In Her Own Right : The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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Authors: Elisabeth Griffith
In Her Own Right
The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
ELISABETH GRIFFITH
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 1984 by Elisabeth Griffith
First published in 1984 by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1985
Oxford is the registered trademark of Oxford University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Griffith, Elisabeth.
Includes index.
1. Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 1815–1902.
2. Feminists—United States—Biography.
3. Suffragettes—United States—Biography.
4. Women’s rights—United States—History. I. Title.
HQ1413.S67G74 1984 324.6′23′0924 [B] 83-25120
ISBN 978-0-19-503729-6
For my mother
Like detectives, historians search for clues, follow leads, examine documents, evaluate evidence, and investigate lives. The case of Elizabeth Cady Stanton sent me across the country in pursuit of correspondence by or about her and in search of lost relatives. I always expected to find a cache of hidden letters in some great-grandchild’s attic, but I never did. Instead I discovered the generosity of librarians and scholars and the excitement of “getting the facts.”
At the libraries and historical societies I visited, I was assisted by knowledgeable, courteous professionals. For their assistance and enthusiasm, I would like to thank the staffs at the Susan B. Anthony Memorial, Rochester, New York; the Boston Public Library, Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts; the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library; the Mabel Smith Douglass Library, Rutgers University; the Geneva (New York) Historical Society and Museum; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the Huntington Library, San Marino, California; the Johnstown (New York) Public Library; the Library of Congress; the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis; the New-York Historical Society; the New York Public Library; the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College; the Seneca Falls (New York) Historical Society; the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College; the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Foundation, Seneca Falls, New York; the Ernest Bird Library, Syracuse University; and Vassar College.
Equally helpful were the many people who answered my written requests, directed to the Columbia University Archives, New York; the Cornell University Archives and Alumni Office, Ithaca; the Friends Historical Society, Swarthmore College, Haverford, Pennsylvania; the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; the Madison County (New York) Historical Society; the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul; the Stowe-Day Memorial Library and Historical Society, Hartford; the Clements Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and the Yale University Alumni Records Office, New Haven. Individuals like Kenneth L. Brock, Archivist for the Emma Willard School; Virginia Mosley, Borough Historian of Tenafly, New Jersey; Charles Noxon of the Johnstown Historical Society; and Wilfred Rauber, Town and Village Historian of Dansville, New York, were both thorough and thoughtful in their responses. I especially want to thank my sister, Jane Griffith Bryan, head of the reference department of the Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania, who was never too busy to respond to my long-distance demands.
Unfortunately, too many of the people who helped me were never identified or introduced, like the woman at the public library in Greenwich, Connecticut, who answered my telephone query about the children of Stanton’s granddaughter, whom the
New York Times
obituary reported to have died in Greenwich. She directed me to Stanton’s great-granddaughter, Rhoda Barney Jenkins. “She lives just down the block,” said the voice on the phone. When I called Mrs. Jenkins, she invited me and my tape recorder to spend the afternoon. That encounter began a friendship with a woman who resembles her famous foremother in many ways and who contributed her family memories and photographs to this book.
Another chance clue prompted an inquiry to the public librarian in Beaman, Iowa, who forwarded my letter to Barbara Wood McMartin, great-granddaughter-in-law of Stanton’s sister Margaret. Mrs. McMartin, an energetic genealogist, helped trace the offspring of the rest of the Cady sisters. Also helpful were the court clerks in the County of New York (City) and Fulton County, New York.
The steadfast encouragement of my dissertation committee at American University invigorated this project. Their combined confidence in me and their demands on me strengthened this biography and honed my skills as a historian. Robert L. Beisner, the chairman of the committee, kept me on course and on schedule with good-humored patience; his skill as an editor challenged me to meet his standard of excellence. If Dr. Beisner was my mentor, Professor Valerie French was my role model. Her commitment to historical applications of psychological methodology convinced me to attempt a “psychobiography” of Stanton, and her informed questions forced me to probe more deeply and widely than I might have on my own. Alan Kraut contributed his expertise on abolition and nineteenth-century reform movements. Kay Mussell, head of the American Studies department, corrected my interpretations of women’s history and sought to improve my craftsmanship as a writer.
This biography also benefited from the critical reading of John M. Cooper, Jr., of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who had been my undergraduate adviser at Wellesley College; Anne Macdonald, head of the history faculty at the National Cathedral School in Washington, who nurtured both the book and its author; and Mary Grant, whose dissertation on Julia Ward Howe, an enemy of Stanton’s, cemented our friendship. These friends deserve special thanks, as do the scholars who shared their insights or research with me: Margaret Hope Bacon, Ellen C. DuBois, Corinne Guntzel, Blanche Glassman Hersch, Kirk Jeffrey, Mary Kelley, Hanns Kuttner, Allan J. Lichtman, Edith Mayo, Carol Weissbrod, Judith Wellman, and Kathy Widom.
A Woodrow Wilson Grant for Research in Women’s Studies, awarded in 1978, provided me with funds for travel and the purchase of
The History of Woman Suffrage
, as well as for photocopying and day care, all of which were necessary to the completion of this project.
I am even more indebted to Audrey Wolf, my agent, to Sheldon Meyer, my editor, to Ann Hofstra Grogg, my copy editor, and to Joan Fraser and Julia Goetz, friends and assistants, for sharing my enthusiasm for Mrs. Stanton. Finally, I want to thank my family for their encouragement and endurance: Anne and Katie, who almost completed their degrees before I did; my daughter Megan, whose joyful presence cheered me; and especially my husband, John Deardourff, who sustained me. All of us came to think of Mrs. Stanton as a member of our extended household.
McLean, Virginia | Elisabeth Griffith |
APPENDICES
Introduction
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the best known and most conspicuous advocate of women’s rights in the nineteenth century. For almost fifty years she led the first women’s movement in America. She set its agenda, drafted its documents, and articulated its ideology. Her followers grew from a scattered network of local reform groups into a national constituency of politically active women. Her statements and actions were recorded in the national press; her death in 1902 made international headlines. Newspapers called her “America’s Grand Old Woman.”
On November 12, 1895, six thousand people celebrated Stanton’s eightieth birthday. The “Queen Mother” of American suffragists was enthroned on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. As usual, her rotound form was swathed in yards of black silk. White lace set off her carefully coifed thick white curls and bright blue eyes. Though no longer pretty, Mrs. Stanton radiated humor and intelligence. Behind her on the stage, under a canopy of evergreens, red carnations spelled out her name in a field of white chrysanthemums; dozens of roses banked her red velvet chair. Nearly immobile from overweight and old age, Mrs. Stanton surveyed her domain with delight. She sat through three hours of tributes and ovations from representatives of national and international women’s groups. Mormon women from the Utah Territory gave her an onyx and silver ballot box; much to Stanton’s amusement, it could not be opened. Finally, with the help of her children and two canes, she hobbled to the podium to acknowledge her audience of admirers. Too weak to speak for long, she could only remark, “I am well aware that all these public demonstrations are not so much tributes to me as an individual as to the great idea I represent—the enfranchisement of women.”
1
The hall exploded with cheers for the cause and the crusader.
Stanton’s feminism was not limited to suffrage. In an era of outspoken reformers, she was an innovative and radical thinker. She believed that women had been condemned to a subordinate status by entrenched attitudes based on Judeo-Christian tradition, patriarchal institutions, English common law, American statutes, and social customs. She frequently compared the position of women to that of slaves, and she worked to abolish both forms of bondage. In addition to suffrage she advocated coeducation, girls’ sports, job training, equal wages, labor unions, birth control, cooperative nurseries and kitchens, property rights for wives, child custody rights for mothers, and reform of divorce laws. Stanton was the first person to enumerate every major advance achieved for women in the last century and many of the reforms still on the agenda in this century.
Stanton’s talents were aptly suited to the role of agitator. Well educated and widely read, she had keen intelligence, a trained mind, and an ability to argue persuasively in writing and speaking. Her personality was magnetic. In conversation and correspondence she was witty and opinionated; in person she was funny, feisty, engaging. Her most remarkable trait was her self-confidence. It gave her the courage to take controversial stands without hesitation.