Volume 17 , Issue 28

Life's Struggle For Suffrage - Reminiscences of Mrs. Stanton

In "The Inter Ocean," 2 November 1902, Sunday, page 39, we found the following article: Life's Struggle For Suffrage - Reminiscences of Mrs. Stantion. All who view with a kindly eye the advance made by women over the last few centuries knew full well that Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrought incalculable benefit to her sisters. As one of the world's greatest leaders among women she fought during her long life for the oppressed of her sex, and to grant all women rights and advantages which they had never known.

Whatever had been done in the past, whatever may be the present popular opinion of the suffrage question, and whatever it may be destined to become, Mrs. Stanton would always be mentioned as its pioneer and as one of its sturdiest and most successful advocates. Her life was closely linked with the life of another great suffragist, Susan B. Anthony, and the history of the one is largely the history of the other. Their careers were both picturesque, they worked in conjunction, and the fruits belong to both.

O these two women, Mrs. Stanton was the more scholarly, Miss Anthony the more vigorous. The former was the essayist of the suffragist movement; the latter was the orator. Mrs. Stanton, burdened with he cares of a large family, and during a part of her career kept at home, wrote many of the resolutions and was author of many of the epigrams that Miss Anthony carried to the conventions, there to electrify the assembly.

The history of the woman's suffrage movement for a great many years was really the history of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, if we eliminate the names of her co-workers. For about ten years she had not been so actively engaged in public work, yet the ink on her pen had rarely been allowed to dry. She was 86 years old when she died, and she had been a champion of women since she was a mere girl.

In 1876, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony were together and were working hard upon their book, "The History of Woman's Suffrage."

The incidents of Elizabeth Cady's girlhood were well known, and form as interesting a chapter as was chronicled in the life of any woman this country ever had produced in those early days.

Elizabeth Cady was born November 12, 1816. Her father was Judge Daniel Cady of Johnstown, New York, a distinguished man in his day. Her mother was Margaret Livingston, a daughter of James Livingston, an officer in the revolutionary war. Thus were blended in the child strains of the best blood of the county.

To her father she owed a training that fitted her for whatever she accomplished. She was an utterly self-reliant child, and her father's attitude toward her perhaps enhanced this trait. She interested herself in the studies generally considered best only for boys, and affirmed her intention to master Greek, Latin, and mathematics. During her girlhood her father permitted her to remain a great part of the time in his law office, and it was among her father's books that she first became imbued with the idea of fighting to place upon the statute book laws that would change conditions. Jurisprudence always had a fascination for her, and she delved among those dusty old law books, noting particularly how insignificant a thing was woman form a legal standpoint.

The objectionable points found by her in the law books were those acts pertaining to women and children. Women had no property rights. They had nothing. They could not control the wages they earned. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was theirs by right of law. Of these things Elizabeth Cady would complain to her father, whose only answer would be, "I wish you were a boy." Judge Cady would have made a lawyer of the child had she been a boy. Mrs. Stanton had often told a reporter that it was one of her father's great disappointments that she was not a boy.

Elizabeth Cady was dismayed by what she saw in the law books in her father's office. "There is nothing here to protect women and children," she would say to him, as she pored over the legal volumes. When she was quire too young to understand the legislative process, but quite old enough o see that something was terribly wrong with the laws, she would insist that her father allow her to cut from the book the pages wearing the laws she regarded as oppressive to her sex. Elizabeth would tell how disappointed she was when she learned that such a process would not result in any benefit. But she did not stop thinking when she learned that the scissors could afford no panacea.

A truthful account of the deeds performed first by the young woman and later by the more mature thinker and originator would make up a heroic history. As an Abolitionist, candidate for Congress, and champion of woman's rights she showed the power of an aggressive woman. And when on knew her feel it was not difficult to see how she could be one of the central figures in a great movement and yet be ridiculed and vilified less than most of the other workers.

Elizabeth Cady had a rare and charming personality, and beautiful. She possessed a personal magnetism that tamed even her most rabid opponents, and the grace of her bearing mellowed the bitterness of those who opposed a change in the status of the franchise question. She was a keen observer and a brilliant conversationalist. Her aptness in turning an epigram often entirely disarmed her opponents. She was known for her quickness at repartee.

Mrs. Stanton modestly told reporters how she broke down Horace Greeley's argument against woman's suffrage. She had gone to the office of theNew York Tribune to prevent a petition asking Mr. Greeley to turn his paper over to the cause. After the great editor had listened to Mrs. Stanton for a while he turned, in a self-satisfied way, and asked her what she would do in case of war. Without a moment's hesitation she answered:

"I would do as you did, Mr. Greeley. I would send a substitute." Mr. Greeley had nothing more to say, but he ever afterward had the deepest reverence for Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The Tribune eventually became a champion woman's rights.

Despite the fact that she was vigorous in her expression and said many strong things, she never offended. She always put people in a good humor. Her keen wit served her well in getting an audience to give her the closest attention. She would never seem to oppose her listeners, and she always sought to allay any antagonism. If she assailed anything she did it in a way to win approval rather than to incur disfavor. Few women have been so diplomatic as she.

In 1840, the year Elizabeth Cady was married, she and Lucretia Mott, the famous Quakers, were delegates to a great abolitionist convention in London, but they were to permitted to sit as delegates, because they were women. It was from her cousin Gerrit Smith, the abolitionist, that Mrs. Stanton, before her marriage, received her abolition sentiment. Her equal-rights ideas had been largely formed before this. It was while she was a student in Miss Willard's seminary that she experienced the greatest disappointment on account of the denial of privileges to women. She was preparing herself to enter Union college, but f=before she left he seminary she learned that she would not be admitted to the college. She returned home after graduation nd became interested in the anti-slavery movement, and later was sent to the London convention.

One of the most interesting episodes of her life was to result from her failure to act as a delegate in London. She saw clearly how little women could do by permission, and she impressed upon Lucretia Mott the necessity of calling a women's convention to begin agitating the equal-rights idea. When she returned to America she began agitating the question throughout the state. After several years she finally secured permission from the New York Legislature in 1848 to speak before that body on the married woman's property bill, which she had largely framed. Her father was incensed when he learned that his daughter was to address the Legislature, but she finally won him over.

When the momentous day arrived she spoke for two hours, and soon afterward had the satisfaction of seeing the measure come a law.

During the same year Mrs. Stanton and others called the woman's suffrage convention at Seneca Falls, the first ever held. The meeting was the target for no end of ridicule, but that made little difference with the heroic women. They were called "cross old maids" and what not, but they went ahead and adopted their list of grievances, and thus started the movement which has had such a great and widespread influence. After that time Mrs. Stanton never faltered. From one end of the country to the other and in foreign lands she prosecuted with tremendous vigor the work she long ago set out to do.

It can readily be seen what the woman's political rights movement had done for the sex. But it had done much more. It had opened the colleges to coeducation; it had allowed woman to enter the professions upon a footing equal with men; it had given her a more independent and self-reliant force. Women were pre-eminently better off than they were when Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and a host of others began demanding that they be allowed a voice in affairs.
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