| Stanton, Elizabeth Cady |
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Feminist leader (1815-1902) |  |
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The daughter of a successful lawyer in upstate New York, Elizabeth Cady rebelled from an early age against restrictive female roles. After graduating from Troy Female Seminary in 1832, she became active in the temperance and anti-slavery causes, challenging barriers to female leadership in both movements. In 1840, insisting that the word "obey" be omitted from her wedding vows, she married reformer, Henry Stanton, with whom she had seven children. In 1848, she helped organize the historic women's rights convention in Seneca Falls and authored its Declaration of Sentiments, paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence to proclaim that "men and women are created equal." Over the next half-century, Stanton energetically advocated women's rights to participate fully in all areas of social, intellectual and political life. |
 | | Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), suffrage leade | | © 1997 State Historical Society of Wisconsin |
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An 1851 meeting with Susan B. Anthony sparked a lifelong political partnership. In 1869, they formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, and Stanton served as the organization's president until 1892. A rousing and entertaining orator, Stanton toured on the lecture circuit between 1868 and 1880. In later years, she expressed her views in articles for newspapers and popular magazines. Possessing an iconoclastic streak and great intellectual breadth, she frequently sparked controversy. In The Woman's Bible (1895), she criticized organized religion's role in keeping women subservient; the book drew harsh rebukes from the church and the media, as well as from many suffrage leaders who feared association with such radicalism would taint the movement.
SOURCE: Notable American Women; Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography. |
