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Biography of: Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Author: Michelle Zichy

Timeline
Leadership Style
Political Philosophy

Timeline

  • 1815 Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in Johnstown, New York.
  • 1830 she graduated from Johnstown Academy and went on to attend the Troy Female Seminary in New York
  • 1840 She married Henry Stanton against her father's wishes.
  • March 1840 The World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London rejects the credentials of American delegate Lucretia Mott and other female American delegates. This experience prompts Mott and Stanton to take up the cause of women's rights.
  • July 19 1848 The first women's rights convention in the United States is held in Seneca Falls, New York. The idea for the convention arises spontaneously out of a discussion among Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and three other women over tea. Many participants sign a "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions" that outlines the main issues and goals for the emerging women's movement. Thereafter, women's rights meetings are held on a regular basis.
  • 1849 Stanton began writing for Amelia Bloomer's temperance newspaper the Lily. Already she was known for her elegant and forceful articulation of women's need for individual rights. The leading antislavery journals, which reported woman's rights activism with favor, published her writings as the movement spread to other states.
  • 1851 Stanton met Susan B. Anthony, whose organizing abilities complemented Stanton's more philosophical focus.
  • 1866 Stanton and Anthony form the American Equal Rights Association, an organization for white and black women and men dedicated to the goal of universal suffrage.
  • 1869 Stanton and Anthony form the more radical, New York-based National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), with Stanton as president. Stanton also began publishing the Revolution, a woman's rights newspaper. She refused to focus on suffrage alone, believing it was only a part of a greater program of social, economic, and political reform. Stanton sought to change not only the legal status on women but also the way society viewed the very role of women. Her ideas were progressive. She protested the sexual abuse of women and championed the idea of husbands and wives equally caring for their children. She also lobbied to have men and women educated together.
  • 1881 Stanton and Anthony published the first volume of the History of Woman Suffrage, a collection of writings about the movement's struggle. Two more volumes were published in the next five years.
  • 1890 Stanton and Anthony united the two major women's groups into the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
  • 1891 Stanton resigned as NAWSA president.
  • 1895 Although Stanton was elected the first president, her radical stance on religion threatened to break the association apart. She believed organized religion promoted superstition and hostility to women. In 1895 she published The Women's Bible, a study of sexism in the Old Testament.
  • 1902 Stanton dies at the age of 87.
  • 1920 The 19th amendment is adopted by Congress, which finally gave women the right to vote, but did little to alter their lives. Change began only when Stanton's far-reaching ideas of equality were finally recognized in the last half of the 20th century.

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Leadership Style

One quality a leader possesses is organization skills. Stanton was the president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, which proves she was able to make good decisions based on her status. An organizer must have imagination to create new ideas, tactics, and organizational structures. Stanton was an excellent writer and came up with ideas for flyers, articles and speeches. Since Stanton was the president of NWSA she was a good decision-maker and proved that each time her voice was heard about issues she strongly believed in. She was a symbol of this organization and continues to get recognized even after her death 98 years ago. Stanton possessed an inspiring personality, which gave her the charisma to be a great leader. She was also tactful and efficient which proved she was pragmatic.

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Political Philosophy

Elizabeth Cady Stanton could be described as both innovational and progressive. Innovative argument falls between the Radical and Liberal spokes of the Rossiter model. It is characterized by a nagging dissatisfaction with the existing order and a preference for experimental change. There is an almost equal aversion to violence and the status quo. Stanton's radical stance on religion threatened to break the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Stanton argued the existence of an androgynous God and showed how male ministers utilized the Bible to their own advantage. She claimed that the standing of the woman in the Bible projected the bias of male authors. Stanton once said, "We have had hearing before congress for 18 years steadily, good reports, votes, but no action. I am dismayed and disgusted, and feel like making an attack on some new quarter of the enemy's domain. Our politicians are calm and complacent under our fire but the clergy jump round…like parched peas on a hot shovel." Soon afterwards, Stanton was branded a schismatic. The suffragists were angry; they believed that The Woman's Bible would injure any chance of success in the future.

Progressive argument is a clearly "systematic" approach to political argument. Unlike insurgent arguments that seek to replace the established means for reconciling differences or innovative arguments that believe in the underlying creed but objects to the ways that the society practices that creed, progressive argument takes established procedures as givens. The philosophies of Liberalism and Conservatism agree that change of some sort is inevitable and the established system for resolving disagreements should be used. Stanton's role was that of thinker and writer. She worked unremittingly for women's movement in all its phases, including divorce reform, birth control, the challenge to religious assumptions which opposed legal rights for women. She once said "To me, there was no question so important as the emancipation of women from the dogmas of the past, political, religious, and social. It struck me as very remarkable that abolitionists, who felt so keenly the wrongs of the slave, should be so oblivious to the equal wrongs of their own mothers, wives, and sisters, when, according to the common law, both classes occupied a similar legal status." Stanton contributed to the woman's rights movement principally from home, where she combined writing the most influential arguments for human equality with raising children and running a household.

Works Cited

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