Editing Susan B. Anthony (section)

====Early women's rights activities====
Anthony's work for the women's rights movement began at a time when that movement was already gathering momentum. Stanton had helped organize the [[Seneca Falls Convention]] in 1848, a local event that was the first women's rights convention. In 1850, the first in a series of [[National Women's Rights Convention]]s was held in [[Worcester, Massachusetts]]. In 1852, Anthony attended her first National Women's Rights Convention, which was held in [[Syracuse, New York]], where she served as one of the convention's secretaries.<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 1,  [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n121/mode/2up p. 72]</ref> According to [[Ida Husted Harper]], Anthony's authorized biographer, "Miss Anthony came away from the Syracuse convention thoroughly convinced that the right which woman needed above every other, the one indeed which would secure to her all others, was the right of suffrage."<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n129/mode/2up, p. 81].</ref> Suffrage, however, did not become the main focus of her work for several more years.

A major hindrance to the women's movement was a lack of money. Few women at that time had an independent source of income, and even those with employment generally were required by law to turn over their pay to their husbands.<ref>Dudden (2011), [https://books.google.com/books?id=7-XV-oP9UFUC&pg=PA17 p. 17].</ref>
Partly through the efforts of the women's movement, a law had been passed in New York in 1848 that recognized some rights for married women, but that law was limited. In 1853, Anthony worked with [[William Henry Channing]], her activist [[Unitarian Universalism|Unitarian]] minister, to organize a convention in Rochester to launch a state campaign for improved property rights for married women, which Anthony would lead. She took her lecture and petition campaign into almost every county in New York during the winter of 1855 despite the difficulty of traveling in snowy terrain in [[horse and buggy days]].<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n179/mode/2up pp. 104, 122–128].</ref>

When she presented the petitions to the New York State Senate Judiciary Committee, its members told her that men were actually the oppressed sex because they did such things as giving women the best seats in carriages. Noting cases in which the petition had been signed by both husbands and wives (instead of the husband signing for both, which was the standard procedure), the committee's official report sarcastically recommended that the petitioners seek a law authorizing the husbands in such marriages to wear petticoats and the wives trousers.<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n193/mode/2up pp. 140–141].</ref>
The campaign finally achieved success in 1860 when the legislature passed an improved [[Married Women's Property Acts in the United States|Married Women's Property Act]] that gave married women the right to own separate property, enter into contracts and be the joint guardian of their children. The legislature rolled back much of this law in 1862, however, during a period when the women's movement was largely inactive because of the [[American Civil War]].<ref>Barry (1988), pp. 136, 149.</ref>

The women's movement was loosely structured at that time, with few state organizations and no national organization other than a coordinating committee that arranged annual conventions.<ref>Million (2003), pp. 109, 121.</ref>
[[Lucy Stone]], who did much of the organizational work for the national conventions, encouraged Anthony to take over some of the responsibility for them. Anthony resisted at first, feeling that she was needed more in the field of anti-slavery activities. After organizing a series of anti-slavery meetings in the winter of 1857, Anthony told a friend that, "the experience of the last winter is worth more to me than all my temperance and woman's rights work, though the latter were the school necessary to bring me into the antislavery work."<ref>Letter from Anthony to [[Abby Kelley Foster]] and [[Stephen Symonds Foster]], April 20, 1857, quoted in Million (2003), p. 234</ref>
During a planning session for the 1858 women's rights convention, Stone, who had recently given birth, told Anthony that her new family responsibilities would prevent her from organizing conventions until her children were older. Anthony presided at the 1858 convention, and when the planning committee for national conventions was reorganized, Stanton became its president and Anthony its secretary.<ref>Million (2003), pp. 235, 250–252.</ref>
Anthony continued to be heavily involved in anti-slavery work at the same time.