Susan B Anthony - Essay Example

In 1838, her father lost his cotton mill business because of the financial depression in the United States, and in the spring of 1839 he had to sell their house. They moved to a town called Hardscrabble. In the spring of 1840, she went to teach at a boarding school near New York City. While Susan was teaching, she heard people talking about getting rid of slavery. She agreed with this idea, just like her father did. She believed that all people were equal. In 1849, when Susan came back home to Rochester, her father had started inviting over his friends who were interested in talking about the achievement of making free slavery state.

She listened to her father and to others who wanted to finish slavery from the society. During the 1850s, the plan of getting rid of slavery was becoming an essential issue. The people in the North were against slavery, while on the other hand, the people in the South wanted to keep slavery. Those who were against slavery were called abolitionists. A lot of abolitionists were invited to the farm for a meeting. They all supported Susan in her work for women's rights. "In 1852, Anthony joined with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Bloomer in campaigning for women's suffrage and equal pay.

She also served in the American Anti-Slavery Society, and challenged barriers to female leadership in temperance societies and educational associations. Following the Civil War, Stanton and Anthony focused their efforts on voting rights, in hopes that suffrage for women and blacks could be linked in a groundbreaking constitutional amendment."Feminist leaderhttp://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/bios/2.html (Accessed January 18, 2006)She helped the administration of President Abraham Lincoln by forming the Women's Loyal League.

In 1856, the abolitionists motivated Susan to classify, write and deliver speeches for a movement against slavery. In 1865, their efforts would pay off with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Even though the slaves were free they didn't get the right to vote. In addition to Susan's fight to end slavery, she joined the Women's State Temperance Society in New York. Both men and women could join. Soon men started to take over the society, so Susan resigned as leader of the group.

That was the end of her work with the temperance movement; she began working for women's rights. "In 1866 Anthony joined with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Lucy Stone to help establish the American Equal Rights Association. The following year, the organization became active in Kansas where Negro suffrage and women's suffrage was to be decided by popular vote. However, both ideas were rejected at the polls."Elizabeth Cady Stanton wanted both the abolitionist and the women's right group to get combine for good results.

Unluckily, the abolitionists did not want to work for women to have the right to vote. (Just as before, many of the women's suffragists did not care to get their cause tangled up with abolition.) Susan and Elizabeth were back where they had started twenty years before and focused their efforts on women's rights in order to raise money.Susan B. Anthony in politicsIn 1868 Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton established the political weekly, The Revolution and the Fourteenth Amendment was passed.

This amendment affirmed that all people who were born or naturalized in the United States