What is viewed to be a hero? A hero is someone who puts his or her life at risk, in order to help those in need. Someone who is fearless into coming out of their own shadow and not knowing what the outcome will be. A hero such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had the bravery and courage to step up for what was right. Stanton was never afraid to speak up because she had her reasons to debate about certain situations and was dedicated towards her goal. Elizabeth Cady Stanton ended up being an important key into the development of American society as she assumed an imperative job in the Seneca Falls Convention and made a difference in the Women’s Rights movement.
Born in Johnstown, New York, Stanton was one of four children, however there were eleven but didn’t make it to adulthood. When the only son Eleazer Cady passed away, Stanton’s father, Daniel Cady, was in shock. She often heard her father mentioning that “if only you were a boy.” Meaning that if she was a boy, she would have more privileges. This influenced her to prove that she can be everything that her brother was. This influenced her because men had the right according to gender and they were treated highly than women were. This influenced her to be “destined to mold my character a new.” This also contributed to her fighting for Women’s rights.
Stanton utilized this as inspiration and exceeded expectations at Johnstown Academy and at Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary School in New York. All through her education began at an early age and with the guidance from Daniel Cady, who was a lawyer and judge, demonstrated her the desires for what it was extremely similar to.
In order for Stanton to keep thriving for her chances of political reforms, cousin, Gerrit Smith, introduced her to the movement. The women’s movement of the 1920s attempted to give women the privilege to cast a ballot broadly, in this manner permitting them more political equality. Stanton must be independent, as well as the conditions that enabled her to wind up from a housewife to women’s activist instigator. Stanton finally took action, she began and organized what came to be known as the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. “Stanton had been observing and practicing different roles.” Experiences from her childhood such as the expectations and rejections from her father, her very highly background in education, and her introduction to the movement had an impact to her development.
The beginning of a new chapter for the Women’s rights movement was the first meeting held in Seneca Falls, New York. On July 1848, Stanton and other women were interested in keeping focus on the rights of the movement at the Seneca Falls Convention. Stanton demanded that the convention would include the privilege to cast a ballot in the Declaration of Sentiments that she drafted, which was viewed as the focal issue in their development for the following seventy years.
“Stanton as guidance chose the 1776 Declaration of Independence as the model and did most of the actual writing.” It helped Stanton to format the list of grievances, that had an insight towards what the lives of women were like then. Just as how the Declaration of Independence had eighteen grievances against the King of England. There were also eighteen grievances in the Declaration of Sentiments. During the convention, Stanton issued her Declaration of Sentiments, which requested that women have each and every one of the rights and benefits having a place with them as citizens. The Declaration demonstrated that “Men had deprived women of legal rights, employment opportunities, opportunities in education and the right to divorce and to custody of their children.” The Declaration was not acknowledged at first and some considered it to be women who were venturing out of the place planned for them. As a result of the Declaration, different associations supporting women’s rights movements were established and worked together for this cause.
That same year, Stanton flowed petitions all through New York to ask Congress to pass the New York Married Women’s Property Acts. Which represented the right to give women control over their property such as real estate and their personal property. In addition, Stanton collaborated with Susan B. Anthony and together they founded the National Women Suffrage Association in 1869.
During the time of the National Women Suffrage Association, under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, petitions and protests that fought for the equal rights of women began to revolve around Congress. Women’s rights activists wanted to pass new reform laws, however Congress didn’t listen to what they had to offer. They responded, “Senators argued that suffrage was a community right, not an individual one and that the community, though its elected representatives could restrict suffrage in any manner it chose.” At last, these social affairs began to comprehend that with the goal to be successful and being worth important, first their challenge was to fight for the privilege to vote.
Stanton was involved in the making of The Revolution, a weekly newspaper, which the National Women’s Suffrage Association could secure a standing position. “Every issue carried witty, pithy, informative articles that Elizabeth penned on her favorite subjects but above all, the cause of women suffrage.” Stanton issued the first publication of The Revolution and was published on January 8, 1868. These newspapers included a text that Stanton drafted, not only did this newspaper cover the issues of assault, aggressive behavior at home, separation, prostitution and regenerative rights, but it was important to pull in regular working women to the movement by dedicating sections to concerns, for example, discrimination to female laborers.
An opponent association, the American Woman Suffrage Association, trusted that the accomplishment of obtaining the equivalent rights issue could be all effectively accomplished through state-by-state crusades. In 1890 the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association united and became known as the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Throughout the years Women’s Suffrage was the focal point during the movement. “The National American Woman Suffrage Association’s goal was a sixteenth amendment for woman suffrage.” Stanton proceeded with work on The Revolution which included the radical women’s difficulties to obtain female jobs. She wanted to overthrow the patriarchy because they were rejecting them from their gender. The NAWSA represented millions of women, and their system was to push for suffrage at the state level, trusting that state-by-state support would force the government to pass the amendment. The NAWSA facilitated tawdry suffrage marches and held yearly traditions that kept its individuals involved.
After the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment likewise included the primary notice of the difference in gender into the Constitution. However, this amendment included the text that women were still not allowed to vote and own property. “Without the word “male”, the language could be interpreted to include women as citizens and workers.” Unfortunately, women thought that they were considered as citizens. Stanton still believed that women should be incorporated into the amendment for their service to the nation. With the word “male”, Stanton would have to find another way for to enfranchise women.
Stanton was the National American Women Suffrage Association’s president and then once again she was elected and would be its president for many more years until she couldn’t anymore. In 1877, the National American Women Suffrage Association came up with a better plan for this amendment. “A constitutional revision through a sixteenth, women’s suffrage, amendment and mounted a new petition campaign to Congress,” With the assistance from Senator Aaron Sargent, another women’s suffrage supporter, he would introduce the planned-out amendment to Congress.
As a result of the unity between the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association to make the National American Women Suffrage Association was the ratification of the nineteenth amendment, which allowed women the right to vote. Also, which resulted in the end of petitions and protests towards Congress for this goal. The nineteenth amendment assumed a vital job in advancing conceptive rights for women, introducing the right to cast a ballot which increased population with a political motivation and gave women more privileges and opportunities towards life.
By the 1880s, Stanton was 65 years of age and concentrated more on composing as opposed to voyaging and addressing. She drafted three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage in 1881 with the help from Anthony, Susan and Matilda Joslyn Gage. This text describes the events that led up to the right of women to vote. From how it started back in 1848 when the Seneca Falls Convention first occurred, up until in 1920 when women were guaranteed the nineteenth amendment. Stanton recorded the individual and neighborhood activism that manufactured and continued a development for woman’s suffrage.
Alongside various articles regarding the matter of women and religion, Stanton also drafted the Woman’s Bible in 1895, in which she voiced her confidence in a common state and asked women to perceive how religious universality and manly philosophy blocked their odds to accomplish self-power. The text had “commentaries on the scriptures intended to make readers question the theological doctrines derogatory to women.” With regards to her trademark radical independence, Stanton attacks religious conventionality on a political point instead of a scholarly. It was an extraordinary document because of how it addresses its topics which succeeded and changed women’s perspective.
Stanton also composed an autobiography, Eighty Years and More. This distinctive collection of memoirs by one of the first reformers to battle for women suffrage and gives off vivid details of the early battles of American women toward equality. About the extraordinary occasions and work of her life and “in the hope that her lifelong struggle for the rights of women might inspire others to work toward the same goal.’ In the text, Stanton draws attention to her discontent towards how she was not able to speak up for women and showed disappointment because women were not taken seriously. Therefore, to take measures into her own hands, Stanton launched the Women’s rights movement, which led them to be known for their actions.
After the ratification of the nineteenth amendment, it totally changed the American legislative issues towards that time. Women changed how society was running. Before it was a world managed by men and with the assistance from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she changed society and accordingly it gave women another feeling of appreciation. Presently women have a larger number of rights than it was ever conceivable to accomplish. If it were not for Stanton and the choices that she made towards the right of woman, they wouldn’t have gone far and beyond without her.
Cady Stanton passed on October 26, 1902, she was one of the primary people in America to stand tall against the social standards of the nineteenth century and stood up for women starting the Women’s rights development. Her legacy lives on through her efforts to bring social equality for women into a brighter future. Without the commitments of Elizabeth Cady Stanton made, women today might not have been granted the laws that enabled them to begin to speak and represent themselves. Women have incredibly advanced in society and will keep on developing towards enhancement.
This research is relevant because the purpose of this particular research paper was to inform the reader about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and how she was associated in the movement for Women’s rights. With the knowledge and given resources to complete this research, one can learn many things about what this individual had to sacrifice in order to risk her identity to give women a new life.
