title: Congenital adrenal hyperplasia

text: The association of excessive sex steroid effects with diseases of the adrenal cortex have been recognized for over a century. The term "adrenogenital syndrome" was applied to both sex-steroid producing tumors and severe forms of CAH for much of the 20th century, before some of the forms of CAH were understood. Congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which also dates to the first half of the century, has become the preferred term to reduce ambiguity and to emphasize the underlying pathophysiology of the disorders.


title: Congenital adrenal hyperplasia

text: Much modern understanding and treatment of CAH comes from research conducted at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore in the middle of the 20th century. Lawson Wilkins, "founder" of pediatric endocrinology, worked out the apparently paradoxical pathophysiology: that hyperplasia and overproduction of adrenal androgens resulted from impaired capacity for making cortisol. He reported use of adrenal cortical extracts to treat children with CAH in 1950. Genital reconstructive surgery was also pioneered at Hopkins. After application of karyotyping to CAH and other intersex disorders in the 1950s, John Money, JL Hampson, and JG Hampson persuaded both the scientific community and the public that sex assignment should not be based on any single biological criterion, and gender identity was largely learned and has no simple relationship with chromosomes or hormones. See Intersex for a fuller history, including recent controversies over reconstructive surgery.


title: Congenital adrenal hyperplasia

text: Hydrocortisone, fludrocortisone, and prednisone were available by the late 1950s. By 1980, all of the relevant steroids could be measured in blood by reference laboratories for patient care. By 1990, nearly all specific genes and enzymes had been identified. The last decade, though, has seen a number of new developments, discussed more extensively in congenital adrenal hyperplasia due to 21-hydroxylase deficiency:


title: Robbie Savage

text: Robert William Savage (born 18 October 1974) is a Welsh former professional footballer who played as a midfielder, now a football pundit and director of football at club Macclesfield.


title: Robbie Savage

text: During his career he played predominantly as a midfielder, starting off as a youth player with Manchester United before joining Crewe Alexandra when released by the Old Trafford club. He became a regular for Leicester City in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and performed a similar role for Birmingham City and Blackburn Rovers. In 2008, he joined Derby County; after a short loan spell with Brighton & Hove Albion later that year, he returned to captain Derby, with whom he finished his playing career. He also played for the Wales national team on 39 occasions. He is now a pundit for the BBC and regularly presents "606" on BBC Radio 5 Live on Sunday evenings. He also co-presents "Early Kick Off" on BT Sport.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Born in Wrexham, Savage started his playing career with local sides Brickfield Rangers and Lex XI. When he finished school, he joined Manchester United as a trainee and originally played as a striker. He played in the FA Youth Cup winning team of 1992, and was later given a professional contract, but never played a first-team game for the club and signed for Crewe Alexandra in 1994.


title: Robbie Savage

text: He switched into midfield early in his time at Crewe and proved himself as a competent young player, helping them reach the Division Two play-offs in his first two seasons at the club; a remarkable feat for a newly promoted club who had only played at this level twice in the previous 30 years. Crewe then made it third time lucky by sealing promotion via the play-offs in 1997. It was the first time that Crewe had reached the second tier of the English football league system, but shortly after helping Crewe win promotion, Savage handed in a transfer request to manager Dario Gradi.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage was transferred to Premier League side Leicester City managed by Martin O'Neill, for a fee of £400,000, in July 1997. Savage spent five years at Leicester, where he made his name as a reliable, competitive and fiery midfielder. In 1999, Leicester reached the League Cup final against Tottenham Hotspur. In a controversial incident, Savage made a poor tackle on Tottenham's Justin Edinburgh who retaliated by swinging his arm out. Contact was minimal, but Savage fell to the ground. Edinburgh was sent off for raising his arms, and although Tottenham went on to win the final, many Spurs fans still hold a grudge against Savage for the incident to this day. However, a year later Savage reached the League Cup final again, this time winning 2–1 against Tranmere Rovers.


title: Robbie Savage

text: When Leicester were relegated from the Premiership at the end of the 2001–02 season he transferred to newly promoted Birmingham City for a fee of £1.25 million, signing a three-year contract. He won the club's Player of the Year award in 2003. At the beginning of January 2005 he submitted a written request for a transfer, allegedly wishing to be nearer his ailing parents in Wrexham. On 19 January, he completed a move to Blackburn Rovers for a fee of £3 million, having scored 11 goals in 82 league games for Birmingham.


title: Robbie Savage

text: In his first five months as a Blackburn player, Savage helped his new club to Premier League safety and reached the FA Cup Semi-final, a 3–0 loss to Arsenal in his homeland's Millennium Stadium.


title: Robbie Savage

text: In March, Savage called an end to his international career after new manager John Toshack dropped him for a World Cup 2006 qualifying game against Austria. His feud with Toshack and the Welsh FA continued long into the 2005–06 season as Savage insisted he retired from international football only because Toshack told him he was not good enough to play for Wales.


title: Robbie Savage

text: In 2005–06, Savage was a regular performer for Blackburn, making 42 appearances and scoring once, against former club Birmingham. The following season, he scored against Salzburg and Wisła Kraków in Rovers' UEFA Cup campaign, but his season was cut short by a broken leg in January, which kept him out for the rest of the season.


title: Robbie Savage

text: During the 2007–08 season, Savage endured further problems with his knee, suffering a knock in the 2–1 win at Spurs after being caught by Robbie Keane. Surgery was required which kept him out of the starting lineup for six weeks. Following the return of Steven Reid to the Rovers starting lineup and some good form by David Dunn, he found it harder to get into the starting XI. Savage was well liked by the Blackburn fans and was given a standing ovation by a near capacity ground by the Rovers fans when he returned with Derby.


title: Robbie Savage

text: It was revealed by then Sunderland manager Roy Keane in his 2014 autobiography, that he had been given permission by Blackburn to sign Savage during the end of his time at Blackburn; however he was put off by Savage's "wazzupp" voicemail, with Keane describing his thoughts after hearing this as "I can't be fucking signing that".


title: Robbie Savage

text: On 9 January 2008, Savage joined Derby County for a fee of £1.5 million on a two-and-a-half-year contract, and later revealed that he had taken a pay cut to join Derby in his search for first-team football and had rejected a move to Sunderland because he felt Derby had wanted him more. As the number 8 shirt, which he had worn at previous clubs, was already allocated to then-captain Matthew Oakley, he took the number 44 shirt because the numbers add up to 8. He was appointed the new Derby captain after Oakley was sold to Leicester, and he skippered the Derby side in his first match, a 1–0 home defeat to Wigan Athletic.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Rumours of Savage leaving Derby came in July 2008 when he missed out on every pre-season match. In August, Leicester City chairman Milan Mandaric declared an interest in Savage, which was dismissed by Derby. Paul Jewell repeatedly left Savage out of the team, after Derby's poor start to the 2008–2009 season, and he was replaced as captain by Alan Stubbs. Stubbs was forced to retire shortly into the new season through injury, but Savage was not considered for the role due to not being in the first team, and the armband went to Paul Connolly.


title: Robbie Savage

text: After failing to break back into the first team, Savage was sent out on loan in October to Brighton for a month to keep match fit. He would later reveal one year later, in a build-up to a match between Leicester and Derby County, that he had tried to secure a loan deal to the Walkers Stadium (Leicester had declared an interest in him months earlier). Savage even telephoned club ambassador Alan Birchenall and former teammate Paul Dickov to put in a good word with manager Nigel Pearson. Pearson, however, "said no", despite Derby offering to pay "90 or 95 per-cent" of Savage's wages. Following Jewell's resignation as Derby manager, Savage found himself brought back into first team contention by new manager Nigel Clough, who made him first choice in central midfield. Savage scored his first goal for the club in a 2–1 loss to Doncaster Rovers on 27 February 2009.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage signed a one-year extension to his Derby contract with the club on 10 August 2009 to take him through to the end of the 2010–11 season. The next day, he was named in the Championship Team of the Week for his performance in the opening day victory over Peterborough United. Later that month, Savage was renamed as Captain of Derby County, replacing Paul Connolly, who manager Nigel Clough wanted to "concentrate on his own game". In response, Savage said that: "I did not deserve the captaincy when I first came to the club. I was handed it from the first day and I shouldn't have been. It was too much pressure for me and I had a nightmare. I let it get to me. I think I'm ready for it now. I feel more comfortable with it now." Derby struggled once again during the season, not achieving safety until the 44th fixture, but the season was a personal success for Savage as he appeared in all but one of Derby's 51 league and cup fixtures during the campaign, the match which he missed being due to suspension, starting 49 of them. He also scored twice; a free kick against Queens Park Rangers in a 4–2 home defeat and a volley at Sheffield United in a 1–1 draw. He also won the club's own Player of the Year award but lost out on the fan's award to Shaun Barker.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage again started in the Derby first XI in the 2010–11 season in a new 4–2–3–1 formation around new signing James Bailey, though Derby got off to a poor start winning just one of their opening seven league games, with Savage's form making fans question the justification for his place in the team and his status as skipper. He made his 100th appearance for the club in a 2–2 draw against Queens Park Rangers before he was dropped to the bench for a 1–1 draw at Barnsley, the first game he had played no part in for Derby (barring unavailability for selection) since Nigel Clough's arrival as manager in January 2009.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage played in goal for Derby on 11 March 2010, when Stephen Bywater was taken off with a back injury against Reading. He let in two goals during his 45 minutes in the Derby goal.


title: Robbie Savage

text: On 16 October 2010, Savage played his 600th career match in a 3–0 victory on Preston North End, scoring an injury-time penalty to seal the win. In January 2011, Savage revealed that he was considering leaving the club for a move to Vancouver Whitecaps, Savage stating: "One thing is for sure, I will be leaving Derby County at the end of the season, if not before, even if they offer me a new contract. My time is up here. I've thoroughly enjoyed my time with Derby and I want to walk away with my head held high". One fan responded by telephoning Savage during an interview on Radio Five Live and telling him to "leave the club now" and "take young Mr. Clough with him". Savage eventually rejected the move, stating it was too big a move for his family. On 31 January 2011, Savage announced that he would be retiring at the end of the season to concentrate on his growing media career. In his last two games, a home loss against Bristol City and an away defeat at Reading, he was met with a round of applause and a standing ovation from both sets of supporters.


title: Robbie Savage

text: On 24 November 2019, Savage came out of retirement to join Stockport Town of the North West Counties League. He made his league debut for the club the following evening, as an 80th-minute substitute in a 3–2 victory over FC Oswestry Town. That was his only appearance.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage played at under-18 and under-21 level for Wales before making his senior international debut in 1995 against Albania while at Crewe. Savage attained 39 caps, scoring two goals, both in World Cup qualifying against Turkey and Norway, before retiring from international football in September 2005, saying he wished to concentrate on his club career. However, many people believe the reason he quit was due to a spat with Wales manager John Toshack. Savage did give the explanation that "John Toshack said it was my way or the highway – well I'm on the M56."


title: Robbie Savage

text: On 6 March 2006, he appeared on Welsh radio, partaking in a debate with pundit Leighton James over his exclusion from the Welsh squad. Early in his international career he clashed with former Wales manager Bobby Gould when he jokingly threw a replica of Paolo Maldini's shirt into a disposal bin before a match against Italy. Savage was initially dropped by Gould from the squad only to be reinstated the next day.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage's style as a midfield player was all-action and energetic, and he regularly collected yellow cards, and for a while held the dubious distinction of being awarded the most yellow cards of any Premiership player in the league's history – 89, although he has now been overtaken by Lee Bowyer, Kevin Davies and Paul Scholes. Fans of Aston Villa, Tottenham, West Ham and Arsenal have accused him of simulation, whether to win a set piece or to get an opponent red carded.


title: Robbie Savage

text: During a match against Newcastle United in August 2003, the referee Matt Messias swung his arm out and accidentally hit Savage in the face as Savage was running behind him. On 17 January 2010, whilst commentating for BBC Radio 5 Live's coverage of a Premier League match between Aston Villa and West Ham United at Villa Park, a clearance by Villa midfielder Stiliyan Petrov hit Savage in the face causing some minor bleeding to the nose.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage has, however, only been sent off twice in his career: once during an international game for the Welsh national team, and once during a Premier League game for Blackburn. He received his first-ever red card when he was sent off in Wales' World Cup qualification match against Northern Ireland in September 2004 for reacting to a foul on him by midfielder Michael Hughes. Both Hughes and Savage were sent off, but, on later review, the punishment of Savage seemed harsh to some. Savage was ridiculed for threatening to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights over the decision. His once-impressive statistic of never being sent off in a Premiership match ended on 18 March 2006 when he was dismissed against Middlesbrough for two bookable offences. Both were controversial – the first for a challenge on George Boateng where he appeared to take the ball, and the second for handball when it seemed unintentional. Savage later admitted that he was probably due a controversial sending off because he had escaped punishment for illegal challenges in the past.


title: Robbie Savage

text: One famous example of his eccentric behaviour was while he played for Leicester City. In an incident to become known as "Poogate" he used the referee's toilet before a game, claiming he had an upset stomach due to antibiotics he was on at the time. The Football Association charged him and he was fined £10,000, a decision that he appealed against, but lost. Leicester fined him two weeks' wages for the incident.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Whilst playing for Leicester, in the final minute of a league game between rivals Leicester and Derby at Pride Park in 2001, Savage dived in the penalty area. Leicester were awarded the penalty, which was converted, and meant they won the game 3–2. Savage's blatant dive, his hopeful look at the referee and his aggressive fist-pumping celebration in front of the home fans resulted in a torrent of abuse from the fans and in Savage being chased across the pitch by incensed Derby players, two of whom were booked. Derby fans regularly booed, jeered and abused Savage whenever he played against them, and when he became a Derby player in January 2008, he was treated with a mixture of hostility and indifference, partly over the incident, and partly over his average form.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage is also famous for an incident at Villa Park, while playing for Birmingham City, in a bad-tempered Second City derby in March 2003. After a slide tackle on him by Dion Dublin, a confrontation between the two and several other players occurred before Dublin headbutted Savage. Dublin was then sent off by referee Mark Halsey as result. Birmingham would go on to win the derby 0–2.


title: Robbie Savage

text: When being interviewed by BBC Radio Derby's Colin Gibson in January 2010, Savage reacted furiously to rumours he heard that the Derby players think the club's backroom staff are not up to the job. These rumours were brought up during a phone-in on Gibson's show on the station the preceding weekend, following the Rams' 4–1 defeat at home to Scunthorpe United on 9 January.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage occasionally acted as a pundit during his club career, and started working in the media more regularly in the 2009–10 season. He worked in a number of different punditry roles during the 2010 FIFA World Cup before joining the presenting team for BBC Radio 5 Live's 6-0-6 show. In September 2010, Savage signed up as official sporting ambassador for bookmakers William Hill. In May 2011 he was awarded the Sony Radio Academy Rising Star Award, as well as winning an award from the Plain English Campaign.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Since retiring from football in May 2011, Savage has attempted to become a more prominent broadcasting figure beyond punditry. From September 2011 Savage took part in the 2011 series of "Strictly Come Dancing", partnering Ola Jordan. The show broadcast on 22 October saw Savage perform a dramatic knee-slide towards the camera, which resulted in a broken nose. Savage and Jordan were eliminated from the competition in the quarterfinal on 4 December 2011, placing sixth.


title: Robbie Savage

text: In October 2012, along with 463 other players, Savage took part in BBC Radio 5 Live's attempt to set a new Guinness World Record for the 'most players in a continuous 5 a side exhibition match'. This was for BBC Children in Need along with comedian Lloyd Langford and BBC Radio 5 Live travel reporter Lindsey Chapman. Along with Ex-England cricketer Andrew Flintoff, Savage is part of a BBC Radio 5 Live podcast called "Flintoff, Savage & The Ping Pong Guy", hosted by former table tennis player Matthew Syed, which discussed current sporting topics.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage's involvement with Stockport Town led to him becoming involved with the creation of phoenix club Macclesfield F.C. in October 2020. Macclesfield owner Robert Smethurst appointed Savage as a member of the board (later director of football) with Danny Whitaker as manager. On 30 August Macclesfield defeated local rivals Congleton Town 1-0 in the NWCFL Premier Division; the match was suspended for several minutes late in the second half due to crowd trouble, during which Savage intervened to break up fighting.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage was born in Wrexham on 18 October 1974, to Colin and Valerie Savage. He attended Ysgol Bryn Alyn in Gwersyllt until he completed his GCSE studies in July 1991. On leaving school, Savage joined Manchester United as an apprentice.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage and his wife Sarah have two sons. In 2012 one of his sons, Charlie, was attached to Manchester United's youth academy and in April 2021 he signed his first professional contract with the club. On 8 December 2021, Savage provided commentary for BT Sport in the match where his son Charlie made his senior Manchester United debut in the UEFA Champions League, coming on as a late substitute in a 1-1 draw against Young Boys.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Robbie Savage's father was diagnosed with Pick's disease, a dementia-type illness, when he was in his mid-50s, and died in 2012. Savage is an ambassador for the dementia care and research charity, the Alzheimer's Society.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage had said in the future he would have liked to finish his career at home town club Wrexham before going on to manage them. He also said that the greatest regret of his football career was not signing for Everton when he had the chance in 2005.


title: Robbie Savage

text: Savage published an autobiography in 2011, "Savage!", written with Janine Self, and in 2015 published "I'll Tell You What...", a book of memoir and punditry.


title: Robbie Savage

text: In October 2014, Savage was awarded an honorary fellowship at Wrexham's Glyndŵr University for services to sport.


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: Going in Style is a 2017 American heist drama comedy film remake of the 1979 film of the same name. Directed by Zach Braff and written by Theodore Melfi, it stars Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Alan Arkin, Joey King, Matt Dillon, Christopher Lloyd, Ann-Margret, John Ortiz and Siobhan Fallon Hogan. It follows a trio of retirees (Freeman, Caine, and Arkin) who plan to rob a bank after their pensions are canceled.


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: The film premiered at the SVA Theatre on March 30, 2017, and was released in the United States on April 7, 2017. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $84 million worldwide against its $25 million budget.


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: Joe, Willie, and Albert are senior citizens and lifelong friends living in New York. During an unpleasant appointment at the bank, Joe is one of the victims to witness a robbery in progress carried out by three individuals wearing black masks. During the robbery, he notices the leader bearing a Mongol warrior tattoo on his neck as the only lead that could help the police identify the culprit. However, the leader sympathizes with Joe when he finds out about his current financial situation brought up by the bank. The robbers subsequently escape with over $1.6 million.


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: When the company they worked for is bought out, their pensions become a casualty of the restructuring. Joe is hit particularly hard and finds out that he, his daughter, Rachel, and granddaughter, Brooklyn, will be homeless in less than thirty days. Willie finds out he is gravely ill from kidney failure and needs a transplant and is even more frustrated because his financial situation forces him into a long-distance relationship with his daughter and granddaughter. Desperate, the three friends decide to rob the bank that is going to restructure their pension funds and take back what is rightfully theirs.


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: Inspired by his experience of the robbery, Joe originates the idea; at first Albert and Willie are appalled, but eventually agree when they later learn that their bank intends to steal their pensions. Trying to shoplift some items from a grocery store, where Al's love interest, Annie, works, results in a comic disaster, so the trio turn to Joe's former son-in-law, Peter Murphy, and a professional criminal and pet store owner named Jesús to teach them the ropes. They plan an alibi using their lodge's carnival as a cover.


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: Joe, Willie, and Albert disguise themselves as "The Rat Pack" (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr.) and use guns with blanks so that no one gets hurt. The robbery almost goes awry when Willie collapses briefly and Lucy, a child witness partially pulls off his mask to allow him to breathe better; she sees the wrist watch he wears with a picture of his granddaughter on it as he engages in a friendly conversation so as not to let her feel intimidated; however, the three manage to get away with over $2.3 million. They are soon arrested on suspicion by FBI Agent Hamer after the manager from the grocery store recognizes Al's walk from the video surveillance cameras, but they all stick to their alibis.


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: Hamer puts them along with other senior suspects into a police lineup, using Lucy, the child witness who partially took off Willie's mask. She refuses to identify Willie, leaving Hamer with no case. Willie suffers total kidney failure and is near death until Al agrees to donate a kidney. While part of the money is used to help the three friends with their financial situations, the rest is given to their families, friends, co-workers, and fellow members at the lodge. Joe finally gets his granddaughter a puppy he promised her if she got A's in every subject at school; courtesy of Jesús, who is later revealed to be the leader of the robbers from the robbery Joe witnessed and has laundered the money that they stole. The tattoo on his neck is also revealed to be a fake made of henna, intended to throw the FBI and the police off the scent. The movie ends at Al and Annie's wedding as the three friends celebrate their good fortune.


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: On October 12, 2012, it was announced that New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. were developing a remake of 1979 heist comedy film "Going in Style", with Theodore Melfi set to write the script. Donald De Line was on board to produce the film with Tony Bill, producer of the original film, as executive producer. Melfi was approached by De Line and Andrew Haas about writing the screenplay for the remake, but Melfi insisted on changing the ending to something more upbeat. Melfi explained:


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: On January 9, 2013, Don Scardino was hired to direct the film. On September 19, 2013, Melfi, who wrote the script was in talks to direct the film. On November 19, 2014, it was revealed that Zach Braff was in talks with the studio to direct the film, but he was not officially offered yet. On November 19, 2014, it was announced that Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine were cast in the film to play the lead roles, while Dustin Hoffman was in talks to join them. On April 9, 2015, Alan Arkin joined the cast of the film to complete the lead cast of three. On August 3, 2015, Joey King joined the cast of the film to play Caine's character's granddaughter. On August 10, 2015, Matt Dillon was added to the cast to play an FBI agent named Hamer, pursuing the three elderly lifelong friends and robbers. The same day, Ann-Margret was cast in the film for an unspecified role.


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: Principal photography on the film began in Brooklyn, New York City, on August 3, 2015. Filming also took place in Astoria, Queens.


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: The film features original music by composer Rob Simonsen, as well as songs by various artists and two of its stars:


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: "Going in Style" was released on April 7, 2017, which Warner Bros moved from an original May 6, 2016 date.


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: "Going in Style" grossed $45 million in the United States and Canada and $39.6 million in other territories for a worldwide gross of $84.6 million, against a production budget of $25 million.


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: In North America, the film opened alongside "" and "The Case for Christ", and was projected to gross around $8 million from 3,061 theaters in its opening weekend. It grossed $4.2 million on its first day and $11.9 million over the weekend, finishing above expectations and 4th at the box office. In its second weekend the film grossed $6.3 million (a drop of 47%), finishing 5th at the box office.


title: Going in Style (2017 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 47% based on 171 reviews, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Despite the considerable talent of its leads, "Going in Style" is light on laughs and plays it safe far too often." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score 50 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an overall positive score of 83%.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first convention to be called for the sole purpose of discussing women's rights, and was the primary author of its Declaration of Sentiments. Her demand for women's right to vote generated a controversy at the convention but quickly became a central tenet of the women's movement. She was also active in other social reform activities, especially abolitionism.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1851, she met Susan B. Anthony and formed a decades-long partnership that was crucial to the development of the women's rights movement. During the American Civil War, they established the Women's Loyal National League to campaign for the abolition of slavery, and they led it in the largest petition drive in U.S. history up to that time. They started a newspaper called "The Revolution" in 1868 to work for women's rights.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: After the war, Stanton and Anthony were the main organizers of the American Equal Rights Association, which campaigned for equal rights for both African Americans and women, especially the right of suffrage. When the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was introduced that would provide suffrage for black men only, they opposed it, insisting that suffrage should be extended to all African Americans and all women at the same time. Others in the movement supported the amendment, resulting in a split. During the bitter arguments that led up to the split, Stanton sometimes expressed her ideas in elitist and racially condescending language. In her opposition to the voting rights of African Americans Cady was quoted to have said, "It becomes a serious question whether we had better stand aside and let 'Sambo' walk into the kingdom first." Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist friend who had escaped from slavery, reproached her for such remarks.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton became the president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, which she and Anthony created to represent their wing of the movement. When the split was healed more than twenty years later, Stanton became the first president of the united organization, the National American Woman Suffrage Association. This was largely an honorary position; Stanton continued to work on a wide range of women's rights issues despite the organization's increasingly tight focus on women's right to vote.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton was the primary author of the first three volumes of the "History of Woman Suffrage", a massive effort to record the history of the movement, focusing largely on her wing of it. She was also the primary author of "The Woman's Bible", a critical examination of the Bible that is based on the premise that its attitude toward women reflects prejudice from a less civilized age.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Elizabeth Cady was born into the leading family of Johnstown, New York. Their family mansion on the town's main square was handled by as many as twelve servants. Her conservative father, Daniel Cady, was one of the richest landowners in the state. A member of the Federalist Party, he was an attorney who served one term in the U.S. Congress and became a justice in the New York Supreme Court.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Her mother, Margaret ( Livingston) Cady, was more progressive, supporting the radical Garrisonian wing of the abolitionist movement and signing a petition for women's suffrage in 1867. She was described, at least earlier in her life, as "[n]early six feet tall, strong willed and self-reliant, ... She was the only person in the household not in awe of her husband who was 12 years her senior."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Elizabeth was the seventh of eleven children, six of whom died before reaching full adulthood, including all of the boys. Her mother, exhausted by giving birth to so many children and the anguish of seeing so many of them die, became withdrawn and depressed. Tryphena, the oldest daughter, together with her husband Edward Bayard, assumed much of the responsibility for raising the younger children.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In her memoir, "Eighty Years & More", Stanton said there were three African American menservants in her household when she was young. Researchers have determined that one of them, Peter Teabout, was a slave and probably remained so until all enslaved people in New York state were freed on July 4, 1827. Stanton recalled him fondly, saying that she and her sisters attended the Episcopal church with Teabout and sat with him in the back of the church rather than in front with the white families.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton received a better education than most women of her era. She attended Johnstown Academy in her hometown until the age of 15. The only girl in its advanced classes in mathematics and languages, she won second prize in the school's Greek competition and became a skilled debater. She enjoyed her years at the school and said she did not encounter any barriers there due to her gender.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: She was made sharply aware of society's low expectations for women when Eleazar, her last surviving brother, died at the age of 20 just after graduating from Union College in Schenectady, New York. Her father and mother were incapacitated by grief. The ten-year-old Stanton tried to comfort her father, saying she would try to be all her brother had been. Her father said, "Oh my daughter, I wish you were a boy!"


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton had many educational opportunities as a young child. Their neighbor, Reverend Simon Hosack, taught her Greek and mathematics. Edward Bayard, her brother-in-law and Eleazar's former classmate at Union College, taught her philosophy and horsemanship. Her father brought her law books to study so she could participate in debates with his law clerks at the dinner table. She wanted to go to college, but no colleges at that time accepted female students. Moreover, her father initially decided she did not need further education. He eventually agreed to enroll her in the Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York, which was founded and run by Emma Willard.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In her memoirs, Stanton said that during her student days in Troy she was greatly disturbed by a six-week religious revival conducted by Charles Grandison Finney, an evangelical preacher and a central figure in the revivalist movement. His preaching, combined with the Calvinistic Presbyterianism of her childhood, terrified her with the possibility of her own damnation: "Fear of judgment seized my soul. Visions of the lost haunted my dreams. Mental anguish prostrated my health."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton credited her father and brother-in-law with convincing her to disregard Finney's warnings. She said they took her on a six-week trip to Niagara Falls during which she read works of rational philosophers who restored her reason and sense of balance. Lori D. Ginzberg, one of Stanton's biographers, says there are problems with this story. For one thing, Finney did not preach for six weeks in Troy while Stanton was there. Ginzberg suspects that Stanton embellished a childhood memory to underline her belief that women harm themselves by falling under the spell of religion.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: As a young woman, Stanton traveled often to the home of her cousin, Gerrit Smith, who also lived in upstate New York. His views were very different from those of her conservative father. Smith was an abolitionist and a member of the "Secret Six," a group of men who financed John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in an effort to spark an armed uprising of enslaved African Americans. At Smith's home, she met Henry Brewster Stanton, a prominent abolitionist agent. Despite her father's reservations, the couple married in 1840, omitting the word "obey" from the marriage ceremony. Stanton later wrote, "I obstinately refused to obey one with whom I supposed I was entering into an equal relation."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: While uncommon, this practice was not unheard of; Quakers had been omitting "obey" from the marriage ceremony for some time.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton took her husband's surname as part of her own, signing herself Elizabeth Cady Stanton or E. Cady Stanton, but not Mrs. Henry B. Stanton.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Soon after returning from their European honeymoon, the Stantons moved into the Cady household in Johnstown. Henry Stanton studied law under his father-in-law until 1843, when the Stantons moved to Boston (Chelsea), Massachusetts, where Henry joined a law firm. While living in Boston, Elizabeth enjoyed the social, political, and intellectual stimulation that came with a constant round of abolitionist gatherings. Here, she was influenced by such people as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1847, the Stantons moved to Seneca Falls, New York, in the Finger Lakes region. Their house, which is now a part of the Women's Rights National Historical Park, was purchased for them by Elizabeth's father.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The couple had seven children. At that time, child-bearing was considered to be a subject that should be handled with great delicacy. Stanton took a different approach, raising a flag in front of her house after giving birth, a red flag for a boy and a white one for a girl. One of her daughters, Harriot Stanton Blatch, became, like her mother, a leader of the women's suffrage movement. Because of the spacing of their children's births, one historian has concluded that the Stantons must have used birth control methods. Stanton herself said her children were conceived by what she called "voluntary motherhood." In an era when it was commonly held that a wife must submit to her husband's sexual demands, Stanton believed that women should have command over their sexual relationships and childbearing. She also said, however, that "a healthy woman has as much passion as a man."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton encouraged both her sons and daughters to pursue a broad range of interests, activities, and learning. She was remembered by her daughter Margaret as being "cheerful, sunny and indulgent." She enjoyed motherhood and running a large household, but she found herself unsatisfied and even depressed by the lack of intellectual companionship and stimulation in Seneca Falls.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: During the 1850s, Henry's work as a lawyer and politician kept him away from home for nearly 10 months out of every year. This frustrated Elizabeth when the children were small because it made it difficult for her to travel. The pattern continued in later years, with husband and wife living apart more often than together, maintaining separate households for several years. Their marriage, which lasted 47 years, ended with Henry Stanton's death in 1887.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Both Henry and Elizabeth were staunch abolitionists, but Henry, like Elizabeth's father, disagreed with the idea of female suffrage. One biographer described Henry as, "at best a halfhearted 'women's rights man.'"


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: While on their honeymoon in England in 1840, the Stantons attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Elizabeth was appalled by the convention's male delegates, who voted to prevent women from participating even if they had been appointed as delegates of their respective abolitionist societies. The men required the women to sit in a separate section, hidden by curtains from the convention's proceedings. William Lloyd Garrison, a prominent American abolitionist and supporter of women's rights who arrived after the vote had been taken, refused to sit with the men and sat with the women instead.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Lucretia Mott, a Quaker minister, abolitionist and women's rights advocate, was one of the women who had been sent as a delegate. Although Mott was much older than Stanton, they quickly bonded in an enduring friendship, with Stanton eagerly learning from the more experienced activist. While in London, Stanton heard Mott preach in a Unitarian chapel, the first time Stanton had heard a woman give a sermon or even speak in public.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: An accumulation of experiences was having an effect on Stanton. The London convention had been a turning point in her life. Her study of law books had convinced her that legal changes were necessary to overcome gender inequities. She had personal experience of the stultifying role of women as wives and housekeepers. She said, "the wearied, anxious look of the majority of women, impressed me with a strong feeling that some active measures should be taken to remedy the wrongs of society in general, and of women in particular." This knowledge, however, did not immediately lead to action. Relatively isolated from other social reformers and fully occupied with household duties, she was at a loss as to how she could engage in social reform.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In the summer of 1848, Lucretia Mott traveled from Pennsylvania to attend a Quaker meeting near the Stanton's home. Stanton was invited to visit with Mott and three other progressive Quaker women. Finding herself in sympathetic company, Stanton said she poured out her "long-accumulating discontent, with such vehemence and indignation that I stirred myself, as well as the rest of the party, to do and dare anything." The gathered women agreed to organize a women's rights convention in Seneca Falls a few days later, while Mott was still in the area.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton was the primary author of the convention's Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, which was modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Its list of grievances included the wrongful denial of women's right to vote, signaling Stanton's intent to generate a discussion of women's suffrage at the convention. This was a highly controversial idea at the time but not an entirely new one. Her cousin Gerrit Smith, no stranger to radical ideas himself, had called for women's suffrage shortly before at the Liberty League convention in Buffalo. When Henry Stanton saw the inclusion of woman suffrage in the document, he told his wife that she was acting in a way that would turn the proceedings into a farce. Lucretia Mott, the main speaker, was also disturbed by the proposal.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: An estimated 300 women and men attended the two-day Seneca Falls Convention. In her first address to a large audience, Stanton explained the purpose of the gathering and the importance of women's rights. Following a speech by Mott, Stanton read the Declaration of Sentiments, which the attendees were invited to sign. Next came the resolutions, all of which the convention adopted unanimously except for the ninth, which read, "it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves the sacred right of the elective franchise." Following a vigorous debate, this resolution was adopted only after Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist leader who had formerly been enslaved, gave it his strong support.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton's sister Harriet attended the convention and signed its Declaration of Sentiments. Her husband, however, made her remove her signature.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Although this was a local convention organized on short notice, its controversial nature ensured that it was widely noted in the press, with articles appearing in newspapers in New York City, Philadelphia and many other places. The Seneca Falls Convention is now recognized as an historic event, the first convention to be called for the purpose of discussing women's rights. The convention's Declaration of Sentiments became "the single most important factor in spreading news of the women's rights movement around the country in 1848 and into the future," according to Judith Wellman, a historian of the convention. The convention initiated the use of women's rights conventions as organizing tools for the early women's movement. By the time of the second National Women's Rights Convention in 1851, the demand for women's right to vote had become a central tenet of the United States women's rights movement.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: A Rochester Women's Rights Convention was held in Rochester, New York two weeks later, organized by local women who had attended the one in Seneca Falls. Both Stanton and Mott spoke at this convention. The convention in Seneca Falls had been chaired by James Mott, the husband of Lucretia Mott. The Rochester convention was chaired by a woman, Abigail Bush, another historic first. Many people were disturbed by the idea of a woman chairing a convention of both men and women. How, for example, might people react if a woman ruled a man out of order? Stanton herself spoke in opposition to the election of a woman as the chair of this convention, although she later acknowledged her mistake and apologized for her action.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: When the first National Women's Rights Convention was organized in 1850, Stanton was unable to attend because she was pregnant. Instead, she sent a letter to the convention entitled "Should women hold office" that outlined the movement's goals. The letter emphatically endorsed women's right to hold office, stating that "women might have a 'purifying, elevating, softening influence' on the 'political experiment of our Republic.'” Thereafter it became a tradition to open national women's rights conventions with a letter by Stanton, who not did participate in person in a national convention until 1860.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: While visiting Seneca Falls in 1851, Susan B. Anthony was introduced to Stanton by Amelia Bloomer, a mutual friend and a supporter of women's rights. Anthony, who was five years younger than Stanton, came from a Quaker family that was active in reform movements. Anthony and Stanton soon became close friends and co-workers, forming a relationship that was a turning point in their lives and of great importance to the women's movement.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The two women had complementary skills. Anthony excelled at organizing, while Stanton had an aptitude for intellectual matters and writing. Stanton later said, "In writing we did better work together than either could alone. While she is slow and analytical in composition, I am rapid and synthetic. I am the better writer, she the better critic." Anthony deferred to Stanton in many ways throughout their years of work together, not accepting an office in any organization that would place her above Stanton. In their letters, they referred to one another as "Susan" and "Mrs. Stanton."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Because Stanton was homebound with seven children while Anthony was unmarried and free to travel, Anthony assisted Stanton by supervising her children while Stanton wrote.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: One of Anthony's biographers said, "Susan became one of the family and was almost another mother to Mrs. Stanton's children." One of Stanton's biographers said, "Stanton provided the ideas, rhetoric, and strategy; Anthony delivered the speeches, circulated petitions, and rented the halls. Anthony prodded and Stanton produced." Stanton's husband said, "Susan stirred the puddings, Elizabeth stirred up Susan, and then Susan stirs up the world!" Stanton herself said, "I forged the thunderbolts, she fired them."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: By 1854, Anthony and Stanton "had perfected a collaboration that made the New York State movement the most sophisticated in the country," according to Ann D. Gordon, a professor of women's history.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: After the Stantons moved from Seneca Falls to New York City in 1861, a room was set aside for Anthony in every house they lived in. One of Stanton's biographers estimated that, over her lifetime, Stanton spent more time with Anthony than with any other adult, including her own husband.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In December 1865, Stanton and Anthony submitted the first women's suffrage petition directed to Congress during the drafting of the Fourteenth Amendment. The women challenged the use of the word "male" in the version submitted to the States for ratification. When Congress failed to remove the language, Stanton announced her candidacy as the first woman to run for Congress in October 1866. She ran as an independent and secured only 24 votes, but her candidacy sparked conversations surrounding women's officeholding separate from suffrage.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In December 1872, Stanton and Anthony each wrote New Departure memorials to Congress and were invited to read their memorials to the Senate Judiciary Committee. This further brought women's suffrage and officeholding to the forefront of Congress's agenda, even though the New Departure agenda was ultimately rejected.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The relationship was not without its strains, especially as Anthony could not match Stanton's charm and charisma. In 1871, Anthony said, "whoever goes into a parlor or before an audience with that woman does it at the cost of a fearful overshadowing, a price which I have paid for the last ten years, and that cheerfully, because I felt that our cause was most profited by her being seen and heard, and my best work was making the way clear for her."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Excessive consumption of alcohol was a severe social problem during this period, one that began to diminish only in the 1850s. Many activists considered temperance to be a women's rights issue because of laws that gave husbands complete control of the family and its finances. The law provided almost no recourse to a woman with a drunken husband, even if his condition left the family destitute and he was abusive to her and their children. If she managed to obtain a divorce, which was difficult to do, he could easily end up with sole guardianship of their children.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1852, Anthony was elected as a delegate to the New York state temperance convention. When she tried to participate in the discussion, the chairman stopped her, saying that women delegates were there only to listen and learn. Years later, Anthony observed, "No advanced step taken by women has been so bitterly contested as that of speaking in public. For nothing which they have attempted, not even to secure the suffrage, have they been so abused, condemned and antagonized."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Anthony and other women walked out and announced their intention to organize a women's temperance convention. Later that year, about five hundred women met in Rochester and created the Women's State Temperance Society, with Stanton as president and Anthony as state agent. This leadership arrangement, with Stanton in the public role as president and Anthony as the energetic force behind the scenes, was characteristic of the organizations they founded in later years.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In her first public speech since 1848, Stanton delivered the convention's keynote address, one that antagonized religious conservatives. She called for drunkenness to be legal grounds for divorce at a time when many conservatives opposed divorce for any reason. She appealed for wives of drunkard husbands to take control of their marital relations, saying, "Let no woman remain in relation of wife with the confirmed drunkard. Let no drunkard be the father of her children." She attacked the religious establishment, calling for women to donate their money to the poor instead of to the "education of young men for the ministry, for the building up a theological aristocracy and gorgeous temples to the unknown God."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: At the organization's convention the following year, conservatives voted Stanton out as president, whereupon she and Anthony resigned from the organization. Temperance was not a significant reform activity for Stanton afterwards, although she continued to use local temperance societies in the early 1850s as conduits for advocating women's rights. She regularly wrote articles for "The Lily", a monthly temperance newspaper that she helped transform into one that reported news of the women's rights movement. She also wrote for The Una, a women's rights periodical edited by Paulina Wright Davis, and for the New York Tribune, a daily newspaper edited by Horace Greeley.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The status of married women at that time was in part set by English common law which for centuries had set the doctrine of coverture in local courts. It held wives were under the protection and control of their husbands. In the words of William Blackstone's 1769 book "Commentaries on the Laws of England ": "By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage." The husband of a married woman became the owner of any property she brought into a marriage. She could not sign contracts, operate a business in her own name, or retain custody of their children in the event of a divorce. In practice some American courts followed the common law. Some Southern states like Texas and Florida provided more equality for women. Across the country state legislatures were taking control away from common law traditions by passing legislation.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1836, the New York legislature began considering a Married Women's Property Act, with women's rights advocate Ernestine Rose an early supporter who circulated petitions in its favor. Stanton's father supported this reform. Having no sons to pass his considerable wealth to, he was faced with the prospect of having it eventually pass to the control of his daughters' husbands. Stanton circulated petitions and lobbied legislators in favor of the proposed law as early as 1843.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The law eventually passed in 1848. It allowed a married woman to retain the property that she possessed before the marriage or acquired during the marriage, and it protected her property from her husband's creditors. Enacted shortly before the Seneca Falls Convention, it strengthened the women's rights movement by increasing the ability of women to act independently. By weakening the traditional belief that husbands spoke for their wives, it assisted many of the reforms that Stanton championed, such as the right of women to speak in public and to vote.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1853, Susan B. Anthony organized a petition campaign in New York state for an improved property rights law for married women.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: As part of the presentation of these petitions to the legislature, Stanton spoke in 1854 to a joint session of the Judiciary Committee, arguing that voting rights were needed to enable women to protect their newly won property rights. In 1860, Stanton spoke again to the Judiciary Committee, this time before a large audience in the assembly chamber, arguing that women's suffrage was the only real protection for married women, their children and their material assets. She pointed to similarities in the legal status of woman and slaves, saying, "The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man." The legislature passed the improved law in 1860.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1851, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Stanton's cousin, brought a new style of dress to the upstate New York area. Unlike traditional floor-length dresses, it consisted of pantaloons worn under a knee-length dress. Amelia Bloomer, Stanton's friend and neighbor, publicized the attire in "The Lily", a monthly magazine that she published. Thereafter it was popularly known as the "Bloomer" dress, or just "Bloomers." It was soon adopted by many female reform activists despite harsh ridicule from traditionalists, who considered the idea of women wearing any sort of trousers as a threat to the social order. To Stanton, it solved the problem of climbing stairs with a baby in one hand, a candle in the other, and somehow also lifting the skirt of a long dress to avoid tripping. Stanton wore "Bloomers" for two years, abandoning the attire only after it became clear that the controversy it created was distracting people from the campaign for women's rights. Other women's rights activists eventually did the same.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton had already antagonized traditionalists in 1852 at the women's temperance convention by advocating a woman's right to divorce a drunken husband. In an hour-long speech at the Tenth National Women's Rights Convention in 1860, she went further, generating a heated debate that took up an entire session. She cited tragic examples of unhealthy marriages, suggesting that some marriages amounted to "legalized prostitution." She challenged both the sentimental and the religious views of marriage, defining marriage as a civil contract subject to the same restrictions of any other contract. If a marriage did not produce the expected happiness, she said, then it would be a duty to end it.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Strong opposition to her speech was voiced in the ensuing discussion. Abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips, arguing that divorce was not a women's rights issue because it affected both women and men equally, said the subject was out of order and tried unsuccessfully to have it removed from the record.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In later years on the lecture circuit, Stanton's speech on divorce was one of her most popular, drawing audiences of up to 1200 people.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In an 1890 essay entitled "Divorce versus Domestic Warfare," Stanton opposed calls by some women activists for stricter divorce laws, saying, "The rapidly increasing number of divorces, far from showing a lower state of morals, proves exactly the reverse. Woman is in a transition period from slavery to freedom, and she will not accept the conditions and married life that she has heretofore meekly endured."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1860 Stanton published a pamphlet called "The Slaves Appeal" written from what she imagined to be the viewpoint of a female slave.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The fictional speaker uses vivid religious language ("Men and women of New York, the God of thunder speaks through you") that expresses religious views very different from those that Stanton herself held. The speaker describes the horrors of slavery, saying, "The trembling girl for whom thou didst pay a price but yesterday in a New Orleans market, is not thy lawful wife. Foul and damning, both to the master and the slave, is this wholesale violation of the immutable laws of God." The pamphlet called for defiance of the Federal Fugitive Slave Act, and it included petitions to be used for opposing the practice of hunting escaped slaves.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1861, Anthony organized a tour of abolitionist lecturers in upstate New York that included Stanton and several other speakers. The tour began in January just after South Carolina had seceded from the union but before other states had seceded and before the outbreak of war. In her speech, Stanton said that South Carolina was like a willful son whose behavior jeopardized the whole family and that the best course of action was to let it secede. The lecture meetings were repeatedly disrupted by mobs operating under the belief that abolitionist activity was causing southern states to secede. Stanton was not able to participate some of the lectures because she had to return home to her children. At her husband's urging, she left the lecture tour because of the persistent threat of violence.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1863, Anthony moved into the Stantons' house in New York City and the two women began organizing the Women's Loyal National League to campaign for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would abolish slavery. Stanton became president of the new organization and Anthony was secretary.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: It was the first national women's political organization in the United States. In the largest petition drive in the nation's history up to that time, the League collected nearly 400,000 signatures to abolish slavery, representing approximately one out of every twenty-four adults in the Northern states.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The petition drive significantly assisted the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Although its purpose was the abolition of slavery, the League made it clear that it also stood for political equality for women, approving a resolution at its founding convention that called for equal rights for all citizens regardless of race or sex. The League indirectly advanced the cause of women's rights in several ways. Stanton pointedly reminded the public that petitioning was the only political tool available to women at a time when only men were allowed to vote.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The success of the League's petition drive demonstrated the value of formal organization to the women's movement, which had traditionally resisted being anything other than loosely organized up to that point.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Its 5000 members constituted a widespread network of women activists who gained experience that helped create a pool of talent for future forms of social activism, including suffrage. Stanton and Anthony emerged from this endeavor with significant national reputations.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: After the Civil War, Stanton and Anthony became alarmed at reports that the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would provide citizenship for African Americans, would also for the first time introduce the word "male" into the constitution. Stanton said, "if that word 'male' be inserted, it will take us a century at least to get it out."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Organizing opposition to this development required preparation because the women's movement had become largely inactive during the Civil War. In January 1866, Stanton and Anthony sent out petitions calling for a constitutional amendment providing for women's suffrage, with Stanton's name at the top of the list of signatures.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton and Anthony organized the Eleventh National Women's Rights Convention in May 1866, the first since the Civil War began.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The convention voted to transform itself into the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), whose purpose was to campaign for the equal rights of all citizens regardless of race or sex, especially the right of suffrage. Stanton was offered the post of president but declined in a favor of Lucretia Mott. Other officers included Stanton as first vice president, Anthony as a corresponding secretary, Frederick Douglass as a vice president, and Lucy Stone as a member of the executive committee. Stanton provided hospitality for some of the attendees at this convention. Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and women's rights activist who had formerly been enslaved, stayed at Stanton's house as, of course, did Anthony.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Leading abolitionists opposed the AERA's drive for universal suffrage. Horace Greeley, a prominent newspaper editor, told Anthony and Stanton, "This is a critical period for the Republican Party and the life of our Nation... I conjure you to remember that this is 'the negro's hour.'" Abolitionist leaders Wendell Phillips and Theodore Tilton arranged a meeting with Stanton and Anthony, trying to convince them that the time had not yet come for women's suffrage, that they should campaign for voting rights for black men only, not for all African Americans and all women. The two women rejected this guidance and continued to work for universal suffrage.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1866, Stanton declared herself a candidate for Congress, the first woman to do so. She said that although she could not vote, there was nothing in the Constitution to prevent her from running for Congress. Running as an independent against both the Democrat and Republican candidates, she received only 24 votes. Her campaign was noted by newspapers as far away as New Orleans.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1867, the AERA campaigned in Kansas for referendums that would enfranchise both African Americans and women. Wendell Phillips, who opposed mixing those two causes, blocked the funding that the AERA had expected for their campaign.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Anthony and Stanton created a storm of controversy by accepting help during the last days of the campaign from George Francis Train, a wealthy businessman who supported women's rights. Train antagonized many activists by attacking the Republican Party and openly disparaging the integrity and intelligence of African Americans.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: There is reason to believe that Stanton and Anthony hoped to draw the volatile Train away from his cruder forms of racism, and that he had actually begun to do so. In any case, Stanton said she would accept support from the devil himself if he supported women's suffrage.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: After the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, a sharp dispute erupted within the AERA over the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would prohibit the denial of suffrage because of race. Stanton and Anthony opposed the amendment, which would have the effect of enfranchising black men, insisting that all women and all African Americans should be enfranchised at the same time. Stanton argued in the pages of "The Revolution" that by effectively enfranchising all men while excluding all women, the amendment would create an "aristocracy of sex," giving constitutional authority to the idea that men were superior to women.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Lucy Stone, who was emerging as a leader of those who were opposed to Stanton and Anthony, argued that suffrage for women would be more beneficial to the country than suffrage for black men but supported the amendment, saying, "I will be thankful in my soul if "any" body can get out of the terrible pit."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: During the debate over the Fifteenth Amendment, Stanton wrote articles for "The Revolution" with language that was elitist and racially condescending.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: She believed that a long process of education would be needed before many of the former slaves and immigrant workers would be able to participate meaningfully as voters.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton wrote, "American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood to make laws for you and your daughters ... demand that women too shall be represented in government."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In another article, Stanton objected to laws being made for women by "Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung who do not know the difference between a Monarchy and a Republic."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: She also used the term "Sambo" on other occasions, drawing a rebuke from her old friend Frederick Douglass.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Douglass strongly supported women's suffrage but said that suffrage for African Americans was a more urgent issue, literally a matter of life and death. He said that white women already exerted a positive influence on government through the voting power of their husbands, fathers and brothers, and that it "does not seem generous" for Anthony and Stanton to insist that black men should not achieve suffrage unless women achieved it at the same time.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Sojourner Truth, on the other hand, supported Stanton's position, saying, "if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Early in 1869, Stanton called for a Sixteenth Amendment that would provide suffrage for women, saying, "The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition … in the dethronement of woman we have let loose the elements of violence and ruin that she only has the power to curb."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The AERA increasingly divided into two wings, each advocating universal suffrage but with different approaches. One wing, whose leading figure was Lucy Stone, was willing for black men to achieve suffrage first and wanted to maintain close ties with the Republican Party and the abolitionist movement. The other, whose leading figures were Stanton and Anthony, insisted that all women and all African Americans should be enfranchised at the same time and worked toward a women's movement that would no longer be tied to the Republican Party or be financially dependent on abolitionists. The AERA effectively dissolved after an acrimonious meeting in May 1869, and two competing woman suffrage organizations were created in its aftermath.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In the words of one of Stanton's biographers, one consequence of the split for Stanton was that, "Old friends became either enemies, like Lucy Stone, or wary associates, as in the case of Frederick Douglass."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1868, Anthony and Stanton began publishing a sixteen-page weekly newspaper called "The Revolution" in New York City. Stanton was co-editor along with Parker Pillsbury, an experienced editor who was an abolitionist and a supporter of women's rights. Anthony, the owner, managed the business aspects of the paper. Initial funding was provided by George Francis Train, the controversial businessman who supported women's rights but who alienated many activists with his political and racial views. The newspaper focused primarily on women's rights, especially suffrage for women, but it also covered topics such as politics, the labor movement and finance. One of its stated goals was to provide a forum in which women could exchange opinions on key issues.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Sisters Harriet Beecher Stowe and Isabella Beecher Hooker offered to provide funding for the newspaper if its name was changed to something less inflammatory, but Stanton declined their offer, strongly favoring its existing name.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Their goal was to grow "The Revolution" into a daily paper with its own printing press, all owned and operated by women. The funding that Train had arranged for the newspaper, however, was less than expected. Moreover, Train sailed for England after "The Revolution" published its first issue and was soon jailed for supporting Irish independence.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Train's financial support eventually disappeared entirely. After twenty-nine months, mounting debts forced the transfer of the paper to a wealthy women's rights activist who gave it a less radical tone.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Despite the relatively short time it was in their hands, "The Revolution" gave Stanton and Anthony a means for expressing their views during the developing split within the women's movement. It also helped them promote their wing of the movement, which eventually became a separate organization.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton refused to take responsibility for the $10,000 debt the newspaper had accumulated, saying she had children to support. Anthony, who had less money than Stanton, took responsibility for the debt, repaying it over a six-year period through paid speaking tours.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In May 1869, two days after the final AERA convention, Stanton, Anthony and others formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), with Stanton as president. Six months later, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and others formed the rival American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which was larger and better funded. The immediate cause for the split in the women's suffrage movement was the proposed Fifteenth Amendment, but the two organizations had other differences as well. The NWSA was politically independent while the AWSA aimed for close ties with the Republican Party, hoping that ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment would lead to Republican support for women's suffrage. The NWSA focused primarily on winning suffrage at the national level while the AWSA pursued a state-by-state strategy. The NWSA initially worked on a wider range of women's issues than the AWSA, including divorce reform and equal pay for women.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: As the new organization was being formed, Stanton proposed to limit its membership to women, but her proposal was not accepted. In practice, however, the overwhelming majority of its members and officers were women.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton disliked many aspects of organizational work because it interfered with her ability to study, think, and write. She begged Anthony, without success, to arrange the NWSA's first convention so that she herself would not need to attend. For the rest of her life, Stanton attended conventions only reluctantly if at all, wanting to maintain the freedom to express her opinions without worrying about who in the organization might be offended.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Of the fifteen NWSA meetings between 1870 and 1879, Stanton presided at four and was present at only one other, leaving Anthony effectively in charge of the organization.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1869 Francis and Virginia Minor, husband and wife suffragists from Missouri, developed a strategy based on the idea that the U.S. Constitution implicitly enfranchised women. It relied heavily on the Fourteenth Amendment, which says, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States … nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." In 1871 the NWSA officially adopted what had become known as the New Departure strategy, encouraging women to attempt to vote and to file lawsuits if denied that right. Soon hundreds of women tried to vote in dozens of localities. Susan B. Anthony actually succeeded in voting in 1872, for which she was arrested and found guilty in a widely publicized trial. In 1880, Stanton also tried to vote. When the election officials refused to let her place her ballot in the box, she threw it at them. When the Supreme Court ruled in 1875 in "Minor v. Happersett" that "the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone," the NWSA decided to pursue the far more difficult strategy of campaigning for a constitutional amendment that would guarantee voting rights for women.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1878, Stanton and Anthony convinced Senator Aaron A. Sargent to introduce into Congress a women's suffrage amendment that, more than forty years later, would be ratified as the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Its text is identical to that of the Fifteenth Amendment except that it prohibits the denial of suffrage because of sex rather than "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton traveled with her daughter Harriet to Europe in May 1882 and did not return for a year and a half. Already a public figure of some prominence in Europe, she gave several speeches there and wrote reports for American newspapers. She visited her son Theodore in France, where she met her first grandchild, and traveled to England for Harriet's marriage to an Englishman. After Anthony joined her in England in March 1883, they traveled together to meet with leaders of European women's movements, laying the groundwork for an international women's organization. Stanton and Anthony returned to the U.S. together in November 1883. Hosted by the NWSA, delegates from fifty-three women's organizations in nine countries met in Washington in 1888 to form the organization that Stanton and Anthony had been working toward, the International Council of Women (ICW), which is still active.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton traveled again to Europe in October 1886, visiting her children in France and England. She returned to the U.S. in March 1888 barely in time to deliver a major speech at the founding meeting of the ICW. When Anthony discovered that Stanton had not yet written her speech, she insisted that Stanton stay in her hotel room until she had written it, and she placed a younger colleague outside her door to make sure she did so.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton later teased Anthony, saying, "Well, as all women are supposed to be under the thumb of some man, I prefer a tyrant of my own sex, so I shall not deny the patent fact of my subjection."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The convention succeeded in bring increased publicity and respectability to the women's movement, especially when President Grover Cleveland honored the delegates by inviting them to a reception at the White House.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Despite her record of racially insensitive remarks and occasional appeals to the racial prejudices of white people, Stanton applauded the marriage in 1884 of her friend Frederick Douglass to Helen Pitts, a white woman, a marriage that enraged racists. Stanton wrote Douglass a warm letter of congratulation, to which Douglass responded that he had been sure that she would be happy for him. When Anthony realized that Stanton was planning to publish her letter, she convinced her not to do so, wanting to avoid associating women's suffrage with an unrelated and divisive issue.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1876, Anthony moved into Stanton's house in New Jersey to begin working with Stanton on the "History of Woman Suffrage". She brought with her several trunks and boxes of letters, newspaper clippings, and other documents. Originally envisioned as a modest publication that could be produced quickly, the history evolved into a six-volume work of more than 5700 pages written over a period of 41 years.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The first three volumes, which cover the movement up to 1885, were produced by Stanton, Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Anthony handled the production details and the correspondence with contributors. Stanton wrote most of the first three volumes, with Gage writing three chapters of the first volume and Stanton writing the rest. Gage was forced to abandon the project afterwards because of the illness of her husband. After Stanton's death, Anthony published Volume 4 with the help of Ida Husted Harper. After Anthony's death, Harper completed the last two volumes, which brought the history up to 1920.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton and Anthony encouraged their rival Lucy Stone to assist with the work, or at least to send material that could be used by someone else to write the history of her wing of the movement, but she refused to cooperate in any way. Stanton's daughter Harriot Stanton Blatch, who had returned from Europe to assist with the editing, insisted that the history would not be taken seriously if Stone and the AWSA were not included. She herself wrote an 120-page chapter on Stone and the AWSA, which appears in Volume 2.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The "History of Woman Suffrage" preserves an enormous amount of material that might have been lost forever. Written by leaders of one wing of the divided women's movement it does not, however, give a balanced view of events where their rivals are concerned. It overstates the role of Stanton and Anthony, and it understates or ignores the roles of Stone and other activists who did not fit into the historical narrative they had developed. Because it was for years the main source of documentation about the suffrage movement, historians have had to uncover other sources to provide a more balanced view.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton worked as a lecturer for the New York bureau of the Redpath Lyceum from late 1869 until 1879. This organization was part of the Lyceum movement, which arranged for speakers and entertainers to tour the country, often visiting small communities where educational opportunities and theaters were scarce. For ten years, Stanton traveled eight months of the year on the lecture circuit, usually delivering one lecture per day, two on Sundays. She also arranged smaller meetings with local women who were interested in women's rights. Traveling was sometimes difficult. One year, when deep snow closed the railroads, Stanton hired a sleigh and kept going, bundled in furs to protect against freezing weather.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: During 1871, she and Anthony traveled together for three months through several western states, eventually arriving in California.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Her most popular lecture, "Our Girls," urged young women to be independent and to seek self-fulfillment. In "The Antagonism of Sex," she addressed the question of women's rights with a special fervor. Other popular lectures were "Our Boys," "Co-education," "Marriage and Divorce" and "The Subjugation of Women." On Sundays she would often speak on "Famous Women in the Bible" and "The Bible and Women's Rights."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Her earnings were impressive. During her first three months on the road, Stanton reported, she cleared "$2000 above all expenses … besides stirring women generally up to rebellion." Accounting for inflation, that would be about $ in today's dollars. Because her husband's income had always been erratic and he had invested it badly, the money she earned was welcome, especially with most of their children either in college or soon to begin.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: After 15 years in Seneca Falls, Stanton moved to New York City in 1862 when her husband secured the position of deputy collector for the Port of New York. Their son Neil, who worked for Henry as his clerk, was caught taking bribes, causing both father and son to lose their jobs. Henry worked intermittently afterwards as a journalist and a lawyer.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: When her father died in 1859, Stanton received an inheritance worth an estimated $50,000, or about $ in today's dollars. In 1868, she bought a substantial country house near Tenafly, New Jersey, an hour's ride by train from New York City. The Stanton house in Tenafly is now a National Historic Landmark. Henry remained in the city in a rented apartment. Aside from visits, she and Henry afterwards mostly lived apart.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Six of the seven Stanton children graduated from college. Colleges were closed to women when Stanton sought higher education, but both of her daughters were educated at Vassar College. Because graduate studies were not yet available to women in the U.S., Harriet enrolled in a master's program in France, which she abandoned after she became engaged to be married. Harriet earned a master's degree from Vassar at the age of 35.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: After 1884, Henry began to spend more time at Tenafly. In 1885, just before his 80th birthday, he published a short autobiography called "Random Recollections". In it, he said that he had married the daughter of the famous Judge Cady, but he did not provide her name. In the third edition of his book, he mentioned his wife by name a single time. He died in 1887 while she was in England visiting their daughter.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870, removing much of the original reason for the split in the women's suffrage movement. As early as 1875, Anthony began urging the NWSA to focus more tightly on women's suffrage instead of a variety of women's issues, which brought it closer to the AWSA's approach. The rivalry between the two organizations remained bitter, however, as the AWSA began to decline in strength during the 1880s.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In the late 1880s, Alice Stone Blackwell, daughter of AWSA leader Lucy Stone, began working to heal the breach among the older generation of leaders. Anthony warily cooperated with this effort, but Stanton did not, disappointed that both organizations wanted to focus almost exclusively on suffrage. She wrote to a friend that, "Lucy & Susan alike see suffrage only. They do not see women's religious & social bondage, neither do the young women in either association, hence they may as well combine."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1890, the two organizations merged as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). At Anthony's insistence, Stanton accepted its presidency despite her unease at the direction of the new organization. In her speech at the founding convention, she urged it to work on a broad range of women's issues and called for it to include all races, creeds and classes, including "Mormon, Indian and black women."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The day after she was elected president, Stanton sailed to her daughter's home in England, where she stayed for eighteen months, leaving Anthony effectively in charge. When Stanton declined reelection to the presidency at the 1892 convention, Anthony was elected to that post.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1892, Stanton delivered the speech that became known as "The Solitude of Self" three different times in as many days, twice to Congressional committees and once as her final address to the NAWSA.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: She considered it her best speech, and many others agreed. Lucy Stone printed it in its entirety in the Woman's Journal in the space where her own speech normally would have appeared. In pursuit of her lifelong quest to overturn the belief that women were lesser beings than men and therefore not suited for independence, Stanton said in this speech that women must develop themselves, acquiring an education and nourishing an inner strength, a belief in themselves. Self-sovereignty was the essential element in a woman's life, not her role as daughter, wife or mother. Stanton said, "no matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton said she had been terrified as a child by a minister's talk of damnation, but, after overcoming those fears with the help of her father and brother-in-law, had rejected that type of religion entirely. As an adult, her religious views continued to evolve. While living in Boston in the 1840s, she was attracted to the preaching of Theodore Parker, who, like her cousin Gerritt Smith, was a member of the Secret Six, a group of men who financed John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in an effort to spark an armed slave rebellion. Parker was a transcendentalist and a prominent Unitarian minister who taught that the "Bible" need not be taken literally, that God need not be envisioned as a male, and that individual men and women had the ability to determine religious truth for themselves.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In the Declaration of Sentiments written for the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, Stanton listed a series of grievances against males who, among other things, excluded women from the ministry and other leading roles in religion. In one of those grievances, Stanton said that man "has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: This was the only grievance that was not a matter of fact (such as exclusion of women from colleges, from the right to vote, etc.), but one of belief, one that challenged a fundamental basis of authority and autonomy.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The years after the Civil War saw a significant increase in the variety of women's social reform organizations and the number of activists in them.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton was uneasy about the belief held by many of these activists that government should enforce Christian ethics through such actions as teaching the "Bible" in public schools and strengthening Sunday closing laws.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In her speech at the 1890 unity convention that established the NAWSA, Stanton said, "I hope this convention will declare that the Woman Suffrage Association is opposed to all Union of Church and State and pledges itself … to maintain the secular nature of our government.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1895, Stanton published "The Woman's Bible", a provocative examination of the "Bible" that questioned its status as the word of God and attacked the way it was being used to relegate women to an inferior status. Stanton wrote most of it, with the assistance of several other women, including Matilda Joslyn Gage, who had assisted with the History of Woman Suffrage. In it, Stanton methodically worked her way through the "Bible", quoting selected passages and commenting on them, often sarcastically. A best-seller, with seven printings in six months, it was translated into several languages. A second volume was published in 1898.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The book created a storm of controversy that affected the entire women's rights movement. Stanton could not have been surprised, having earlier told an acquaintance, "Well, if we who do see the absurdities of the old superstitions never unveil them to others, how is the world to make any progress in the theologies? I am in the sunset of life, and I feel it to be my special mission to tell people what they are not prepared to hear."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The process of critically examining the text of the "Bible", known as historical criticism, was already an established practice in scholarly circles. What Stanton did that was new was to scrutinize the "Bible" from a woman's point of view, basing her findings on the proposition that much of its text reflected not the word of God but prejudice against women during a less civilized age.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In her book, Stanton explicitly denied much of what was central to traditional Christianity, saying, "I do not believe that any man ever saw or talked with God, I do not believe that God inspired the Mosaic code, or told the historians what they say he did about woman, for all the religions on the face of the earth degrade her, and so long as woman accepts the position that they assign her, her emancipation is impossible." In the book's closing words, Stanton expressed the hope for reconstructing "a more rational religion for the nineteenth century, and thus escape all the perplexities of the Jewish mythology as of no more importance than those of the Greek, Persian, and Egyptian."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: At the 1896 NAWSA convention, Rachel Foster Avery, a rising young leader, harshly attacked "The Woman's Bible", calling it a "volume with a pretentious title … without either scholarship or literary merit."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Avery introduced a resolution to distance the organization from Stanton's book. Despite Anthony's strong objection that such a move was unnecessary and hurtful, the resolution passed by a vote of 53 to 41. Stanton told Anthony that she should resign from her leadership post in protest, but Anthony refused.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: The incident led many of the younger suffrage leaders to hold Stanton in low regard for the rest of her life.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: When Stanton returned from her final trip to Europe in 1891, she moved in with two of her unmarried children who shared a home in New York City.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: She increased her advocacy of "educated suffrage," something she had long promoted. In 1894, she debated William Lloyd Garrison Jr. on this issue in the pages of "Woman's Journal". Her daughter Harriot Stanton Blatch, who was then active in the women's suffrage movement in Britain and would later be a leading figure in the U.S. movement, was disturbed by the views that Stanton expressed during this debate. She published a critique of her mother's views, saying there were many people who had not enjoyed the opportunity to acquire an education and yet were intelligent and accomplished citizens who deserved the right to vote.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In a letter to the 1902 NAWSA convention, Stanton continued her campaign, calling for "a constitutional amendment requiring an educational qualification" and saying that "everyone who votes should read and write the English language intelligently."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In her later years, Stanton became interested in efforts to create cooperative communities and workplaces. She was also attracted to various forms of political radicalism, applauding the Populist movement and identifying herself with socialism, especially Fabianism, a gradualist form of democratic socialism.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1898, Stanton published her memoirs, "Eighty Years and More", in which she presented the image of herself by which she wished to be remembered. In it, she minimized political and personal conflicts and omitted any discussion of the split in the women's movement. Largely dealing with political topics, the memoir barely mentions her mother, husband or children.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Despite some degree of friction between Stanton and Anthony in their later years, on the dedication page Stanton said, "I dedicate this volume to Susan B. Anthony, my steadfast friend for half a century."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton continued to write articles prolifically for a variety of publications right up until she died.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton died in New York City on October 26, 1902, 18 years before women achieved the right to vote in the United States via the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The medical report said the cause of death was heart failure. According to her daughter Harriet, she had developed breathing problems that had begun to interfere with her work. The day before she died, Stanton told her doctor, a woman, to give her something to speed her death if the problem could not be cured.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton had signed a document two years earlier directing that her brain was to be donated to Cornell University for scientific study after her death, but her wishes in that regard were not carried out. She was interred beside her husband in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: After Stanton's death, Susan B. Anthony wrote to a friend: "Oh, this awful hush! It seems impossible that voice is stilled which I have loved to hear for fifty years. Always I have felt I must have Mrs. Stanton's opinion of things before I knew where I stood myself. I am all at sea."


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Even after her death, foes of women's suffrage continued to use Stanton's more unorthodox statements to promote opposition to ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which became law in 1920. Younger women in the suffrage movement responded by belittling Stanton and glorifying Anthony. In 1923, Alice Paul, leader of the National Women's Party, introduced the proposed Equal Rights Amendment in Seneca Falls on the 75th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention. The planned ceremony and printed program made no mention of Stanton, the primary force behind the convention. One of the speakers was Stanton's daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, who insisted on paying tribute to her mother's role. Aside from a collection of her letters published by her children, no significant book about Stanton was written until a full-length biography was published in 1940 with the assistance of her daughter. Stanton began E to regain recognition for her role in the women's rights movement with the rise of the new feminist movement in the 1960s and the establishment of academic women's history programs.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: Stanton is commemorated, along with Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony, in the 1921 sculpture "Portrait Monument" by Adelaide Johnson in the United States Capitol. Placed for years in the crypt of the capitol building, it was moved in 1997 to a more prominent location in the U.S. Capitol rotunda.


title: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

text: In 1965, the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House in Seneca Falls was declared a National Historic Landmark. It is now part of the Women's Rights National Historical Park.