Posted on November 12, 2017
I always associate Elizabeth Cady Stanton, born on this date in 1815, with the fight for women's right to vote.
But, like so many women of her time, Stanton was involved in many different movements: abolition of slavery, women's rights, the temperance movement (which tried to lessen the use and abuse of alcohol), and more.
In addition to being active in so many social justice movements, Stanton had seven children and wrote and published two books and many articles. So...Wow!
Elizabeth Cady first became involved in the abolition and temperance movements. Working for abolition, she met her husband, Henry Brewster Stanton, who was a writer and speaker, and later a lawyer and one of the founders of the anti-slavery Republican Party.
After the Civil War, Elizabeth Cady Stanton focused more on women's rights. Unlike many of the women's suffrage workers, Stanton spoke and wrote about a LOT of issues concerning women's rights, including employment rights, divorce, birth control, parental and custody rights, property rights, and so forth.
Stanton worked closely with the these-days-more-famous Susan B. Anthony, and when the women's suffrage movement split into two over the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment, Stanton and Anthony found themselves on the same side. They both argued against assuring black freedmen the vote without including women in the language of the amendment.
Unfortunately, Stanton's bitterness over the fact that recently freed black Americans were to be given voting rights before women did spilled over into what could be seen as racist statements. But, in Stanton's defense, she did argue vigorously for universal suffrage - for white and black people, for men and women. She talked about the triple bondage of recently freed women: slavery, gender, and race. She thought that standing against an amendment that only gave voting rights to some would spur everyone involved to create an amendment giving voting rights to all.
Anthony and Stanton were joined in this "all or nothing" stance by Sojourner Truth, a black woman who was a former slave.
Most male abolitionists and many female women's suffrage workers thought the "all or nothing" strategy was going to result in keeping black men disenfranchised, longer, and they may have been right.
Stanton, Anthony, and Truth argued that women had waited a long time, and being told to wait longer for their rights was definitely not cool - especially after so many women had worked so hard on behalf of other people's rights. And that was a good point, too.
Even looking back at history, it's hard to see what's best.
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