The Fight for Women’s Rights in The United States
Inspiration for the fight for women’s right sprouted from the fertile soil of the abolition movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, both abolitionists, attended the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London and found that as women they were barred from the convention floor. The two women thought it outrageous and ironic, because as they were fighting for the equality of African Americans it became clear that women also suffered under the hand of white men. This was the birth of a seventy-two year long struggle to secure women’s rights in the United States. Upon returning home after the Convention, Stanton and Mott began organizing the first women’s conference to be …show more content…
Her father was a prominent Federalist attorney, Daniel Cady, therefore Stanton was exposed at an early age to the inner workings and injustices in the legal system. Elizabeth Cady married Henry Stanton, journalist and abolitionists, in 1840. In 1847 they moved from Boston to Seneca Falls, Stanton isolated from friends, became an authority figure and guiding light to an Irish community, where she saw firsthand the suffering of poor women, bearing child after child, being beaten by their husbands, and scrambling for money after their husbands had spent their wages on liquor. It was at this time Stanton visited Lucrecia Mott and met her friends, Mary Ann McClintock, Jane Hunt and Martha White (Ockerbloom, 1992), and at that first meeting the women decided that they would hold a convention. Five days later at the Methodist Church, the women’s right movement had formally begun with Stanton’s “The Women’s Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” being signed by 100 of the 300 attendees of the two day long convention. Frederick Douglas, friend and fellow advocate for equal rights to all, was in attendance and one of the first signers of the …show more content…
Anthony, born into a strict Quaker home, was taught to be self-sufficient. She decided upon teaching as a career, and was by all accounts very well received by both students and parents. Her parents attended one of the Conventions held in Rochester, N.Y. and proclaimed to Susan that the cause was worthy and right. Anthony, never married and therefore dedicated her life entirely to the cause, was very bright and her organization skills made her the perfect candidate to be the leading spokesperson for the movement. Stanton, said of Anthony, “Miss Anthony 's style of speaking is rapid and vehement. In debate she is ready and keen, and she is always equal to an emergency” (Ockerbloom, 1992), as Anthony traveled giving speeches from New York to California. Anthony cast a vote in the Presidential election of 1872, calling attention to the fourteenth amendment, which both Stanton and Anthony had declined to support because the amendment retained the word “male” , allowing black men full citizens’
Inspiration for the fight for women’s right sprouted from the fertile soil of the abolition movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, both abolitionists, attended the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London and found that as women they were barred from the convention floor. The two women thought it outrageous and ironic, because as they were fighting for the equality of African Americans it became clear that women also suffered under the hand of white men. This was the birth of a seventy-two year long struggle to secure women’s rights in the United States. Upon returning home after the Convention, Stanton and Mott began organizing the first women’s conference to be …show more content…
Her father was a prominent Federalist attorney, Daniel Cady, therefore Stanton was exposed at an early age to the inner workings and injustices in the legal system. Elizabeth Cady married Henry Stanton, journalist and abolitionists, in 1840. In 1847 they moved from Boston to Seneca Falls, Stanton isolated from friends, became an authority figure and guiding light to an Irish community, where she saw firsthand the suffering of poor women, bearing child after child, being beaten by their husbands, and scrambling for money after their husbands had spent their wages on liquor. It was at this time Stanton visited Lucrecia Mott and met her friends, Mary Ann McClintock, Jane Hunt and Martha White (Ockerbloom, 1992), and at that first meeting the women decided that they would hold a convention. Five days later at the Methodist Church, the women’s right movement had formally begun with Stanton’s “The Women’s Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” being signed by 100 of the 300 attendees of the two day long convention. Frederick Douglas, friend and fellow advocate for equal rights to all, was in attendance and one of the first signers of the …show more content…
Anthony, born into a strict Quaker home, was taught to be self-sufficient. She decided upon teaching as a career, and was by all accounts very well received by both students and parents. Her parents attended one of the Conventions held in Rochester, N.Y. and proclaimed to Susan that the cause was worthy and right. Anthony, never married and therefore dedicated her life entirely to the cause, was very bright and her organization skills made her the perfect candidate to be the leading spokesperson for the movement. Stanton, said of Anthony, “Miss Anthony 's style of speaking is rapid and vehement. In debate she is ready and keen, and she is always equal to an emergency” (Ockerbloom, 1992), as Anthony traveled giving speeches from New York to California. Anthony cast a vote in the Presidential election of 1872, calling attention to the fourteenth amendment, which both Stanton and Anthony had declined to support because the amendment retained the word “male” , allowing black men full citizens’