EVANGELICAL WOMEN IN EARLY 1800: ELIZABETH CADY STANTON P/160

                                                                              Read Part One HERE

In this post I continue my focus on a woman named Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She lived from 1815 - 1902.

Although Elizabeth remained committed to efforts to gain property rights for women and ending slavery, the women's suffrage movement increasingly became her top priority. Elizabeth met Susan B. Anthony in 1851 and the two began collaboration on speeches, articles, and books. Their intellectual and organisational partnership dominated the woman's movement for over half a century. When Elizabeth was unable to travel due to the demands of raising her seven children, she would author speeches for Susan to deliver.

In 1862, the Stantons moved to Brooklyn and later New York City. There she also became involved in Civil War efforts and joined with Susan to advocate for the 13th amendment, which ended slavery. An outstanding orator with a sharp mind, Elizabeth was able to travel more after the Civil War and she became one of the best-known women's rights activists in the country, Her speeches addressed such topics as maternity, child rearing, divorce law, married women's property rights, temperance, abolition and presidential campaigns. She and Susan opposed the 14th and 15th amendmentss to the US Constitution, which gave voting rights to black men but did not extend the franchise to women.Their stance led to a rift with other women's suffragists and prompted Susan and Elizabeth to found the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869. Elizabeth edited and wrote for the NSWA's journal The Revolution. As NWSA president, Elizabeth was an outspoken social and political commentator and debated the maajor political and legel questions of the day. The two major women's suffrage groups reunited in 1890 as the National Woman's Suffrage Association.

By the 1880's Elizabeth was 65 years old and focused more on writing that travelling and lecturing. She wrote three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage with Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage. In this comprehensive work, publised several decades before women won the right to vote, the authors documented the individuals and local activism that built and sustained a movement for woman suffrage. She also wrote an autobiography "Eighty Years And More" about the great events and work of her life. Elizabeth died in 1902, 18 years before women gained the right to vote.

Read Part One Hundred And Sixty-One HERE