FOUNDER OF THE WOMAN-SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT.
MONG the few women who have shown themselves the polemic equals of the most trained and brilliant men of their times, the subject of this sketch stands prominently with the first. Mrs. Stanton was always a vigorous woman of commanding size with the mental force of a giant. In public debates and private arguments, she has shown herself to be an orator, forceful, logical, witty, sarcastic and eloquent. Like all great orators, she is imbued with one great idea which presses to the front in all she says or does and has been the moving force of her life. She believes that social and national safety lies alone in the purity of individuals and in the full and free bestowal upon every individual, regardless of sex, of all the rights and privileges of citizenship. In other words, whatever other excellencies or merits she may possess, she is primarily a Woman Suffragist.
Elizabeth Cady was the daughter of Judge Daniel Cady and was born in Johnstown, N. Y., November 12, 1815. She was a child of marked intelligence and was thoroughly educated by her parents and graduated in Troy, N. Y., in 1832. She was learned in Latin and Greek, was a great lover of sports and, it is said that in early life she frequently complained that she had been born a girl instead of a boy. She used to discuss law in her father’s office and always insisted that no law was just which denied to women an equal right with men. She was anxious to complete her education in Union College where her brother had been educated, and her indignation was unbounded when she was refused entrance because girls were not admitted to that institution. Thus it will be seen how she became a Woman’s Rights believer, and with her strong and cultured mind it was only natural that she should become one of its chief advocates. At the age of twenty-five, in 1840, she married Henry B. Stanton, an Anti-slavery orator, journalist and author. Thus she became an Abolitionist and entered, with her usual force and zeal, into that movement. She was a delegate to the World’s Anti-slavery Convention, which met the next year in London. With Lucretia Mott, she signed the first call for a Woman’s Rights Convention, which met in Seneca Falls, N. Y., on the 19th of July, 1848. Mrs. Stanton received and cared for the visitors, wrote the resolutions, declarations and aims of the organization, and had the satisfaction of being ridiculed throughout the United States. Even her father, Judge Cady, imagined that she had gone crazy and journeyed all the way to Seneca Falls in order to endeavor to reason her out of her position; but she remained unshaken. Since that convention, Mrs. Stanton has been one of the leaders of the movement in the United States.
In 1854, Mrs. Stanton addressed the New York Legislature, endeavoring to bring about such a change in the constitution as would enfranchise women, an extract from which, we insert in this volume. She delivered another address to the same body in 1860 and again in 1867. In Kansas and in Michigan in ’67 and ’74, when those states were submitting the question of “Woman’s Suffrage” to the people, she did heroic work by canvassing and speaking throughout both of these Commonwealths. Until the year of 1890, she was President of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association. In 1868, she ventured to run as candidate for Congress and, in her speech to the electors of the district, she announced her creed to be “Free speech, free press, free men and free trade.”
The “New York Herald” ventured to support her in this effort; but of course she was defeated, as she expected, her object being only to emphasize and advertise the principle of “Woman Suffrage.”
The literary works of Mrs. Stanton consist of her contributions to “The Revolution,” a magazine published in New York City, of which she became editor in 1868, Susan B. Anthony being the publisher. She was also joint-author of the “History of Woman’s Suffrage” of which three volumes have appeared. She has, also, lectured much and contributed to the secular press.
Mrs. Stanton, with all her public works, has been a thoroughly domestic woman. She has a family of seven children, five sons and two daughters, all of whom were living up to a recent date and some of them have inherited the talents of their mother and bid fair to become famous. Mrs. Stanton possesses conversational powers of the highest order. In the light of recent developments, the retrospect of her long career must afford her unusual pleasure. She was met with bitterness, ridicule and misrepresentation at the beginning of her crusade. She has lived down all of this and has seen her cherished ambition fruited here and there, while many of the leading men of the age in all sections of the country have been brought to look upon “Woman Suffrage” as something to be desired; while in the minds of the public generally, the seed of thoughts sown by her are so fast rooting themselves and springing up, that she looks with confidence forward to the early realization of her hopes—the enfranchisement of woman.
A PLEA FOR EQUAL RIGHTS.