
stepping down from the presidential term, my yearss of extremist leading were non
over. As the right to vote motion grew progressively conservative and uneffective,
I once more turned to the pen instead than the platform. In my 80th twelvemonth,
I shocked even women’s rightists with the publication of The Woman & # 8217 ; s Bible ( 1895 ) ,
a carefully researched statement against adult females & # 8217 ; s low-level place in faith
that- like the Revolution- was more sensible than its inflammatory rubric
implied. Reverend Anna Howard Shaw and others moved a declaration in the 1896
NAWSA convention dissociating the organisation from the book, and despite
Susan B. Anthony & # 8217 ; s impassioned supplication, the gesture passed. This indignation gave
me no intermission, nevertheless, and in 1898, I added a 2nd volume.
In the same twelvemonth, I published my autobiography, Eighty
Old ages and More ( 1898 ) , and I continued to compose on wide subjects for newspapers
and magazines. While the NAWSA concentrated with increasing exclusivity on
right to vote, I remembered that the original motion had included far more than
suffrage- and that it was I who had to contend for the add-on of right to vote
on the docket. As I aged, my composing focused more on issues that straight
concerned adult females & # 8217 ; s personal lives, peculiarly dress reform, divorce, and
the detrimental influence of spiritual and educational systems on the female
population.
In June of 1902, Susan Anthony spent a hebdomad in my place
and she found me about blind, but still alarm. A few months subsequently, on October
26, 1902, I died softly at the age of 80 three.
The Nineteenth Amendment, leting 26 million American adult females the right to
ballot, became the jurisprudence of the land on August 18, 1920. Unfortunately, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton did non populate long plenty to vote freely.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton & # 8217 ; s Hagiographas, her addresss, her
enthusiasm and her life provide inspiration for coevalss of American
women’s rightists, even to the present twenty-four hours. I think that Elizabeth, were she here
today, would be pleased to see her work was non in vain. And that the revolution
she and other ladies of Seneca Falls began that hot July twenty-four hours in 1848 did
non stop 76 old ages ago when adult females acquired right to vote. And that her life still
inspires new genrations of immature adult females. If it were possible for me to run into
with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, I would be delighted to take portion in that
chance. Stanton & # 8217 ; s spirit lives on today whenever and wherever American
adult females use their voices and their ballots to proclaim equality.
Works CitedFaber, Doris. Oh Lizzie! The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. New York: Lothrop,
Lee, and Shepard Company, 1972.Franck, Irene and David Brownstone. Women & # 8217 ; s World: A Timeline of Women in
History. New York: Harper Collins Publishers,
1995.Rossi, Alice S. The Feminist Documents: From Adams to deBeauvoir. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1973.Weatherford, Doris. American Women & # 8217 ; s History.
