Elizabeth Cady Stanton Author
- Gender: Female
- Citizenship: United States
- Born: Nov 12, 1815
- Died: Oct 26, 1902
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early women's rights movement. Her Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the Seneca Falls Convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, is often credited with initiating the first organized women's rights and women's suffrage movements in the United States.
Before Stanton narrowed her political focus almost exclusively to women's rights, she was an active abolitionist with her husband, Henry Brewster Stanton and cousin, Gerrit Smith. Unlike many of those involved in the women's rights movement, Stanton addressed various issues pertaining to women beyond voting rights. Her concerns included women's parental and custody rights, property rights, employment and income rights, divorce, the economic health of the family, and birth control. She was also an outspoken supporter of the 19th-century temperance movement.
After the American Civil War, Stanton's commitment to female suffrage caused a schism in the women's rights movement when she, together with Susan B. Anthony, declined to support passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.
equality
The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation.
women
The best protection any woman can have... is courage.
best & courage
The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstition of the Christian religion.
religion
To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes.
education
The woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother.
mom
The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.
history & women
I shall not grow conservative with age.
age
The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.
women