Working Women

The Road to Equal Rights Required Strength

  

Reform was in the air in the mid-1800s. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony responded, both espousing support for abolishing slavery, and Elizabeth also for the rights of women. Elizabeth had befriended the Quaker progressive Lucretia Mott, and went to hear her speak in public, a privilege heretofore afforded only to men.

  "When I first her from her lips that I had the same right to think for myself that Luther, Calvin, and John Knox had, and the same right to be guided by my own convictions, I felt a new born sense of dignity and freedom," Mrs. Stanton said of Mrs. Mott. Conversations between them bolstered her confidence and set her on her path toward leadership of other women. The idea of a big Women's Rights Convention was hatched in 1840 but it was not until 1848 that it came to fruition. in a meeting that brought together women and men in the cause. Elizabeth and a committee of like-minded women drafted a document they called the "Declaration of Sentiments, Grievances, and Resolutions," which contained a section advocating for the right to vote, a radical idea that even her husband objected to. He made sure to leave the area when the convention happened, and her father, a judge in the Upstate New York town of Jonestown came down to Seneca Falls to see if she had lost her mind.

The convention was attended by 300 men and women and 68 women ad 32 men signed the Declaration, including the formidable Frederick Douglass, a free man of color who fought for women's rights as well as for the abolition of slavery. Douglass had befriended Elizabeth and her husband Henry in the cause of abolition, and he also became a supporter of women's rights, including that of suffrage.

A few years later Elizabeth Cady Stanton was to meet her lifelong compatriot and partner in battle, Susan B. Anthony. Susan came from Rochester, NY, where she was active in the temperance movement as well as the anti-slave movement. There was always a close connection between the cause of women's rights and the cause of civil rights for the black race--the more the women gathered at abolition meetings, the more they came to realize that symbolically at least they were slaves too. They did not have the right to own property (and if a woman inherited money or land, it was automatically transferred to her husband's name), to attend universities, or to participate in the political process, including the right to vote. Stanton and Anthony were a powerful duo, both as speakers and organizers. They wrote newsletters and traveled across the country giving lectures when lectures were a popular form of diversion and education. They worked together for years, forming a close friendship, even though there were many periods of time when they disagreed on a crucial topic and didn't communicate with each other for years.

In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting and was put in jail, which was what she wanted--as a way of publicizing the cause. She never married but put all her energy into the women's rights movement, while Stanton stayed married and was the mother of seven. Stanton had the charm, the writing talent, and both shared the wholehearted commitment to the movement. They both were adept at public speaking, but basically Susan did the organizing, and often came up with ideas she asked Elizabeth to write about. Throughout their work together they both often felt on the verge of seeing suffrage for women made into law, through a Constitutional amendment. They threw themselves into lobbying for the 14th amendment, about to pass, include a woman's right to vote as well as that of black freed slaves. This was not to be in their lifetimes, but they carved a niche for it, all the while thinking a victory was at hand.

Uptight and Victorian as the 19th century was, it did spawn generations of offbeat characters, and Elizabeth and Susan encountered any number of them in their journey to liberate women. One was an almost-forgotten flamboyant young man named George Francis Train, who had a ton of money and liked to wear outrageous clothes. Train traveled with them and appeared on the lecture circuit, espousing the liberation of women but spewing racist comments at the same time. He funded a feminist newsletter, Revolution, which Elizabeth edited. She and Susan found his anti-abolition rhetoric harmless as long as he backed their principle cause, and he amused them until he didn't. He was rich and charming, but basically a charlatan and their friends thought him insane. Another con artist who beguiled multitudes and won Elizabeth and Susan's admiration for a time was the fascinating Victoria Claflin Woodhull, who deserves a special place in the history of women's rights. She had a checkered career, at last forming her own political party and running for president of the United States in 1872. I'll post about her in my next entry. 

If you're interested in reading more about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, I recommend In Her Own Right, by Elizabeth Griffith and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony by Penny Colman. Victoria Woodhull is the subject of many books too, but the best of them is Other Powers, by Barbara Goldsmith.