In Her Own Right : The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (49 page)

18
. As part of the interest expressed in the 1890s in earlier generations of women leaders, ECS suggested that NAWSA sponsor an annual “Foremothers Day” shortly after Thanksgiving.
Letters
, 290–91.

19
.
80Y
, 418–19.

20
. ECS to Rebecca Eyster, 1 May 1847,
Letters
, 15–16. This letter is a good example of different versions of the same item. The undated copy of this letter found in the Theodore Stanton MSS (hereafter TS), Mabel Smith Douglass Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. (hereafter DL), is longer and more detailed: “Soon after my marriage Theodore Weld said to me: Do not allow any of your correspondents to insult you by addressing your letters Mrs. Henry B. Stanton. I have followed his advice. . . . Furthermore, I have talked this matter over with my husband and he says it would be quite
outré
for us to appear in the papers with either titles or men’s names.”

21
. ECS, “Noted Suffragist Reviews Her Life” (clipping, n.d.), ECS-LC.

1
. Catherine Bryant Rowles,
Tomahawks to Hatpins: A History of Johnstown, New York
(Lakemont, N.Y.: North Country Books, 1975).

2
. ECS’s birthplace faced on Green Street but sat on the same lot as the house that replaced it. That property later became part of the Davis-McIntyre glove factory. The brick Cady mansion was sold in 1888, torn down and replaced by a bank that bears a historical marker noting the ECS connection. Johnstown (N.Y.) Public Library files (hereafter JPL). Description of the Cady mansion in Sallie Holley to C. L. Holley, 4 Feb. 1854,
Letters
, 56–57.

3
.
80Y
, 5–6, 9, 29.

4
. Margaret Stanton Lawrence MSS, ECS-VC; CY, 8, 16, 18–20, 26.

5
. Sallie Holley to C. L. Holley, 4 Feb. 1854,
Letters
, 56–57;
CY
, 20.

6
. For Daniel Cady, see
Dictionary of American Biography
, 1966 ed., article by H. W. Howard Knott; Henry B. Stanton, “Obituary: Daniel Cady,”
New York Daily Times
, [Nov. 1859], JPL.

7
. Sallie Holley to C. L. Holley, 4 Feb. 1854,
Letters
, 56–57; Daniel Cady to Peter Smith, 23 Oct. 1818, ECS-LC.

8
. Daniel Cady to Peter Smith, 2 Dec. 1814, ECS-LC; will of Daniel Cady, on file at Fulton County Courthouse, Johnstown, N.Y.

9
.
Letters
, 275;
CY
, 7, 16, 20. Some of Tryphena Cady Bayard’s letters are included in the Gerrit Smith Miller MSS (hereafter GSM), George Arents Research Library, Syracuse Univ., Syracuse, N.Y. (hereafter SU).

10
.
CY
, 10, 11, 13, 16, 36;
80Y
, 108; Yale Univ. Archives, New Haven, Conn.

11
.
80Y
, 4, 11, 48–49, 111;
CE
, 11–12, 69, 203; letter to author from Kenneth L. Brock, Archivist, Emma Willard School, Troy, N.Y., 19 July 1978;
Emma Willard and Her Pupils, 1822–1872
(Published by Mrs. Russell Sage, 1898), 147–49; letter to author from Barbara Wood McMartin, Beaman, Iowa, 27 May 1980. Attendance at women’s meetings cited in SBA to ECS, 12 Dec. 1860, and 20 Feb. 1861, ECS-LC.

12
. ECS to John Greenleaf Whittier, 11 July 1840.
Letters
, 5–6; Theodore Tilton,
“Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton,”
Eminent Women of the Age
, ed. Tilton (Hartford, Conn.: S. M. Betts, 1868), 336.

13
.
80Y
, 26–28; letter to author from Hanns Kuttner, Young People’s Committee for Historic Seneca Falls, 27 Nov. 1979.

14
.
80Y
, 24; Banner,
Stanton
, 3–4, 11–12.

15
.
80Y
, 20–21.

16
. Ibid.

17
. Tilton, “Stanton,” 343;
80Y
, 20–21.

18
. ECS to SBA, 10 Sept. 1855, TS-DL, also
Letters
, 59–60.

19
. ECS, “Reminiscences of Elizabeth Cady Stanton,” 2, Political Equality Club of Minneapolis MSS, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minn.

20
. Ibid.; ECS, “Speech on Common Schools” (7 March 1855, Seneca Falls, N.Y.), ECS-LC.

21
.
80Y
, 3.

22
. Ibid., 2.

23
. Ibid., 31–32; ECS, “Reminiscences,” 3.

24
. Tilton, “Stanton,” 334; Henry B. Stanton, “Tribute to Daniel Cady,”
New York Tribune
, 1 Jan. 1855, JPL, written upon Judge Cady’s retirement from the New York Supreme Court.

25
.
80Y
, 10, 14–15; ECS interview,
Philadelphia Sun Press
, 8 Dec. 1901, ECS-LC.

26
.
80Y
, 15.

27
. For discussion of female spheres and friendship, see Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,”
Signs
1 (Autumn 1975): 1–29.

1
. Classic and revisionist works on Jacksonian America include Lee Benson,
The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961); Marvin Meyers,
The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief
(Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1957); and Edward Pessen,
Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics
(Homewood, 111.: Dorsey, 1969). A more recent study of the same phenomenon in a smaller area is Paul E. Johnson,
A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1978).

2
. Lerner, “Lady and Mill Girl,” 5–15.

3
. Whitney Cross,
The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850
(Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1950).

4
. ECS, “Reminiscences,” 2;
80Y
, 26–28, 31, 46.

5
.
80Y
, 33.

6
. Ibid., 34, 46.

7
. Ibid., 34; ECS, “Reminiscences,” 5. For a discussion of the equal education movement, see Eleanor Flexner,
A Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States
(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, Belknap Press, 1959; paperback, New York: Atheneum, 1972), chaps. 2, 8.

8
.
80Y
, 35; letter to author from Kenneth L. Brock, 19 July 1978.

9
. Letter to author from Brock.

10
.
New York American Journal
, 27 April 1902, ECS-LC;
80Y
, 441–47, 36.

11
. For Willard, see
Notable American Women
article by Frederick Rudolph (hereafter
NAW
); AL,
Emma Willard: Daughter of Democracy
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929); Ann Firor Scott, “What, Then, Is the American: The New Woman,”
Journal of American History
65 (Dec. 1978):679–703.

12
. Emma Willard,
An Address to the Public, Particularly to Members of the Legislature of New York, Proposing a Plan for Improving Female Education
, 2d ed. (Middlebury, Vt.: J. W. Copeland, 1819). Willard’s tactics are discussed by Ann Douglas,
The Feminization of American Culture
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), p. 59; Keith Melder, “The Mask of Oppression: The Female Seminary Movement in the United States,”
New York History
55 (July 1954):261–79.

13
. Cott,
Bonds of Womanhood
, 119–25.

14
.
80Y
, 41.

15
. Quoted in Perry Miller,
The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965), 9. See also James F. Johnson, “The Life of Charles Grandison Finney” (Ph.D. diss., Syracuse Univ., 1959).

16
. That “romantic reform in America traced its origins to a religious impulse which was both politically and socially conservative” is the thesis of John L. Thomas, “Romantic Reform in America, 1815–1865,”
American Quarterly
17 (Winter 1965):656–81. See also Gerald Sorin,
Abolitionism: A New Perspective
(New York: Praeger, 1972).

17
. Clifford S. Griffin,
Their Brothers’ Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800–1865
(New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1960).

18
.
80Y
, 42; Henry B. Stanton (hereafter HBS),
Random Recollections
, 3d ed. (New York: Harper & Bros., 1887), 22–23.

19
. Quoted in Miller,
Life of the Mind
, 33.

20
.
80Y
, 43.

21
. Ibid., 47–48, 44.

22
. Keith Melder, “Ladies Bountiful: Organized Women’s Benevolence in Early Nineteenth Century America,”
New York History
68 (July 1967):243; Cott,
Bonds of Womanhood
, 159.

23
. ECS’s daughter Margaret recalled her telling this anecdote during a lecture in Chicago, c. 1877. Lawrence, “Sketch,” 11–12.

24
. Entry dated Johnstown, N.Y., 23 Aug. 1837, ECS commonplace book, Boston Public Library, Boston, Mass. (hereafter BPL); Margaret Stanton Lawrence, “Who Was Elizabeth Cady Stanton? My Mother” (typescript, n.d.), 9–11, ECS-VC.

25
. Most sources do not address female adolescence. See Joseph Kett,
Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present
(New York: Basic Books, 1977), 14, 29, 36; Nancy Cott, “Young Women in the Second Great Awakening,”
Feminist Studies
3 (Fall 1975):15–29; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “Beauty, the Beast, and the Militant Woman: A Case Study of Sex Roles and Social Stress in Jacksonian America,”
American Quarterly
23 (Oct. 1971):562–84; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “Puberty to Menopause: The Cycle of Femininity in Nineteenth-Century America,” in
Clio’s Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women
, ed. Mary Hartman and Lois W. Banner (New York: Harper Torch Books, 1974), 23–37.

26
. ECS to Ida Husted Harper [1897?], Harper MSS, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (hereafter HEHL); ECS to Amelia Bloomer, 25 May 1855, ECS-LC.

27
.
CE
, 16–17, 21–23; ECS to Harriot Stanton Blatch, 1 Oct. 1889, and photograph, ECS-LC.

28
. Charles A. Hammond,
Gerrit Smith: The Story of a Noble Man’s Life
(Geneva, N.Y.: W. F. Humphrey, 1900); Ralph V. Harlow,
Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer
(New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1939; reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1972); Sorin,
Abolitionism
, 26–38. Gerrit Smith hereafter GS.

29
. Lucretia Mott (hereafter LM) to ECS, 25 Oct. 1849, William Lloyd Garrison MSS (hereafter WLG), Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. (hereafter SSC). Mrs. Mott believed that Ann Smith was responsible for all of her husband’s reform activity.

30
. For GS’s involvement with John Brown, see Stephen Oates,
To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown
(New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Otto J. Scott,
The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement
, (New York: New York Times Books, 1979). The other five were Samuel G. Howe, Theodore W. Higginson, Theodore Parker, Franklin Sanborn, and George Stearns.

31
. Benjamin P. Thomas,
Theodore Weld: Crusader for Freedom
(New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1950), 162. After the Civil War, GS and Horace Greeley paid the bond for Jefferson Davis.

32
.
CE
, 14–15.

33
. ECS to “Uncle” (Peter Smith, GS’s brother), n.d., GSM-SU;
80Y
, 59.

34
.
80Y
, 54–55.

35
. Ibid., 60.

36
. See HBS,
Recollections;
biographical file in Robert Brewster Stanton (nephew) MSS, NYPL; Arthur H. Rice, “Henry B. Stanton as a Political Abolitionist” (Ed.D. diss., Teachers College, Columbia Univ., 1967); Rosalie Margolin, “Henry B. Stanton, A Forgotten Abolitionist” (M.A. thesis, Columbia Univ., 1962).

37
. “When the hot evening came, to my surprise everybody arranged themselves in the affirmative part of the room except myself. [It] afterward came to pass that this was the beginning of my life-work, and lent color to my whole future existence.” HBS,
Recollections
, 3d ed., 24.

38
. W. R. Keagy, “The Lane Seminary Rebellion,”
Bulletin of the Historical & Philosophical Society of Ohio
9 (April 1951):153–54.

39
. Theodore Weld described Stanton’s role as executive secretary to Angelina Grimké, 16 Oct. 1837,
The Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah Grimké, 1822–1844
, ed. Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1934; reprint, New York: Da-Capo Press, 1970), 1:463–64.

40
. HBS to GS, 27 Feb. 1840, GSM-SU.

41
.
80Y
, 59.

1
.
80Y
, 60–61.

2
. GS to Ann Smith, 11 Dec. 1839, GSM-SU;
80Y
, 60–61; Daniel Cady to Peter Smith, 2 Dec. 1814, ECS-LC.

3
.
80Y
, 32–33, 216, 220–25.

4
. Ibid., 71.

5
. Ibid., 71, 61; ECS to Ann Smith, 4 March 1840, ECS-LC.

6
. Caroline Weston to Anne Weston, n.d., BPL; HBS to GS, 27 Feb. 1840, GSM-SU.

7
. Aileen S. Kraditor,
Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834–1850
(New York: Random House, Pantheon Books, 1967); James B. Stewart,
Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1976).