In Her Own Right : The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (12 page)

Religious, business, and family ties accounted for the Hunts’ link to the McClintocks. McClintock’s sister Sarah had been Hunt’s third wife, and he rented his store from Hunt. Mary Ann and Thomas McClintock lived much more modestly in Waterloo, where he was the druggist and minister of the Hicksite meeting for twenty-five years. The McClintock daughters, Mary Ann and Elizabeth, also attended the Seneca Falls convention and as adults became active suffragists.
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The Hicksite Quakers among the organizers had just returned from the yearly meeting a week earlier. The liberal Friends had had difficulty reaching consensus on two issues: how to minister to the Indian remnants in upstate New York and what qualified a member to participate in meetings. The question of equal rights among the Hicksites predisposed them to be responsive to Stanton’s outburst.
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Having decided to convene a meeting to discuss the position of women, each of the five took an assignment. That same Thursday they convinced the minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Seneca Falls to let them use his building, and they arranged for a newspaper announcement of their plans. The next day the
Seneca County Courier
published an unsigned call to a “convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women,” to be held July 19–20. The first day of the meeting, the blurb specified, was reserved “exclusively for women,” who were “earnestly invited to attend.”
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The group then agreed to meet the next Sunday to set the agenda, draft a document for discussion and some resolutions, and decide on subjects for speeches.

When the women gathered around Mary Ann McClintock’s parlor table, they did not know how to begin.
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As Stanton recalled their dilemma in the
History
, “they felt as helpless and hopeless as if they had been suddenly asked to construct a steam engine.” To get ideas the women perused
“various masculine productions . . . but all alike seemed too tame and pacific for the inauguration of a rebellion.” They finally decided to adopt the Declaration of Independence as their model. They substituted “all men” for the tyrant King George. The
History
records that the women had to make a “protracted search” to identify eighteen germane grievances.
¹⁶

Mrs. Stanton prepared their document. It began with a paraphrase: “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.” Their indictment charged that men had deprived women of legal rights, “profitable” employment opportunities and wages, opportunities in education and the professions, the right to divorce and to custody of their children. Men denied women “equal moral obligations” and undermined their “self-confidence.” The first five points raised the suffrage question, demanding for women the “unalienable right to the elective franchise, . . . voting rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded of men.”
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s ability to articulate these accumulated grievances attests to her enlarged empathy for “woman’s portion.” Although she was better off than most of her neighbors, she sometimes found that she had more in common with them in her daily life than with her own sisters. She could overcome her upper-class biases and ally herself more readily with women of other classes and conditions. Sympathy for other women and the ideals of romantic reform developed in her a republican spirit that coexisted with her tendency to elitism. Like other women, her social and economic status derived from her father and husband. Now she, too, demanded property rights, education, employment, equality under law, and the “sacred right to the elective franchise.”

Finally satisfied with the composition, the women titled it “A Declaration of Rights and Sentiments.” They borrowed the phrase from Garrison and the covenant of the American Anti-Slavery Association. Indeed, many of the ideas as well as the tactics of the first women’s rights convention came from other reform sources. The strategy of meetings, declarations, speakers, and petitions had been established by reformers and revivalists in the 1830s, but the inclusion of economic and social injustices was the result of Mrs. Mott’s conviction that every aspect of woman’s sphere must be addressed.
*
Mott nurtured these sentiments in Stanton. Mrs. Stanton contended that few of Mrs. Mott’s economic claims for women could be
achieved without the right to vote. In later years Stanton believed that obtaining equal employment and educational opportunities, as well as the right to divorce, were as important and more immediate than suffrage.

The emphasis on political action was Mrs. Stanton’s. The wife, daughter, and cousin of politicians and lawyers, she was convinced that social problems required political solutions. Like the political abolitionists with whom she was allied, Elizabeth Cady Stanton believed in using government to create legal remedies. Since women without voting rights had no independent access to political power, she advocated suffrage. The combination of Mott’s economic concerns and Stanton’s political instincts made the Declaration a comprehensive document.

Stanton’s political philosophy was rooted in the theory of natural rights. Like the abolitionists, Stanton applied eighteenth-century natural rights doctrine to nineteenth-century sexual inequality.
¹⁸
Introduced to the theories of John Locke by Edward Bayard and Emma Willard, she had found them useful and attractive. In Stanton’s experience the enlightenment emphasis on the individual had been reiterated by the romantic movement and radical Protestantism, by the revivalists and Theodore Parker. In contrast to the thinking of most Americans in 1848, Stanton assumed that women were individuals endowed with natural rights, the same natural rights possessed by American men. Not only did she claim that women naturally merited equal rights, she also argued that men and women were equal. She admitted different physical functions but asserted equal mental capacities. To her, women were not appendages but individuals with independent rights. Mrs. Stanton’s rendering of the natural rights philosophy was evident in the first three Seneca Falls resolutions:

Resolved
, That such laws as conflict, in any way, with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of nature and of no validity.

Resolved
, That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority.

Resolved
, That woman is man’s equal—was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.

Mrs. Mott, a Garrisonian abolitionist, and the other women had qualms about the political nature of their Declaration. The older woman advised against including the suffrage plank. She worried that it would make the meeting and its sponsors “look ridiculous.”
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But Mott’s affection for her
protégé was such that she acquiesced, perhaps expecting the meeting to strike the clause.

Henry Stanton, an anti-Garrisonian, also opposed the suffrage section. He claimed that Elizabeth would turn the proceedings into a “farce.” Although he had helped draft some of the resolutions, he refused to attend the meeting and left town, perhaps to protect his own political credibility.
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Family anecdote also reports that Judge Cady, alerted to her plan, rushed to Seneca Falls to determine her sanity.
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Rather than allude to these incidents, Stanton implied that all of the husbands had supported their decisions. Three of the men attended the convention and signed the Declaration. Twice during the meeting Stanton insisted that the organizers were addressing general rather than personal questions. Her focus was on legal cases rather than on domestic wrongs. She seemed eager not to embarrass Henry any more than necessary and to avoid any suggestion that she was unhappily married.

Despite the reservations of Henry and Lucretia, the two most influential people in her life, Mrs. Stanton persevered. Having been previously convinced of the legitimacy of political action on behalf of abolition and of the justice of her claims on behalf of women, she was undeterred when others balked. Years later she claimed to have been spurred on by a remark made at a dinner party in Dublin in 1840. Daniel O’Connell, an Irish freedom fighter known as the “Great Liberator,” had advised her always to demand more than she expected to get; eventually the outrageous would seem reasonable.
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When the occasion arose for her to make such a demand, she asked that women be granted the right to vote.

Lucretia Mott had also worried about the turnout. Writing to Mrs. Stanton on July 16, she warned, “The convention will not be so large as it otherwise might be, owing to the busy time with the farmers’ harvest.” Yet according to one witness, on the morning of Wednesday, July 19, the roads approaching the Wesleyan Chapel were jammed with carriages and carts. When the organizers arrived they found a crowd gathering and the church locked, whether intentionally or inadvertently. Unable to locate a key, Mrs. Stanton had her nephew hoisted through a window.
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More than a hundred men and women quickly filled the pews. Unsure about how to ask the men to leave, the organizers hastily decided to allow them to remain, even though they had planned to address only women on the first day.

Bold as they thought themselves, the women did not dare to preside over the meeting. As they had previously arranged, James Mott called the first session to order at eleven o’clock.
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The McClintocks’ daughter Mary Ann was appointed secretary, and Mrs. Stanton rose to state the object of the meeting: “We have met here today to discuss our rights and wrongs, civil
and political.” It was only her second public appearance, and one observer complained that she could hardly be heard.
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Mrs. Mott urged the women to join freely in the debates. Then the Declaration of Sentiments was read by Stanton, reread paragraph by paragraph, amended and adopted. A lively debate on the propriety of having men sign the document ended in a favorable vote but was referred for reconsideration the next day. The first session adjourned at half past two.

The afternoon meeting was addressed by Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Mott. The Declaration was read again, and a paper was circulated to obtain signatures. One hundred people signed: sixty-eight women, including Stanton’s sister Harriet Cady Eaton, and thirty-two men, including the husbands of Mott, McClintock, and Hunt.
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Postponing debate and discussion of the eleven resolutions, Mrs. Mott lightened the proceedings by reading a humorous newspaper article written by her sister Martha Wright. After an address by Elizabeth McClintock, the meeting finally adjourned. That evening Mrs. Mott, who was staying overnight at the Stantons’, spoke to a larger audience on “The Progress of Reforms.”

Promptly at ten o’clock on Thursday, July 20, James Mott called the third session to order. The minutes of the previous day were read, and Mrs. Stanton again read the Declaration. Discussion was animated. Finally the document was unanimously adopted and signed. The afternoon session was devoted to consideration of what the
Seneca County Courier
described as “the spirited and spicey resolutions.”
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Each was read and debated separately. Some elicited little discussion; others aroused heated debate. Partisans objected to such phrases as “corrupt customs” and “a perverted application of the Scriptures.” But as the record states, “After some criticism, much debate, and some slight alterations [all] were finally passed by a large majority.”

The most controversial was the ninth: “
Resolved
, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.” According to Mrs. Stanton in the
History
, opponents feared that a demand for voting would undermine the other, less controversial points. With a militant spirit, Stanton made bolder claims.

Strange as it may seem to many, we now demand our right to vote according to the declaration of the government under which we live. We should not feel so sorely grieved if no man who had not attained the full stature of a Webster, Clay, Van Buren or Gerrit Smith could claim the right of elective franchise. But to have drunkards, idiots, horseracing rumselling rowdies, ignorant foreigners, and silly boys fully recognized, while we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that belong to citizens, is too grossly insulting to . . . be longer quietly submitted to. The right is ours. Have it we must. Use it we will. The pens, the tongues, the fortunes,
the indomitable wills of many women are already pledged to secure this right.

This is the first incidence of anti-male rhetoric by Stanton, and she tried to make amends for it later in the day. Despite her eloquence the resolution would not have succeeded without an able, masculine defense. Frederick Douglass, the former slave and publisher of the
North Star
, reiterated Mrs. Stanton’s claim “that the power to choose rulers and make laws was the right by which all others could be secured.” The resolution barely passed.

The final session was opened at seven Thursday evening by Thomas McClintock. In keeping with the accepted practice at “mixed” meetings—those attended by men and women—none of the five organizers had ever assumed the chair. Mrs. Stanton saw no reason to question the procedure. Neither Mrs. Hunt nor Mrs. Wright was noted as participating in speech or debate. Mr. McClintock called on Mrs. Stanton, who, in an odd turnabout, defended the “lords of creation” against the accusations she had leveled at them in the rhetoric of the Declaration, resolutions, and debate. Perhaps surprised by the vigor of her attack on male voters and eager to appear fair minded, Mrs. Stanton played devil’s advocate. Unfortunately, no copy of her remarks remains.