Impact of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Women Rights and Suffrage Movement
Women rights for some time were violated with men being preferred in all endeavors to women. This led to the formation of women movements made of human rights activists especially those of women. The rights movements’ history in the united states dates back in the 1840s when women started championing for their rights. Women suffrage (otherwise called women’s entitlement to vote) is the privilege of women to vote in decisions. Constrained rights to cast votes were first obtained by women in western states of the United States, Sweden, Iceland and Finland in the late 19th century.
Associations both at national and global levels were framed to arrange endeavors to get their rights of casting votes, in particular the International Woman Suffrage Alliance which was formed in 1904, and also worked towards a realizing an equal society where women would get same treatment as men. The women wanted to have a say in the government that they believed they greatly supported through their taxes. The women desired to live with freedom as far as religious matters were concerned and above all, desired to live with their freedom without being enslaved by anyone (Stanton et al 97).
These visions have been used up to date since through them attitude change was achieved. Margaret Mead after observing different cultures in the world she concludes by saying that a group of mindful citizens is capable of changing the world however much it may be smaller. These words have come true after a small group of women led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton met and laid a foundation to what would turn out to be a victory for women who had been denied their rights over a long period of time.
With these movements, having grown to their current state where they managed to achieve what the pioneers fervently searched for, it’s important to look at the contribution given by some of the pioneers. This paper, therefore, looks exclusively at the role played by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in convention for women’s rights and suffrage movement. She was one of the well-known suffragists and an activist for civil rights in the period of 1815-1902.
Elizabeth unlike the numerous ladies of her period, she was formally taught. She went to an Academy up to the age of 16 years. In her education, she specialized in various things among them learning Greek and Latin languages, religion and also arithmetic. She appreciated being in co-instructive classes where she could contend mentally and scholastically with young men her age and older at the academy. She managed to win a few scholarly honors and respects, including the honor for the Greek language. The education she acquired could be utilized later to push for the rights of women in the various movements. She formed a strong base for formation of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (Coughlin and Charles 20).
The journey started in 1847. At this time Stanton became angry of her residential repression after she got her last three children having moved and stayed in Seneca Falls in New York America. In around 1840 she had met Lucretia Mott in London during World Anti-slavery convention. Lucretia Mott was a well-known female abolitionist in America. The two had become allies especially when the males in the convention denied the women participation in the proceedings. This angered them most and ended up uniting them (Coughlin and Charles 22). With the assistance of Mott in 1948, Elizabeth sorted out the world’s first women convention in Seneca Falls. Mott’s hesitated but Elizabeth demanded including the privilege to women suffrage in the resolutions of the Convention.
These movements of women mark July 13 as their birthday. This is because of the role that Elizabeth Cady Stanton played back in the years of 1848 13th day of the month of July when she was invited for a cup of tea with other colleagues. During this unusual meeting, it came up that the women were pissed off with the treatment given to them by the society.
They therefore planned to have a conference which would bring women together to voice their grievances. A convention was organized from there which turned out to be one of the large programs to have happened by then. it was attended by more than 300 women organized by Elizabeth assisted by her friends. The movement grew stronger and by good leadership provided by the pioneers, it celebrated the 150th anniversary in 1998 marking the great achievements ((Stanton et al 104).
In the subsequent 50 years, women suffrage supporters attempted to teach people in general about the legitimacy of women suffrage. Under the administration of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and other women’s rights pioneers, suffragists circled petitions and campaigned Congress to pass a Constitutional Amendment to emancipate ladies (Liddington and Jill, 90). When the new century rolled over, ladies reformers in the club development and in the settlement house development needed to pass change enactment.
Notwithstanding, numerous legislators were unwilling to tune into a disappointed gathering. In this way, after some time ladies started to understand that with a specific end goal to accomplish change, they expected to win the privilege to vote. Hence, when the new century rolled over, the women suffrage development turned into a mass movement.
Elizabeth Stanton met Susan Anthony, and together they framed a long-lasting organization in view of their basic devotion to ladies’ liberation. After three years, she tended to the New York council on the way forward in achieving the rights of women. In 1860, the vast majority of the lawful changes she looked for in ladies’ status, with the eminent special case of liberation, were secured (Liddington and Jill 97).
Elizabeth and Susan initially joined the temperance movement though they were best known for their joint work for ladies’ suffrage. The two ladies cooperated in achieving a similar dream which they both shared. At the time of her administration of the association, Elizabeth Stanton scandalized numerous supporters by proposing that drunkenness is made adequate reason for divorce. But the connection between the ladies’ suffrage movement and the moderation movement was not really unplanned.
The two movements had normal interests, with ladies’ suffrage filling the part of cause and forbiddance turning into the impact. Afterward, in state after state, once ladies picked up the privilege to vote, they could press for different political measures to lessen inebriation, saw to be to a great extent an issue including the male sex (DuBois, 64). Therefore, the two movements turned out to be much of the time associated.
Cady Stanton devoted herself completely to the political show of the Civil War and assisted by Susan framed a women’s league which had national outlook in the interest of the established abrogation of servitude. Profound clashes among reformers by endeavoring to connection woman suffrage to dark suffrage and, when their endeavors bombed, by reprimanding the 14th and 15th Amendments for overlooking female suffrage were later made by the two of them after the war.
Resolved to utilize the Constitution to emancipate ladies, they set up the Woman Suffrage Association with national outlook in 1869., herald of the association that in the long run secured the Nineteenth Amendment. This is one of the achievement as far as women are concerned. This triumph is viewed as the most critical accomplishment of ladies in the Progressive Era. It was the single biggest augmentation of just voting rights in the history of United States, and it was accomplished gently, through popularity based procedures.
Women rights movement got a boost by a speech delivered by Elizabeth in 1868 at the Convention held in Washington, D.C. Elizabeth Stanton who was at this 52 years old, gave an intense speech which starts by describing the male component is a damaging power, stern, narrow-minded, glorifying, cherishing war, viciousness, victory, obtaining, reproducing in the material and good world alike strife, issue, ailment, and passing. She seized the opportunity to put forward the need of granting the women their rights (Griffith 201).
The speech closes in that with viciousness and aggravation in the characteristic world, we see a consistent push to keep up a harmony of powers. Nature, similar to an adoring mother, is continually attempting to maintain ocean and land, valley and mountain, each in its place, to quiet the irate waves and winds, adjust the extremes of warmth and icy, of rain and dry season, that peace, congruity, and magnificence may rule.
There is a striking similarity amongst matter and mind, and the present disruption of society cautions us that in the deposing of lady we have let free the components of savagery and demolish that she just has the ability to check. In the event that the human progress of the age requires an augmentation of the suffrage, clearly, an administration of the most high-minded instructed men and ladies would better speak to the entire and ensure the interests of all than could the portrayal of either sex alone (Kraditor 104). This speech made the agenda of the rights movement clear and known to all.
Cady Stanton’s interests reached out a long way past the vote. She had dependably supported separation law advancement, and in 1860 she accelerated a warmed verbal confrontation among ladies’ rights advocates by asking ladies to leave miserable relational unions. In the late 1860s, she started to promote what she called the ‘right to self-sway’- ladies ought to take consider measures to abstain from getting to be plainly pregnant.
These convictions drove her in the mid-1870s into relationship with the infamous ‘free significant other,’ Victoria Woodhull. In light of Cady Stanton’s backing of changed separation laws, conceptive self-assurance, and more noteworthy sexual opportunity for ladies, she turned into an inexorably underestimated voice among women reformers in the 1880s (Griffith 206).
The grievances of the rights movement were drafted by Elizabeth as declarations. She outlined various areas which she felt that women were unfairly treated (Coughlin and Charles 23). These included:
- Married ladies never existed as far as the law was concerned.
- Women had been denied their rights of casting votes.
- Married women were deprived of their rights to own property.
- Husbands had a lot of control over their wives and they were allowed to detain as well as beating them.
- Divorce and kid guardianship guidelines oppressed the women while favoring the men.
- Women were denied and opportunity to pursue their dreams and enter into professions like law or medicine.
- Ladies had no way to acquire knowledge since no school or college would acknowledge students who were ladies.
- With just a couple of special cases, ladies were not permitted to take an interest in the issues of the congregation.
- Ladies were made to totally rely on men having been robbed of their self-respect and self-confidence.
Elizabeth Cady likewise veered from the standard ladies’ movement over religion. Her profound abhorrence of composed religion became out of a traumatic young change involvement. In the 1880s, she went to England, where she was affected by freethinkers and scriptural pundits. Back in the United States, she discovered that Christian political activists were endeavoring to close open foundations on the Sabbath, fix separate law progression, and even set up Christianity as the state religion.
Resolved to contradict them, she ended up on an impact course with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, another era of suffrage pioneers, and even Anthony. In 1898 she distributed The Woman’s Bible, an academic yet contemptuous women’s activist discourse, for which the National American Woman Suffrage Association reproached her (Kraditor 107).
Summing up, it cannot be doubted that Cady Stanton composed the world’s first ladies’ rights convention in 1848, and framed the National Women’s Loyal League with Susan B. Anthony in 1863. After seven years, they built up the National Woman Suffrage Association. With her backing of liberal separation laws and conceptive self-assurance, Cady Stanton turned into an inexorably minimized voice among women reformers late in life. In any case, her endeavors realized the possible section of the nineteenth Amendment, which gave all subjects the privilege to vote. She, therefore, impacted greatly on the women rights movements.
The women rights movement, therefore, depended on Elizabeth greatly with the assistance of other colleagues. She made good use of the education she acquired which was rare. As seen in the discussion above, Cady Stanton played a key role in the formation of the movements which have continued to enjoy the benefits even after she passed. In spite of the fact that disillusioned, she proceeded with her autonomous course for the benefit of ladies’ liberation until her passing in 1902.
Work Cited
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, et al., eds. History of Woman Suffrage: 1861-1876. Vol. 2. Fowler ; Wells, 1882.
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Susan Brownell Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. History of Woman Suffrage. Vol. 2. Susan B. Anthony, 1887.
Kraditor, Aileen S. “Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920.” (1965).
Liddington, Jill, and Jill Norris. One hand tied behind us: the rise of the women’s suffrage movement. Rivers Oram Pr, 2000.
DuBois, Ellen. “The radicalism of the woman suffrage movement: Notes toward the reconstruction of nineteenth-century feminism.” Feminist Studies 3.1/2 (1975): 63-71.
Griffith, Elisabeth. In her own right: The life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Oxford University Press, 1984.
Coughlin, Elizabeth Myette, and Charles Edward Coughlin. “Convention in petticoats: The Seneca Falls declaration of woman’s rights.” Communication Quarterly 21.4 (1973): 17- 23.
