Elizabeth Cady Stanton: American Advocate for Free Thought - Essay Example

Your Name Teacher Subject Date Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Reformer and Advocate for Free Thought A well-known feminist and catalyst of the Woman’s Rights Movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in 1815 to Daniel and Mary Livingston Cady, an “upper middle class family” (Leuchtag, 1996, p.1) in Johnstown N.Y. Her father Daniel Cady, a lawyer and a U.S. Congressman and mother Mary were not very enthusiastic about having girls for their children. Elizabeth noticed her parent’s disappointment when her little sister was born. This became her motivation and tried so much to perform like his brothers to please her parents. Elizabeth Stanton studied Mathematics and Greek in Johnstown Academy and completed her study in 1830. Elizabeth, an excellent debater, then attended Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary, the best school for young women and the only school that time that offered academic course comparable to boy’s school. While studying, she is sharp-witted, intelligent and impressive possessing remarkable vivacity (Leuchtag, 1996, p.1). After graduation in 1832 (Britannica Concise, p.1), she was trained in law by her father and became a student of legal and constitutional history. During the training, she watched her father deal with law cases and there she witnessed his discrimination over women. She observed that when a woman comes to seek a divorce for an abusive husband, her father would not take the case. On the other hand, if a man came in and wanted a divorce to the same woman who protested earlier, her father would try his best and squeeze the woman with all her money. She then realized how bias his father and the law to women. Elizabeth Cady met married lawyer and abolitionist organizer Henry Brewster Stanton in 1840 and gave birth to 7 children. Later that year after the marriage, Elizabeth with her husband attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London where she met the famous Quaker abolitionist Lucretia Mott (Leuchtag, 1996, p.2). Unfortunately, the convention would not allow or officially recognize women as delegates and they were disqualified from the floor of the convention (Britannica Concise, p.1) (The Columbia Encyclopedia, p1). This outrageous discrimination angered but seriously inspired Mott and Stanton to pursue and organize women to achieve greater equality (The Columbia Encyclopedia, p1). Lucretia Mott convinced Stanton to read the papers of Wollstonecraft, Paine, Wright, and Grimke who later shaped her new philosophy (Leuchtag, 1996, p.2). Elizabeth Cady Stanton then turned into a regular speaker for women’s right and disseminated petitions to help secure passage of the bill in New York legislature granting married women’s property rights (Britannica Concise, p1). This was done because during that time the husband was given managerial control over his of wife’s properties (Sproul, 1999, p.4) Eight years later in 1848, Mott and Stanton with several others made a call and organized the first women’s right convention in Seneca Falls New York from July 19 to 20 and in Rochester the following day. At Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Stanton wrote the Declaration of Sentiments which contains the woman’s bill of rights and the demands of the women in attendance. Stanton insisted that the suffrage clause be included in the woman’s bill of rights that was rejected at the convention. After a lot of debate, the resolution was finally adapted and include in the woman’s bill of rights (Britannica Concise, p1). In 1851, Stanton was working intimately with Susan B. Anthony, her organizer, tactician, and publisher in the leading women’s rights movement. Although they often disagree about strategy, they are indivisible ally in their fight for women’s social equality (Leuchtag, 1996, p.2). Stanton in 1854 was invited to address the New York legislature. Her speech gave rise to a new legislation granting married women the rights to their earnings and fair guardianship of their offspring in 1860. Throughout her term as the president of the Woman's State Temperance Society in 1852–53, which was established with the help of Anthony, she irritated several of her devoted supporters by signifying liquor intoxication as a cause for divorce (Britannica Encyclopedia, p.1). At some point in the Civil War, Stanton returned to worked for abolitionism. She and Anthony once again organized the Women's National Loyal League. They gathered more than 300,000 signatures on appeal requesting for urgent liberation. They made a number of grueling speaking engagements and trips to promote the women’s suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton became president of the National Suffrage Association in 1869 to 1892 and with Anthony and Parker Pillsbury published the militant feminine magazine Revolution in 1890 (Britannica Concise, p.1). The magazine is their answer to the passage of the 14th Amendment that made their American Equal Rights Association for black suffrage collapsed. Stanton wrote numerous articles calling for women’s control over their own group in marital relations. Liberalized divorce aimed to acknowledge marriage as a legal contract equal to other existing contract. She also wrote some articles on prison improvements, meager houses, insane asylums, and call the state to end sanctioned prostitution (Leuchtag, 1996, p.2). Stanton constantly writes and gives lectures and she is the primary author of the Declaration of Rights for Women 1876 that was presented at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Two years after, she outlined a federal suffrage amendment that was constantly presented in Congress until women in California were given the right to vote in 1911(Britannica Concise, p.2). By 1920 after all the states ratified the 19th Amendment privileges were given to all U.S. citizens to vote (Sproul, 1999, p.3). She is a talented orator, a competent journalist, writer, and lecturer who made every effort for lawful, political, and industrial liberation and equality of women. She, Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage published the initial three volumes of six volumes History of Woman Suffrage in 1881. She also published The Woman's Bible in 1895 and Eighty Years and More in 1898 (Britannica Concise, p.2). After releasing the book The Woman’s Bible in 1895, an international committee was formed under the leadership of Stanton composed of 23 women from liberal reverends, social activist, and free thinkers who began to work for the revision of the bible. It basically attempt to expose the contradictions and discredit traditional teaching in the bible regarding women particularly the belief that man was made superior to a woman. Stanton criticize the teaching that woman brought sin to the world, sets off the fall of a race, and already condemned in heaven. In 1896, from a vote of 53 against 41, a resolution by the American Women Suffrage Association officially disassociating them from the book was adapted despite strong objection from Anthony (Leuchtag, 1996, p3) At home as mother, she still wrote several news paper articles for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune (Leuchtag, 1996, p.2) and Lily of Amelia Bloomer, the “first self-consciously women’s reform magazine” (Vivien, 1997, p.2). Her articles caught many admirers including writers Grimke and Lucy Stone. Stanton later proposed a third party to represent the women’s interest in labor. She insists on having an infant day-care center for working mothers along with free school lunches to be part of the public-school system. She also pushes for the establishment of public colleges to serve the young who belong in the working class and equal justice for the rich and the poor (Leuchtag, 1996, p.2). Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s life as a famous feminist and a free thinker is very distressing and dangerous. Like other modern-day writer and activist she also suffers condemnation, blacklisting, and isolation. The great American woman’s right advocate believed that the orthodox religion is the prime oppressor of women, created enemies from members of the church and the public. In the last years of her life, Stanton wrote The Solitude of Self where she wrote that every one of us carries solitude that is more unreachable than the ice-cold mountains and more intense than the midnight sea, an inner being that is more hidden than the cave of gnome, and who dares to take on himself the rights, the duties, and responsibilities of another human soul (Leuchtag, 1996, p.1). Works Cited List Britannica Concise, n.d.,”Stanton, Elizabeth Cady”, Article 9069429, Britannica Concise Online, http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article9069429/elizabeth-cady-stanton, Copyright 2007. Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. Leuchtag, Alice, 1996, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Free Thinker and Radical Revisionist”, The Humanist, American Humanist Association, Gale Group, High Beam Research Incorporated, Rose Vivien, 1997, “Preserving Women’s Right History”, Historian, Women’s Right National Historical Park, Seneca Falls, New York Sproul Kate, 1999, “A California Review of Women’s Equity Issues in Civil Rights, Education, and Workplace”, Women and Equality, California Senate Office of Research The Columbia Encyclopedia, n.d., “Stanton, Elizabeth Cady”, The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001-2005 Read More