100 YEARS 1920–2020
See That the World Is Moving
The Complex Legacy of Elizabeth Cady Stanton BY K A IT L IN R ESLER
“ Wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.” The Woman’s Bible, E L I Z AB E T H CADY STA N TON
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E M M A W I LL AR D SC HO O L
On August 26, 2020, coinciding with the centennial anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, a bronze statue was unveiled in Central Park. In the park’s 167-year history it is the first to feature three real, historical women: Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Troy Female Seminary alumna Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1832). As a leading activist and intellectual of the 19th century women’s rights movement, Stanton’s unwavering commitment to securing the rights that would establish women as equal and independent citizens alongside men made her an iconic presence in American history. Introducing contemporary readers to Stanton in Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life, Lori D. Ginzberg characterizes her as “to many, a dangerous radical, whose words threatened the stability of marriage, the sanctity of religion, and men’s exclusive control over politics” (3). Stanton changed the rights of citizenship for American women with an important caveat—for women who were most like herself: educated, white, middle class. Her vision, and the rhetorical choices in those early days of the women’s rights movement, set the foundation for both the good and regrettable facets in the feminist movement of our own era. Born in 1815 in Johnstown, NY, the experiences of her early life certainly set the tone for her activism: biographers consistently describe a staunch, determined child and adolescent. Though excluded from attending Union College, she benefited from changes in girls’ education that were popular during the earlier part of the
century and attended the Troy Female Seminary, now our own Emma Willard School (in her Reminiscences, she dismisses her years at school as ‘fashionable,’ despite the quality of the education, even as she writes with admiration of Madame Willard herself ). The Declaration of Sentiments, penned for the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, shows off her sharp intellect and linguistic boldness. Her text mirrors the language of the Declaration of Independence, a move that underscores the unquestionable tradition of rights owed to both women and men. The document contains a resolution that speaks directly to “the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.” Not permitted to vote, she declared herself a candidate for Congress in 1866 (the first woman to do so) against both the Democatic and Republican candidates. She received 24 votes. Suffrage was not the singular goal of the convention, or of Stanton, who denounced the many ways she was disenfranchised: from owning or purchasing property, signing a contract, serving on a jury, and the overall rarity of a woman able to live without reliance on a man (father, brother, husband). However, acquiring the vote became the defining feature around which the early women’s movement coalesced and where the eventual schism began. The difference in how the right to vote was viewed by Stanton versus by Black suffragists illuminates the profound way in which race, class, and life experience shaped her priorities when it came to the fight for equal rights. For Stanton
