Untitled Essay Research Paper I was once

Untitled Essay, Research Paper

I was once called the most dangerous woman in America because

I dared to ask for the unthinkable- the right to vote. I challenged my culture’s

basic assumptions about men and women, and dedicated my life to the pursuit

of equal rights for all women. My name is Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

I was born in Johnstown, New York, on the 12th of November,

1815. My father is the prominent attorney and judge Daniel Cady and my mother

is Margaret Livingston Cady. I was born the seventh child and middle daughter.

Although my mother gave birth to eleven children- five boys and six girls-

six of her children died. Only one of my brothers survived to adulthood,

and he died unexpectedly when he was twenty. At ten years old, my childhood

was shadowed by my father’s grief. I can still recall going into the large

darkened parlor to see my brother and finding the casket and my father by

his side, pale and immovable. As he took notice of me, I climbed upon his

knee. He sighed and said, ” Oh my daughter, I wish you were a boy!” I threw

my arms around his neck and replied that I will try my hardest to be all

my brother was.

I was determined to be courageous, to ride horses and

play chess, and study such manly subjects as Latin, Greek, mathematics, and

philosophy. I devoured the books in my father’s extensive law library and

debated the fine points of the law with his clerks. It was while reading

my father’s law books that I first discovered the cruelty of the laws regarding

women, and I resolved to get scissors and snip out every unfair law. But

my father stopped me, explaining that only the legislature could change or

remove them. This was the key moment in my career as a women’s rights

reformer.

As I grew older, my intellectual interests and masculine

activities embarrassed my father. He told me they were inappropriate in a

young lady, especially the daughter of a prominent man. I was educated at

the Johnstown Academy until I was 15, and was always the head of my class,

even in the higher levels of mathematics and language, where I was the only

girl. But when I graduated, and wanted to attend Union College- as my brother

had done- my father would not allow it. It was unseemly, he said, for a woman

to receive a college education, for in 1830 no American college or university

admitted women. Instead, my father enrolled me in Emma Willard’s Female Academy

in Troy, New York. Although I learned a great deal at the academy, I objected

to the principle of single sex education and felt it was artificial and

unnatural. I believed knowledge had no sex.

I graduated in 1833 and returned to my parent’s home,

and this is when I entered the world of reform. While visiting my cousin,

Gerrit Smith (the abolitionist) in Peterboro, New York, I met with all kinds

of reformers. There, too, I met the man I was to marry- Henry Stanton, a

renowned abolitionist speaker and journalist. My marriage to Henry, who was

10 years older than me, marked an important turning point in my life, especially

since my father objected to my choice. He strongly disagreed with Henry’s

radical politics, and tried to discourage me, but I was stubborn. So, on

May 1, 1840, we got married in my parents home in Johnstown. On the wedding

day, we both agreed (although the minister objected) to remove the word “obey”

from my vows. I refused to obey someone with whom I was entering an equal

relationship. We honeymooned in London where Henry combined business with

pleasure and attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention. It was in London

that I met Lucretia Mott, when both of us were banished from the convention

because of our gender. We resolved the keep in touch when we returned to

America, but eight years passed before this happened.

Meanwhile, after Henry and I returned to the United States,

Henry gave up the lecture circuit and studied law with my father to support

our growing family. I had given birth to three sons in four years, and bore

seven children in all, five sons and two daughters. This colored everything

that I did, for I was either pregnant or nursing or both during the formative

years of the women’s movement. One result was that I learned to use my pen

instead of my presence. A second result was that Susan Anthony spent so much

time at our house that the children called her “Aunt Susan.”

After Henry passed the bar, we lived briefly in Boston

before settling permanently at Seneca Falls, New York. From my home in the

small town near the Canadian border, the start of the struggle for women’s

rights began. Lucretia Mott and I organized the first Women’s Rights Convention

in Seneca Falls, along with the draft of the Declaration of Sentiments.

Susan B. Anthony and I grew to be the most intimate of

friends and the closest collaborators in the battle for women’s suffra

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