​"Nothing that has ever emanated from the brain of man is too sacred to be revised and corrected."

• WOMEN'S RIGHTS ACTIVIST

• Spearheaded and helped organize the Seneca Falls Convention, the FIRST convention in history dedicated to women's rights
• FIRST to propose women seek the vote -- many Convention attendees, even those who helped organize it, were initially opposed to the idea
• Worked in tandem with Susan B. Anthony to improve women's welfare, including lobbying for the successful expansion of New York's Married Woman's Property Act, which -- among other changes -- gave women the legal right to keep the money they earned. (Yes, you read that right: a married woman's earnings legally belonged to her husband!!)​

• Cofounded National Woman Suffrage Association, regarded as the radical wing of the suffrage movement
• ​Although she mostly stayed at home while raising her seven children, she wrote almost all of the speeches Anthony read at conventions and on the road
• Championed many other causes with equal fervor, including coeducation, temperance, abolitionism, birth control, and separation of church and state
• Her bold, controversial -- and sometimes racist -- statements were often a source of consternation for her allies, including Anthony
• The Susan B. Anthony List claims that Stanton was anti-abortion rights. Is this true?

Public Domain Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Not So Awesome

~ After the Constitution was amended to grant Black men the right to vote, Stanton began to espouse the classist and racist idea that "educated" women deserved the same right, as opposed to "ignorant and degraded" former slaves and immigrants.

~ Because of her international fame, Stanton was often sought for her opinion on various matters. In one interview, she stated that she "would like to see Spain and Turkey swept from the face of the earth." She also evidently held no sympathy for the plight of Native Americans, saying, "What would this continent have been if we had left it to the Indians?" (probably completely amazing!)

Bibliography: DuBois, Ellen Carol. “Stanton, Elizabeth Cady." The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, Vol. 4, Oxford University Press, 2008, 150-151.
Ward, Geoffrey C and Ken Burns. Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Print.

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