Editing Elizabeth Cady Stanton (section)

==Early activism==
=== World Anti-Slavery Convention ===
[[File:Mott Lucretia Painting Kyle 1841.jpg|thumb|[[Lucretia Mott]]]]
While on their honeymoon in England in 1840, the Stantons attended the [[World Anti-Slavery Convention]] in London. Elizabeth was appalled by the convention's male delegates, who voted to prevent women from participating even if they had been appointed as delegates of their respective abolitionist societies. The men required the women to sit in a separate section, hidden by curtains from the convention's proceedings. [[William Lloyd Garrison]], a prominent American abolitionist and supporter of women's rights who arrived after the vote had been taken, refused to sit with the men and sat with the women instead.<ref>McMillen, pp. 72–75</ref>

[[Lucretia Mott]], a [[Quaker]] minister, abolitionist and women's rights advocate, was one of the women who had been sent as a delegate. Although Mott was much older than Stanton, they quickly bonded in an enduring friendship, with Stanton eagerly learning from the more experienced activist. While in London, Stanton heard Mott preach in a [[Unitarianism|Unitarian]] chapel, the first time Stanton had heard a woman give a sermon or even speak in public.<ref>Griffith, p. 37</ref>
Stanton later gave credit to this convention for focusing her interests on women's rights.<ref>Ginzberg, p. 41</ref>

===Seneca Falls Convention===

An accumulation of experiences was having an effect on Stanton. The London convention had been a turning point in her life. Her study of law books had convinced her that legal changes were necessary to overcome gender inequities.  She had personal experience of the stultifying role of women as wives and housekeepers. She said, "the wearied, anxious look of the majority of women, impressed me with a strong feeling that some active measures should be taken to remedy the wrongs of society in general, and of women in particular."<ref name=80-years-148>Stanton, ''Eighty Years and More'', [https://archive.org/details/eightyyearsandm00stangoog/page/n171/mode/2up p. 148]</ref> This knowledge, however, did not immediately lead to action. Relatively isolated from other social reformers and fully occupied with household duties, she was at a loss as to how she could engage in social reform.{{cn|date=February 2024}}

In the summer of 1848, [[Lucretia Mott]] traveled from Pennsylvania to attend a Quaker meeting near the Stanton's home. Stanton was invited to visit with Mott and three other progressive Quaker women. Finding herself in sympathetic company, Stanton said she poured out her "long-accumulating discontent, with such vehemence and indignation that I stirred myself, as well as the rest of the party, to do and dare anything."<ref name=80-years-148/> The gathered women agreed to organize a women's rights convention in Seneca Falls a few days later, while Mott was still in the area.<ref>McMillen, p. 86</ref>

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The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her… He has not ever permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.  He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
| source = ''Elizabeth Cady Stanton'', the [[Declaration of Sentiments]] of the Seneca Falls Convention
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Stanton was the primary author of the convention's [[Declaration of Rights and Sentiments]],<ref>Dubois, The Elizabeth Cady Stanton – Susan B. Anthony Reader, pp. 12–13</ref> which was modeled on the [[U.S. Declaration of Independence]]. Its list of grievances included the wrongful denial of women's right to vote, signaling Stanton's intent to generate a discussion of women's suffrage at the convention. This was a highly controversial idea at the time but not an entirely new one. Her cousin [[Gerrit Smith]], no stranger to radical ideas himself, had called for women's suffrage shortly before at the [[Liberty League]] convention in Buffalo. When Henry Stanton saw the inclusion of women's suffrage in the document, he told his wife that she was acting in a way that would turn the proceedings into a farce. Lucretia Mott, the main speaker, was also disturbed by the proposal.<ref>Wellman, [https://books.google.com/books?id=IV6rt59asF8C&pg=PA193 pp. 193–195]</ref>

An estimated 300 women and men attended the two-day [[Seneca Falls Convention]].<ref>Women's Rights National Historical Park, National Park Service, [https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture  "All Men and Women Are Created Equal"]</ref> In her first address to a large audience, Stanton explained the purpose of the gathering and the importance of women's rights. Following a speech by Mott, Stanton read the Declaration of Sentiments, which the attendees were invited to sign.<ref>McMillen, pp. 90–01.  Griffith says on p. 41 that Stanton had earlier spoken to a smaller group of women on temperance and women's rights.</ref> Next came the resolutions, all of which the convention adopted unanimously except for the ninth, which read, "it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves the sacred right of the elective franchise."<ref>Quoted in Ginzberg, p. 59</ref> Following a vigorous debate, this resolution was adopted only after [[Frederick Douglass]], an abolitionist leader who had formerly been enslaved, gave it his strong support.<ref>Wellman, p. 203</ref>

[[File: Frederick Douglass (1840s).jpg|thumb|left|Frederick Douglass]]

Stanton's sister Harriet attended the convention and signed its Declaration of Sentiments. Her husband, however, made her remove her signature.<ref>Griffith, p. 6</ref>

Although this was a local convention organized on short notice, its controversial nature ensured that it was widely noted in the press, with articles appearing in newspapers in New York City, Philadelphia and many other places.<ref>McMillen, pp. 99–100</ref> The Seneca Falls Convention is now recognized as an historic event, the first convention to be called for the purpose of discussing women's rights. The convention's [[Declaration of Sentiments]] became "the single most important factor in spreading news of the women's rights movement around the country in 1848 and into the future," according to Judith Wellman, a historian of the convention.<ref>Wellman, [https://books.google.com/books?id=IV6rt59asF8C&pg=PA192 p. 192]</ref> The convention initiated the use of women's rights conventions as organizing tools for the early women's movement. By the time of the second [[National Women's Rights Convention#1851 in Worcester|National Women's Rights Convention]] in 1851, the demand for women's right to vote had become a central tenet of the [[Feminism in the United States|United States women's rights movement]].<ref>Mari Jo and Paul Buhle, ''The Concise History of Woman Suffrage'', 1978, [https://books.google.com/books?id=ukXENIk2uSkC&pg=PA90 p. 90]</ref>

A [[Rochester Women's Rights Convention of 1848|Rochester Women's Rights Convention]] was held in [[Rochester, New York]] two weeks later, organized by local women who had attended the one in Seneca Falls. Both Stanton and Mott spoke at this convention. The convention in Seneca Falls had been chaired by [[James Mott]], the husband of Lucretia Mott. The Rochester convention was chaired by a woman, [[Abigail Bush]], another historic first. Many people were disturbed by the idea of a woman chairing a convention of both men and women. How, for example, might people react if a woman ruled a man out of order? Stanton herself spoke in opposition to the election of a woman as the chair of this convention, although she later acknowledged her mistake and apologized for her action.<ref>McMillen 95–96</ref>

When the first [[National Women's Rights Convention]] was organized in 1850, Stanton was unable to attend because she was pregnant. Instead, she sent a letter to the convention entitled "Should women hold office" that outlined the movement's goals.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Katz|first=Elizabeth D.|date=July 30, 2021|title=Sex, Suffrage, and State Constitutional Law: Women's Legal Right to Hold Public Office|journal=Yale Journal of Law and Feminism|url=https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3896499|language=en|location=Rochester, NY|ssrn=3896499 }}</ref> The letter emphatically endorsed women's right to hold office, stating that "women might have a 'purifying, elevating, softening influence' on the 'political experiment of our Republic.'”<ref name=":0" /> Thereafter it became a tradition to open national women's rights conventions with a letter by Stanton, who did not participate in person in a national convention until 1860.<ref>Griffith, p. 65.  Stanton's sister Catherine Wilkeson signed the Call to the 1850 convention, according to Ginzberg, p. 220, footnote 55.</ref>

===Partnership with Susan B. Anthony===
While visiting Seneca Falls in 1851, [[Susan B. Anthony]] was introduced to Stanton by [[Amelia Bloomer]], a mutual friend and a supporter of women's rights. Anthony, who was five years younger than Stanton, came from a Quaker family that was active in reform movements. Anthony and Stanton soon became close friends and co-workers, forming a relationship that was a turning point in their lives and of great importance to the women's movement.<ref>Ginzberg, p. 77</ref>

The two women had complementary skills. Anthony excelled at organizing, while Stanton had an aptitude for intellectual matters and writing. Stanton later said, "In writing we did better work together than either could alone. While she is slow and analytical in composition, I am rapid and synthetic. I am the better writer, she the better critic."<ref>Quoted in McMillen, pp. 109–110</ref> Anthony deferred to Stanton in many ways throughout their years of work together, not accepting an office in any organization that would place her above Stanton.<ref>Barry, p. 297</ref> In their letters, they referred to one another as "Susan" and "Mrs. Stanton."<ref>Barry, p. 63</ref>

 [[File:Susan B Anthony c1855.png|left|thumb|Susan B. Anthony]]
Because Stanton was homebound with seven children while Anthony was unmarried and free to travel, Anthony assisted Stanton by supervising her children while Stanton wrote.
Among other things, this allowed Stanton to write speeches for Anthony to give.<ref name=Griffith-74>Griffith, [https://archive.org/details/inherownright00elis/page/74 p. 74]</ref>
One of Anthony's biographers said, "Susan became one of the family and was almost another mother to Mrs. Stanton's children."<ref>Barry, p. 64</ref> One of Stanton's biographers said, "Stanton provided the ideas, rhetoric, and strategy; Anthony delivered the speeches, circulated petitions, and rented the halls. Anthony prodded and Stanton produced."<ref name=Griffith-74/> Stanton's husband said, "Susan stirred the puddings, Elizabeth stirred up Susan, and then Susan stirs up the world!"<ref name=Griffith-74/> Stanton herself said, "I forged the thunderbolts, she fired them."<ref>Stanton, ''Eighty Years and More'',  [https://archive.org/details/eightyyearsandm00stangoog/page/n190 p. 165].</ref>
By 1854, Anthony and Stanton "had perfected a collaboration that made the New York State movement the most sophisticated in the country," according to [[Ann D. Gordon]], a professor of women's history.<ref>Gordon, Vol 1, [https://books.google.com/books?id=dBs4CO1DsF4C&pg=PR30 p. xxx]</ref>

After the Stantons moved from Seneca Falls to New York City in 1861, a room was set aside for Anthony in every house they lived in. One of Stanton's biographers estimated that, over her lifetime, Stanton spent more time with Anthony than with any other adult, including her own husband.<ref>Griffith, [https://archive.org/details/inherownright00elis/page/224 pp. 108, 224]</ref>

In December 1865, Stanton and Anthony submitted the first women's suffrage petition directed to Congress during the drafting of the Fourteenth Amendment.<ref name=":0" /> The women challenged the use of the word "male" in the version submitted to the States for ratification.<ref name=":0" /> When Congress failed to remove the language, Stanton announced her candidacy as the first woman to run for Congress in October 1866.<ref name=":0" /> She ran as an independent and secured only 24 votes, but her candidacy sparked conversations surrounding women's officeholding separate from suffrage.<ref name=":0" />

In December 1872, Stanton and Anthony each wrote [[New Departure (United States)|New Departure]] memorials to Congress and were invited to read their memorials to the Senate Judiciary Committee.<ref name=":0" /> This further brought women's suffrage and officeholding to the forefront of Congress's agenda, even though the New Departure agenda was ultimately rejected.<ref name=":0" />

The relationship was not without its strains, especially as Anthony could not match Stanton's charm and charisma. In 1871, Anthony said, "whoever goes into a parlor or before an audience with that woman does it at the cost of a fearful overshadowing, a price which I have paid for the last ten years, and that cheerfully, because I felt that our cause was most profited by her being seen and heard, and my best work was making the way clear for her."<ref>Harper, Vol 1,
 [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n465/mode/2up p. 396]</ref>

===Temperance activity===
Excessive consumption of alcohol was a severe social problem during this period, one that began to diminish only in the 1850s.<ref>McMillen, pp. 52–53</ref> Many activists considered [[temperance movement in the United States|temperance]] to be a women's rights issue because of laws that gave husbands complete control of the family and its finances. The law provided almost no recourse to a woman with a drunken husband, even if his condition left the family destitute and he was abusive to her and their children. If she managed to obtain a divorce, which was difficult to do, he could easily end up with sole guardianship of their children.<ref>Flexner, [https://books.google.com/books?id=VjEw6ZnVm1EC&pg=PA58 p. 58]</ref>

In 1852, Anthony was elected as a delegate to the New York state temperance convention. When she tried to participate in the discussion, the chairman stopped her, saying that women delegates were there only to listen and learn. Years later, Anthony observed, "No advanced step taken by women has been so bitterly contested as that of speaking in public. For nothing which they have attempted, not even to secure the suffrage, have they been so abused, condemned and antagonized."<ref>Susan B. Anthony, "Fifty Years of Work for Woman" ''Independent'', 52 (February 15, 1900), pp. 414–417, as quoted in [[Lynn Sherr|Sherr, Lynn]], ''Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words'', Random House, New York, 1995, p. 134</ref> Anthony and other women walked out and announced their intention to organize a women's temperance convention. Later that year, about five hundred women met in Rochester and created the Women's State Temperance Society, with Stanton as president and Anthony as state agent.<ref>Harper, Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n113/mode/2up, pp. 64–68].</ref> This leadership arrangement, with Stanton in the public role as president and Anthony as the energetic force behind the scenes, was characteristic of the organizations they founded in later years.<ref>Griffith, p. 76</ref>

In her first public speech since 1848, Stanton delivered the convention's keynote address, one that antagonized religious conservatives. She called for drunkenness to be legal grounds for divorce at a time when many conservatives opposed divorce for any reason. She appealed for wives of drunkard husbands to take control of their marital relations, saying, "Let no woman remain in relation of wife with the confirmed drunkard. Let no drunkard be the father of her children."<ref>Harper, Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n115/mode/2up, p. 67]</ref> She attacked the religious establishment, calling for women to donate their money to the poor instead of to the "education of young men for the ministry, for the building up a theological aristocracy and gorgeous temples to the unknown God."<ref>Harper, Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n117/mode/2up, p. 68]</ref>

At the organization's convention the following year, conservatives voted Stanton out as president, whereupon she and Anthony resigned from the organization.<ref>Harper, Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n143/mode/2up, pp. 92–95]</ref> Temperance was not a significant reform activity for Stanton afterwards, although she continued to use local temperance societies in the early 1850s as conduits for advocating women's rights.<ref>Griffith, p. 77</ref> She regularly wrote articles for ''[[The Lily (newspaper)|The Lily]]'', a monthly temperance newspaper that she helped transform into one that reported news of the women's rights movement.<ref>DuBois, ''The Elizabeth Cady Stanton – Susan B. Anthony Reader'', p. 15</ref> She also wrote for [[The Una]], a women's rights periodical edited by [[Paulina Wright Davis]], and for the [[New York Tribune]], a daily newspaper edited by [[Horace Greeley]].<ref>Griffith, p. 87</ref>

===Married Women's Property Act===

The status of married women at that time was in part set by English [[common law]] which for centuries had set the doctrine of [[coverture]] in local courts. It held wives were under the protection and control of their husbands.<ref name=Ginzberg-17>Ginzberg, p. 17</ref> In the words of [[William Blackstone]]'s 1769 book ''[[Commentaries on the Laws of England]]'': "By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage."<ref>Quoted in Wellman, p. 136</ref> The husband of a married woman became the owner of any property she brought into a marriage. She could not sign contracts, operate a business in her own name, or retain custody of their children in the event of a divorce.<ref>McMillen, p. 19</ref><ref name=Ginzberg-17/> In practice some American courts followed the common law. Some Southern states like Texas and Florida provided more equality for women. Across the country state legislatures were taking control away from common law traditions by passing legislation.<ref>Nancy Cott, ''Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation'' (2000). Cott says that "state legislatures’ flurry of activity in passing laws on divorce and married women’s property showed their hand: marriage was their political creation" p 54; and "the doctrine of coverture was being unseated in social thought and substantially defeated in the law." p. 157.</ref>

In 1836, the New York legislature began considering a [[Married Women's Property Acts in the United States|Married Women's Property Act]], with women's rights advocate [[Ernestine Rose]] an early supporter who circulated petitions in its favor.<ref>Wellman, pp. 145–146</ref> Stanton's father supported this reform. Having no sons to pass his considerable wealth to, he was faced with the prospect of having it eventually pass to the control of his daughters' husbands. Stanton circulated petitions and lobbied legislators in favor of the proposed law as early as 1843.<ref>Griffith, p. 43</ref>

The law eventually passed [[Married Women's Property Acts in the United States#New York|in 1848]]. It allowed a married woman to retain the property that she possessed before the marriage or acquired during the marriage, and it protected her property from her husband's creditors.<ref>McMillen, p. 81</ref> Enacted shortly before the Seneca Falls Convention, it strengthened the women's rights movement by increasing the ability of women to act independently.<ref name=Griffith-100>Griffith, pp. 100–101</ref> By weakening the traditional belief that husbands spoke for their wives, it assisted many of the reforms that Stanton championed, such as the right of women to speak in public and to vote.{{cn|date=February 2024}}

In 1853, Susan B. Anthony organized a petition campaign in New York state for an improved property rights law for married women.<ref>Harper, Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n155/mode/2up pp. 104, 122–28]</ref>
As part of the presentation of these petitions to the legislature, Stanton spoke in 1854 to a joint session of the Judiciary Committee, arguing that voting rights were needed to enable women to protect their newly won property rights.<ref>Griffith, pp. 82–83</ref> In 1860, Stanton spoke again to the Judiciary Committee, this time before a large audience in the assembly chamber, arguing that women's suffrage was the only real protection for married women, their children and their material assets.<ref name=Griffith-100/> She pointed to similarities in the legal status of woman and slaves, saying, "The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man."<ref>[https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/03/21/a-slaves-appeal-1860/ ''Address to Judiciary Committee of the New York State Legislature''], from the web site of the Catt Center at Iowa State University</ref> The legislature passed the improved law in 1860.{{cn|date=February 2024}}

===Dress reform===

[[File:Bloomers.jpg|right|thumb|The [[Bloomers (clothing)|Bloomer]] dress]]
In 1851, [[Elizabeth Smith Miller]], Stanton's cousin, brought a new style of dress to the upstate New York area. Unlike traditional floor-length dresses, it consisted of pantaloons worn under a knee-length dress. [[Amelia Bloomer]], Stanton's friend and neighbor, publicized the attire in ''[[The Lily (newspaper)|The Lily]]'', a monthly magazine that she published. Thereafter it was popularly known as the "Bloomer" dress, or just "[[Bloomers]]." It was soon adopted by many female reform activists despite harsh ridicule from traditionalists, who considered the idea of women wearing any sort of trousers as a threat to the social order. To Stanton, it solved the problem of climbing stairs with a baby in one hand, a candle in the other, and somehow also lifting the skirt of a long dress to avoid tripping. Stanton wore "Bloomers" for two years, abandoning the attire only after it became clear that the controversy it created was distracting people from the campaign for women's rights. Other women's rights activists eventually did the same.<ref>Griffith, pp. 64, 71, 79</ref>

===Divorce reform===
Stanton had already antagonized traditionalists in 1852 at the women's temperance convention by advocating a woman's right to divorce a drunken husband. In an hour-long speech at the [[National Women's Rights Convention#1860 in New York|Tenth National Women's Rights Convention]] in 1860, she went further, generating a heated debate that took up an entire session.<ref name=Griffith-101-104>Griffith, pp. 101–104</ref> She cited tragic examples of unhealthy marriages, suggesting that some marriages amounted to "legalized prostitution."<ref>Stanton, Anthony, Gage, ''History of Woman Suffrage'' Vol 1, [https://archive.org/details/historyofwomansu01stanuoft/page/718/mode/2up p. 719]</ref> She challenged both the sentimental and the religious views of marriage, defining marriage as a civil contract subject to the same restrictions of any other contract. If a marriage did not produce the expected happiness, she said, then it would be a duty to end it.<ref>Barry, p. 137</ref> Strong opposition to her speech was voiced in the ensuing discussion. Abolitionist leader [[Wendell Phillips]], arguing that divorce was not a women's rights issue because it affected both women and men equally, said the subject was out of order and tried unsuccessfully to have it removed from the record.<ref name=Griffith-101-104/>

In later years on the lecture circuit, Stanton's speech on divorce was one of her most popular, drawing audiences of up to 1200 people.<ref>Ginzberg, p. 148</ref> In an 1890 essay entitled "Divorce versus Domestic Warfare," Stanton opposed calls by some women activists for stricter divorce laws, saying, "The rapidly increasing number of divorces, far from showing a lower state of morals, proves exactly the reverse. Woman is in a transition period from slavery to freedom, and she will not accept the conditions and married life that she has heretofore meekly endured."<ref>Quoted in DuBois, ''Woman Suffrage and Women's Rights'',  p. 169</ref>

===Abolitionist activity===

In 1860 Stanton published a pamphlet called ''The Slaves Appeal'' written from what she imagined to be the viewpoint of a female slave.<ref name=venet-27>Venet, p. 27.  Confusingly, the Catt Center at Iowa State University reprints under the title [https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/03/21/a-slaves-appeal-1860/ ''A Slaves Appeal''] Stanton's speech to the New York Assembly in that same year, in which she compares the situation of women in some ways to slavery.</ref> The fictional speaker uses vivid religious language ("Men and women of New York, the God of thunder speaks through you")<ref name=slaves-appeal>Elizabeth Cady Stanton, [https://archive.org/details/slavesappeal00stan/mode/2up ''The Slaves Appeal''], 1860, Weed, Parsons and Company, Printers; Albany, New York</ref> that expresses religious views very different from those that Stanton herself held. The speaker describes the horrors of slavery, saying, "The trembling girl for whom thou didst pay a price but yesterday in a New Orleans market, is not thy lawful wife. Foul and damning, both to the master and the slave, is this wholesale violation of the immutable laws of God."<ref name=slaves-appeal/> The pamphlet called for defiance of the [[Fugitive Slave Act of 1850|Federal Fugitive Slave Act]], and it included petitions to be used for opposing the practice of hunting escaped slaves.<ref name=venet-27/>

In 1861, Anthony organized a tour of abolitionist lecturers in upstate New York that included Stanton and several other speakers. The tour began in January just after [[South Carolina]] had seceded from the union but before other states had seceded and before the outbreak of war. In her speech, Stanton said that South Carolina was like a willful son whose behavior jeopardized the whole family and that the best course of action was to let it secede. The lecture meetings were repeatedly disrupted by mobs operating under the belief that abolitionist activity was causing southern states to secede. Stanton was not able to participate in some of the lectures because she had to return home to her children.<ref>Venet, pp. 26–29, 32</ref> At her husband's urging, she left the lecture tour because of the persistent threat of violence.<ref>Griffith, p. 106</ref>