In Her Own Right : The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (27 page)

Stanton home in Tenafly, New Jersey.
Courtesy of
The Record,
Hackensack, New Jersey
.

Three generations: Elizabeth Cady Stanton with granddaughter Nora and daughter Harriot Stanton Blatch, 1892.
Courtesy of Rhoda Barney Jenkins
.

The International Council of Women met in Washington, D.C., on March 25, 1888. Mrs. Stanton is seated in the front row, fifth from left. Anthony is third from left, Matilda Joslyn Gage is sixth. In the second row, starting with the second person, are Anna Howard Shaw, Frances Willard, and Lillie Devereux Blake. In the last row, Rachel Foster Avery stands second from left.
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C
.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1891, at Anthony’s home in Rochester.
Courtesy of the Susan B. Anthony Memorial, Rochester, New York
.

Elizabeth-Cady Stanton,
c
. 1895, with her oldest daughter, Margaret Lawrence, and her youngest son, Robert Stanton, with whom she lived in the 1890s.
Courtesy of Rhoda Barney Jenkins
.

Elizabeth Smith Miller.
Courtesy of Vassar College Library
.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “America’s Grand Old Woman,” 1895.
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C
.

Busts of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott, in the crypt of the United States Capitol.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
.

The regal self sovereign: Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1900.
Courtesy of Rhoda Barney Jenkins
.

The Eleventh National Women’s Rights Convention had been called for May 1866. It was scheduled to coincide with the first meeting of a new organization, the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), the brainchild of Theodore Tilton, the young, long-haired editor of the
Independent
.
*
He proposed the AERA as a coalition for supporters of black and female suffrage and persuaded the leaders of both groups to merge into one body. Stanton accepted Tilton’s proposals so that “the same conventions, appeals, and petitions, might include both classes of disfranchised citizens.” At Stanton’s urging, Lucretia Mott accepted the AERA presidency. Stanton was elected first vice-president, and Anthony became corresponding secretary. All three women served on the executive committee. Stanton wrote the preamble to the platform. At Anthony’s insistence it promised “universal suffrage.”
¹⁷

It was soon apparent that the feminists had been naive. The vehicle that Stanton and Anthony had hoped would unite reformers behind their cause ended up being used against them. At the end of May 1866 Wendell Phillips convened the executive committee of the AERA in Boston. In the absence of Mott and Stanton, the committee approved his plan to make black male suffrage paramount. With the support of the AERA and without the opposition of any other organization, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in July 1868, excluding women from citizenship and voting rights.

Unable to change the wording of the Fourteenth Amendment, Stanton next tried to reinterpret it. She claimed that nothing in the Constitution forbade women from holding office, whether or not they could vote. In August 1866 she nominated herself as an independent candidate for Congress, the first woman to run for that office. In a letter addressed to “the electors” of New York City’s Eighth District, Mrs. Stanton advocated “free speech, free press, free men, and free trade.” She chose an independent candidacy, she explained, because the Democrats did not have “a clear vision of personal rights” and because the Republicans lacked “sound . . . principles on trade and commerce.” Finally, of course, she endorsed women’s rights.
“I would gladly have a voice and vote in the Fortieth Congress to demand
universal
suffrage, that thus a republican form of government might be secured to every state in the Union.”
¹⁸

Stanton found the campaign a “merciless duty.” She handed out two-inch square white cards, imprinted “For Representative to Congress, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.” In addition to “printing tickets and handbills and . . . holding up her political opponents to the criticism of men and angels,” she had other demands on her time, as she reported to Libby Miller. “I must buy butter and meat, hear youngsters spell and multiply, coax parted threads in stocking heels and toes to meet again . . . and smooth down the ruffled feathers of imperious men, of cross chambermaids and cook. Then comes Susan, with the nation on her soul, asking for speeches, resolutions, calls, attendance at conventions.” Running against an incumbent Democrat and regular Republican, Mrs. Stanton received only twenty-four votes. Looking back on her defeat, she only regretted that she had not “procure[d] photographs of her two dozen unknown friends.”
¹⁹

Stanton suffered one more defeat in 1866. In December a Senate bill to extend the vote to Negroes in the District of Columbia again raised the issue of woman suffrage. Sen. Thomas Cowan, Republican of Pennsylvania, moved to strike the word “male.” His motion resulted in the first congressional debate on woman suffrage. It was marked by ridicule, disdain, and contempt. Suffrage advocates in the Senate used arguments provided by Stanton and Mott. They stated that women were citizens with legal rights equal to those of men and therefore deserved to vote. The opposition countered with claims that would be repeated for the next fifty years. Women did not need to vote because they were well represented by husbands, fathers, brothers, or sons. Women lacking protective male relatives were ignored. Further, the opponents argued, women were physically and mentally unfit for “the turmoil and battle of public eye.” Indeed, female suffrage would create a sexual “state of war.” The Cowan amendment was defeated thirty-seven to nine.
²⁰