Stanton, Elizabeth Cady (1815-1902), was an early leader of the women’s rights movement. She and Lucretia Mott, another reformer, organized the first women’s rights convention in the United States.
Stanton was born on Nov. 12, 1815, in Johnstown, New York, and graduated from the Troy Female Seminary (now the Emma Willard School). During the 1830’s, she became interested in women’s rights and in abolition. She and Henry B. Stanton, an abolitionist leader, were married in 1840. That same year, they went to London for the World Anti-Slavery Convention. But the delegates voted to exclude women. Elizabeth Stanton discussed the situation with Mott, who also had planned to attend the meeting.
In 1848, Stanton and Mott called the nation’s first women’s rights convention. It was held in Seneca Falls, New York, where the Stantons lived. Stanton wrote a Declaration of Sentiments, using the Declaration of Independence as her model. For example, the Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal.” But Stanton wrote that “all men and women are created equal.” She also called for woman suffrage.
During the 1850’s and the American Civil War (1861-1865), Stanton worked for women’s rights and for abolition. After slavery was abolished in 1865, she broke with abolitionists who favored voting rights for blacks but not for women. In 1869, Stanton and the women’s rights leader Susan B. Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Stanton was its president until 1890.
In 1878, Stanton persuaded Senator Aaron A. Sargent of California to sponsor a woman suffrage amendment to the Constitution of the United States. This amendment was reintroduced every year until 1919, when Congress finally approved it. In 1920, it became the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Stanton died Oct. 26, 1902.
See also Mott, Lucretia Coffin .
