Elizabeth Cady Stanton: In Her Own Words

by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Theodore Stanton (Editor), Harriot Stanton Blatch (Editor)

Anyone who thinks Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a stuffy old Victorian suffragist need only look at the twinkle in her eye in many photographs and her no-nonsense expression. Any lingering doubts will be removed when you read her own letters and diary excerpts in this book. At her marriage in 1840, she asked that the "promise to obey" be removed from the wedding vows. "I obstinately refused to obey one with whom I supposed I was entering into an equal relation." She refused to be addressed as Mrs. Henry B. Stanton, asserting that women were individuals in their own right. Her marriage lasted 47 years. The world has seen few more committed activists capable of spending a lifetime working for such varied issues as abolition and women's rights, and being at the forefront of leading those movements. Formally educated, Stanton took a very broad and modern view of women's rights. The right to vote was central but she saw clearly how the law favored men over women in many spheres. She advocated for women's divorce rights, parental and custody rights, the right to own property, employment and income rights, and birth control. Stanton thought women should have control over their sexual relationships and childbearing. She was also a supporter of the Temperance Movement. Early on she displayed wit and determination. As a youngster, she "I was wondering why it was that everything we like to do is a sin, and that everything we dislike is commanded by God or someone on earth. I am so tired of that everlasting no! no! no! At school, at home, everywhere it is 'no.’ Even at church all the commandments begin 'Thou shalt not.' I suppose God will say 'no' to all we like in the next world, just as you do here." Her daughter Margaret described Stanton as "cheerful, sunny, and indulgent" One of her most cherished and enduring relationships was her 50-year friendship with Susan B. Anthony. Together they worked for women's suffrage and other rights. Stanton wrote, "No power in heaven, hell or earth can separate us, for our hearts are eternally wedded together." Stanton died in 1902, 18 years before women got the right to vote.

270 pages, Paperback

Published December 6, 2016

About the author

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American social activist and leading figure of the early woman's movement. Her Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the first women's rights convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, is often credited with initiating the first organized woman's rights and woman's suffrage movements in the United States.

Before Stanton narrowed her political focus almost exclusively to women's rights, she was an active abolitionist together with her husband, Henry Brewster Stanton and cousin, Gerrit Smith. Unlike many of those involved in the women's rights movement, Stanton addressed a number of issues pertaining to women beyond voting rights. Her concerns included women's parental and custody rights, property rights, employment and income rights, divorce laws, the economic health of the family, and birth control. She was also an outspoken supporter of the 19th-century temperance movement.

After the American Civil War, Stanton's commitment to female suffrage caused a schism in the women's rights movement when she, along with Susan B. Anthony, declined to support passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. She opposed giving added legal protection and voting rights to African American men while continuing to deny women, black and white, the same rights. Her position on this issue, together with her thoughts on organized Christianity and women's issues beyond voting rights, led to the formation of two separate women's rights organizations that were finally rejoined, with Stanton as president of the joint organization, approximately twenty years later.