In Her Own Right : The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (20 page)

Worn out by motherhood, Stanton refused to consider it a “noble aspiration” until she was no longer occupied by its demands. Eventually, however, she would claim that motherhood ennobled women. It was in this angry frame of mind that Stanton took two major steps—one planned, the other unexpected. In August she accepted invitations to deliver important speeches in Philadelphia and Boston, and she conceived her seventh child. They were not compatible undertakings.

After a decade of offers, Elizabeth Cady Stanton finally agreed to visit
Mrs. Mott and to attend the yearly meeting of Philadelphia Friends in the fall of 1858. Unfortunately Mrs. Stanton’s trunk was lost or stolen en route. Her anxiety about the loss turned her visit into a “short and disastrous” episode, according to Mrs. Mott. Stanton returned to Seneca Falls without making her speech. At the request of Mott’s son-in-law, Stanton sent an inventory of the trunk’s contents, listing such items as a shawl valued at one hundred dollars. Mrs. Mott was shocked at such extravagance. She sent Stanton a hundred dollars to cover the entire loss, noting sternly that the money was to be used “to supply only the necessities, not the luxuries.”
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Stanton then used the lost trunk as an excuse to cancel her Boston appearance in November. She had been honored to be the only woman asked to participate in a prestigious lecture series endowed by the Hovey Fund. Her last-minute, tactless withdrawal surprised and disappointed her friends. She claimed that both her speech and her public wardrobe had been lost with the trunk.
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Such wholly uncharacteristic behavior can probably be attributed to Stanton’s seventh pregnancy. For the first time in her experience, she suffered from daily discomfort and distemper. She felt awful. But having claimed equal abilities for men and women, she refused to admit a gender-related disability. To her, lost luggage was a more acceptable excuse than morning sickness. Indeed, there is some indication that she had decided even before her trip to Philadelphia to back out of the Boston event.
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Anthony was almost as upset by the pregnancy as was Stanton. Writing to Antoinette Brown Blackwell before the Philadelphia and Boston incidents, Anthony exclaimed:

Ah me!!! Alas!! Alas!!!! Mrs. Stanton!! is embarked on the rolling sea—three long months of terrible nausea are behind and what the future has in store, the
deep
[baby] only knows. She will be able to lecture however up to January provided she will only
make
her surroundings bend to such a work. But her husband, you know, does not
help
to make it
easy
for her to engage in such work—and all her friends throw
mountains
in her path. Mr. Stanton will be gone most of the Autumn, full of
Political Air Castles
and so soon as Congress sits, at Washington again. He was gone
7 months
last winter. The whole burden of home and children, therefore, falls to her, if she leaves the post,
all
is afloat. I only
scold now
that for a
moment’s pleasure
to herself or her husband, she should thus increase the
load
of
cares
under which she already groans. But there is no remedy now.
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It is significant that Anthony recognized the responsibility of both Stantons in the conception, rather than blaming only Henry’s masculine appetites. Mrs. Stanton was frank about her sexuality and objected to the Victorian view that women did not enjoy intercourse. As a phrenologist had noted,
she was “capable of enjoying the connubial relation to a high degree.”
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Throughout her life Stanton encouraged discussions of female sexuality and physiology.

Stanton’s last child, Robert Livingston Stanton, was born March 13, 1859. Mrs. Stanton was forty-three years old. This last, difficult pregnancy left her exhausted. Although reluctant to admit any weakness, she did confess it to her closest female friends. To Anthony she wrote: “I have a great boy, now three weeks old. He weighed at his birth without a particle of clothing 12¼ pounds. I never suffered so much. I was sick all the time before he was born, and I have been very weak ever since. He seemed to take up every particle of my vitality, soul and body. Thank Heaven! I am through the siege once more.” No longer leaping from her childbirth bed to go driving, Stanton suffered severe postpartum depression. Another week passed, and she wrote Anthony: “All I had or was has gone with the development of that boy. It is now four weeks since my confinement and I can scarcely walk across the room. You have no idea how weak I am and I have to keep my mind in the most quiet state in order to sleep.”
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The baby was fussy, possibly slightly crippled, and Stanton was worn out. It was a disappointing conclusion to her earlier childbearing triumphs.

Ill and depressed for most of 1859, Stanton made a slow recovery. Her enthusiasm returned briefly in the summer months, but it was quickly exhausted. In June she put a notice “To the Women of the Empire State” in the
Courier
, calling for petition signatures for a revised women’s property bill to be brought before the next session of the legislature. Writing to Anthony that same month, she declared: “I am full of fresh thoughts and courage and feel all enthusiasm about our work. I hope to grind out half a dozen good tracts during the summer. The [servant] girls and the children are all well. The house is cleaned. The summer’s sewing all done and I see nothing now to trouble me much if all keep well.” But she could not maintain her interest in women’s rights issues. Six weeks later both serving girls had quit to go into a factory, the older boys were home on vacation, and her household was in disarray. In another epistle to Anthony she explained: “I am in no situation to think or write but the occasion demands that I exert myself to do all I can. When you come I will try to find time to grind out what you say must be done. In the past we have issued all kinds of bulls under all kinds of circumstances, and I think we can still do more . . . even if you must make the puddings and carry the baby while I ply the pen.”
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To her troubles with a sickly infant, unreliable servants, and Anthony’s nagging were added even more serious concerns. Daniel Cady, blind since April and increasingly deaf, died on October 31, 1859, at age eighty-six. His daughter was bereft. There is no record that Stanton and her father
had healed the breach that followed her 1854 speech to the New York legislature or that she had resumed her long family visits to Johnstown in the interim. She had lost her father and any future opportunity to win his approval; she was also freed of his disapproval. To compound her grief, John Brown, a hero to abolitionists and liberals like Stanton, was sentenced to hang for his October raid on Harper’s Ferry. Gerrit Smith, implicated in the case on account of his financial support of Brown as one of the Secret Six, had himself temporarily committed to an insane asylum.

Childbirth, anxiety about an injured baby, the death of a parent, the execution of a hero, and the institutionalization of her cousin created a period of great stress and depression for Stanton. She was haunted by images of death: her father, Eleazar, tolling bells, worms, hanging, decay. She endured a season of mourning. For the first time since her conversion experience at Emma Willard’s, Stanton was incapacitated by despair. She begged Anthony to come and stay with her.
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With Anthony’s common sense, a return to health, the reestablishment of her household routine, and immersion in public duties, Stanton soon worked herself out of her depression. She fell back on her old pattern of activity to cheer herself up. By working and writing she defeated the depression.

In the will in existence in 1859, Stanton shared with her mother and sisters in Judge Cady’s considerable estate. The widow Cady was left the bulk of his fortune and use of their house for life. Each daughter received cash and real estate. Tryphena Bayard was named executrix and trustee of the Johnstown mansion. Elizabeth’s inheritance, estimated at fifty thousand dollars, gave the Stantons new financial security.
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Henry’s income since 1840 had been at best erratic. When he practiced law, earnings depended on the success of his cases and the solvency of his clients. As his family grew and expenses mounted, Henry had supplemented his income as an author, state senator, newspaper correspondent, and lyceum lecturer. There were always unpaid bills. Now the Stantons had enough cash to settle their debts and invest the remainder.
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Judge Cady’s death had another result. Stanton renewed her Johnstown visits and restored her relationship with her mother. In return, Mrs. Cady invited the Stanton children to stay with her during school vacations and when their mother traveled. Soon they were installed in the mansion on the square every summer, to be supervised by “the aunts,” Tryphena Bayard and Harriet Eaton.

Having survived the disapproval of her father, Stanton chose to ignore Henry’s objections to her career. As the new decade opened, Stanton came to depend on female friends for ongoing encouragement and enduring affection. With Lucretia Mott aging and Libby Miller preoccupied with her
father’s mental health, Stanton relied especially on Susan B. Anthony. At the same time, Stanton was becoming more and more self-sustaining. Writing to an acquaintance in 1860, Stanton acknowledged her need for approval from friends but at the same time revealed her increasing independence of it.

Every expression of approval from noble women is most grateful to me. I feel so perfectly sure that the . . . blow struck [in the divorce speech] was a good one that I am truly sorry to have any one turn away. My life has been one long struggle to do and say what I know to be right and true. I would not take back one brave word or deed. My only regret is that I have not been braver and truer in uttering the honest conviction of my own soul. I am thankful that I did not know how [an old ally now opposed] felt, for I fear the knowledge of his disapproval might have held me back. The desire to please those we admire and respect often cripples conscience.
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Previously Stanton had tried to please her traditional family and her untraditional friends. She was still practicing and comparing different behaviors. She depended on, or at least anticipated, the approval of those important to her. She expected that her actions would be accepted if not applauded. As earlier sources of approval had been exhausted or offended (her father, Edward Bayard, Henry), they were replaced by new sources of encouragement within the wider reform community, principally among Stanton’s female friends. Of these Anthony was the most immediate. She shared Stanton’s everyday life, visiting frequently and eventually living with her for extended periods. Their friendship and mutual dependence would be cemented by the adversities of the Civil War.

Aided by Anthony, Stanton had endured the depression caused by the events of 1859. She looked forward to the New Year with renewed vigor and excitement. With no more pregnancies to sap her energy, she anticipated approaching her prime after age forty-five and being active twenty years or more. Stanton entered menopause with mixed feelings. Many Victorians assumed it to be an illness that drained female vitality. But compared to the discomforts and disappointments associated with her last two pregnancies, Stanton looked forward to a return to public activity and intellectual creativity.

As she entered the new year, stability and serenity returned. Amelia Willard had long been a household fixture, relieving Stanton of many domestic duties. Baby Bobby was weaned, her next youngest child would be in school with the other five children in another year, and the older boys were almost adults. Stanton’s inheritance freed her finally to consider leaving Seneca Falls. She even endorsed Henry’s campaign for a political appointment.
Yet Henry’s fortunes, and those of the abolitionists with whom the couple had been associated for twenty years, depended on the success of the Republican party in 1860.

Unaware of all the changes the decade would bring, Stanton in early 1860 was preoccupied with three speeches Anthony had volunteered her to give. After a pause of six years, she made three major addresses in three months. In March she testified on married women’s property rights before the Judiciary Committee of the New York legislature. In May she demanded suffrage for white and black women from the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York City. Two days later she defended divorce before the National Women’s Rights Convention. Each speech addressed a major tenet of her as yet uncodified feminist ideology. Each gave her an opportunity to present the conclusions of her Seneca Falls experiences to a wider audience. She traveled by herself or with Anthony and left her children at home or with her mother.

The Married Women’s Property Act, passed by the New York legislature in 1848, was the first of its kind in the country. It protected a wife’s property from her husband’s creditors. The bill had been amended once in 1857, and another bill for enlargement of its scope had been introduced in 1860. The amendments provided that married women had the right to hold real and personal property without the interference of a husband; to carry on any trade or perform any service; to collect and use their own earnings; to buy, sell, and contract with the consent of husbands, unless those husbands were insane, felons, drunkards, or deserters; to sue and be sued; to share joint custody of their children; and to inherit equally with any children on the death of their spouse. The bill, in part a response to petitions initiated by Stanton, Anthony, and their colleagues, gave women the right to act independently.

After spending Christmas 1859 with the Stantons in Seneca Falls, Anthony had camped out in Albany for six weeks. There she lobbied members of the state Senate, which passed the measure enlarging the scope of the Married Women’s Property Act in February. Anthony’s strategy for the lower house was to focus public attention on the subject and to keep pressure on wavering supporters. She engineered an invitation to Mrs. Stanton to address the Judiciary Committee of the legislature on March 19, 1860. Then she arranged for the testimony to be given in the Assembly chamber, from the speaker’s desk, before a huge audience.