The American Equal Rights Association ( AERA ) was formed in 1866 in the United States . According to its constitution, its purpose was "to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage , irrespective of race, color or sex." Some of the more prominent reform activists of that time were members, including women and men, blacks and whites.
210-599: The AERA was created by the Eleventh National Women's Rights Convention , which transformed itself into the new organization. Leaders of the women's movement had earlier suggested the creation of a similar equal rights organization through a merger of their movement with the American Anti-Slavery Society , but that organization did not accept their proposal. The AERA conducted two major campaigns during 1867. In New York , which
420-626: A Fourteenth Amendment began circulating that would secure citizenship (but not yet voting rights) for African Americans. Some of the proposals for this amendment would also for the first time introduce the word "male" into the Constitution, which begins with the words "We the People of the United States". Stanton said that "if that word 'male' be inserted, it will take us a century at least to get it out." Stanton, Anthony and Lucy Stone ,
630-464: A "Mrs. Harman" were seen in "male attire" actively passing back and forth between the audience and the stage. Lucy Stone Lucy Stone (August 13, 1818 – October 18, 1893) was an American orator , abolitionist and suffragist who was a vocal advocate for and organizer of promoting rights for women . In 1847, Stone became the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She spoke out for women's rights and against slavery. Stone
840-645: A National Dress Reform Association in February 1856. Her resumption of long skirts drew the condemnation of such dress-reform leaders as Gerrit Smith and Lydia Sayer Hasbrouk , who accused her of sacrificing principle for the sake of pleasing a husband. Stone's anti-slavery work included harsh criticism of churches that refused to condemn slavery. Her own church in West Brookfield, the First Congregational Church of West Brookfield,
1050-691: A call out, via the woman's central committee chaired by Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis, to all the "Loyal Women of the Nation" to meet again in convention in May. Forming the Woman's National Loyal League were Stanton, Anthony, Martha Coffin Wright, Amy Post, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Ernestine Rose, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Lucy Stone, among others. They organized the First Woman's National Loyal League Convention at
1260-425: A committee of arrangements, with Davis and Stone as the committee of correspondence. Davis and Stone asked William Elder, a retired Philadelphia physician, to draw up the convention call while they set about securing signatures to it and lining up speakers. "We need all the women who are accustomed to speak in public – every stick of timber that is sound," Stone wrote to Antoinette Brown, a fellow Oberlin student who
1470-571: A committee to carry out the plan. Stone drafted and printed the appeal, and Brown Blackwell mailed it to twenty-five state legislatures. Indiana and Pennsylvania referred the memorial to select committees, while both Massachusetts and Maine granted hearings. On March 6, 1857, Stone, Wendell Phillips and James Freeman Clarke addressed the Judiciary Committee of the Massachusetts senate, and on March 10, Stone and Phillips addressed
1680-514: A convention in New York City to expand their petitioning efforts and declaring that "as certain rights and duties are common to all moral beings,” they would no longer remain within limits prescribed by "corrupt custom and a perverted application of Scripture." After sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimké began speaking to audiences of men and women, instead of women-only groups, as was acceptable, a state convention of Congregational ministers issued
1890-447: A deacon was expelled from Stone's church for his antislavery activities, which included supporting Kelley by hosting her at his home and driving her to lectures that she gave in the vicinity. When the first vote for expulsion was taken, Stone raised her hand, in his defense. The minister discounted her vote, saying that, though she was a member of the church, she was not a voting member. Like Kelley, she stubbornly raised her hand for each of
2100-523: A drive strong enough to convince the Anti-Slavery Society to accept its goal of universal suffrage rather than suffrage for black men only. The AERA held its first annual meeting in New York City on May 9, 1867. Referring to the growing demand for suffrage for African American men, Lucretia Mott , the AERA's president, said, "woman had a right to be a little jealous of the addition of so large
2310-514: A few weeks before a state convention met to revise the Ohio state constitution. The women's convention sent a communication to the constitutional convention requesting that the new constitution secure the same political and legal rights for women that were guaranteed to men. Stone sent a letter praising their initiative and said, "Massachusetts ought to have taken the lead in the work you are now doing, but if she chooses to linger, let her young sisters of
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#17327867973802520-413: A hindrance to the immediate goal of winning suffrage for African American men. The Kansas campaign ended in disarray and recrimination, creating divisions between those who worked primarily for the rights of African Americans and those who worked primarily for the rights of women, and also creating divisions within the women's movement itself. The AERA continued to hold annual meetings after the failure of
2730-616: A historian of the women's suffrage movement, says this rivalry had far-reaching consequences for the women's movement: "More than a century has passed, and still historians become partisans in the hostilities that their opposition created." In 1890 the NWSA and the AWSA combined to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), with Stanton, Anthony and Stone as its top officers. Anthony
2940-544: A lady of no common abilities, and of uncommon energy in the pursuit of a cherished idea. She is a marked favorite in the Conventions." At Sansom Street Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , over three days October 18–20, 1854, Ernestine Rose was chosen president in spite of her atheism . Susan B. Anthony supported her, saying "every religion – or none – should have an equal right on the platform". Rose spoke out to
3150-501: A large meeting in Boston's Melodeon Hall, while Lucy Stone served as secretary. Stone, Henry C. Wright , William Lloyd Garrison , and Samuel Brooke spoke of the need for such a convention. Garrison, whose name had headed the first woman suffrage petition sent to the Massachusetts legislature the previous year, said, "I conceive that the first thing to be done by the women of this country is to demand their political enfranchisement. Among
3360-576: A letter to Anthony, Stone wrote, "But the negroes are all against us. There has just now left us an ignorant black preacher named Twine, who is very confident that women ought not to vote. These men ought not to be allowed to vote before we do, because they will be just so much more dead weight to lift." By the end of summer the AERA campaign had almost collapsed under the weight of Republican hostility, and its finances were exhausted. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton arrived in September to work on
3570-536: A local businessman from a family of capable women, who had taken an interest in Stone. After that successful meeting, Stone accepted Blackwell's offer to arrange a lecture tour for her in the western states – considered, then, to be those west of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Over the following thirteen weeks, Stone gave over forty lectures in thirteen cities, during which a report to the New York Tribune said she
3780-532: A measure of competence, they sought and received permission to debate each other, before Stone's rhetoric class. The debate attracted a large student audience, as well as attention from the Faculty Board, which, thereupon, formally banned women's oral exercises in coeducational classes. Shortly thereafter, Stone accepted a challenge from a former editor of a county newspaper to a public debate on women's rights, and she soundly defeated him. She, then, submitted
3990-423: A minister. Stone and Brown would eventually marry abolitionist brothers and thus become sisters-in-law. Stone hoped to earn most of her college expenses through teaching in one of the institute's lower departments. But because of its policy against employing first-year students as teachers, the only work Stone could get other than teaching at district schools, during the winter break, was housekeeping chores through
4200-430: A modest income through selling eggs and cheese but was denied any control over that money, sometimes denied money to purchase things Francis considered trivial. Believing she had a right to her own earnings, Hannah sometimes stole coins from his purse or secretly sold a cheese. As a child, Lucy resented instances of what she saw as her father's unfair management of the family's money. But she later came to realize that custom
4410-420: A more practical style she had picked up during the summer after meeting Amelia Bloomer . She spoke to say "The woman who first departs from the routine in which society allows her to move must suffer. Let us bravely bear ridicule and persecution for the sake of the good that will result, and when the world sees that we can accomplish what we undertake, it will acknowledge our right." The Syracuse Weekly Chronicle
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#17327867973804620-472: A newspaper account of how a Connecticut antislavery meeting had denied the right to speak or vote to Abby Kelley , recently hired as an antislavery agent to work in that state. Refusing to relinquish her right, Kelley had defiantly raised her hand every time a vote was taken. "I admire the calm and noble bearing of Abby K," Stone wrote to a brother, "and cannot but wish there were more kindred spirits." Three years later, Stone followed Kelley's example. In 1843,
4830-438: A number of men to the voting class, for the colored men would naturally throw all their strength upon the side of those opposed to woman's enfranchisement." Asked by George T. Downing , an African American, whether she would be willing for the black man to have the vote before woman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton replied, "I would say, no; I would not trust him with all my rights; degraded, oppressed himself, he would be more despotic with
5040-565: A number of other local, regional, and state activist conventions. Stone spoke in front of a number of legislative bodies, to promote laws giving more rights to women. She assisted in establishing the Woman's National Loyal League to help pass the Thirteenth Amendment and thereby abolish slavery, after which she helped form the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which built support for
5250-412: A pastoral letter condemning women's assuming "the place of man as a public reformer" and "itinerat[ing] in the character of public lecturers and teachers." Stone attended the convention as a spectator and was so angered by the letter that she determined, "if ever [I] had anything to say in public, [I] would say it, and all the more, because of that pastoral letter." Stone read Sarah Grimké 's "Letters on
5460-505: A petition for woman suffrage and present it to the House of Lords and Harriet Taylor Mill in 1851 to write The Enfranchisement of Women. Harriet Martineau wrote a letter to Davis in August 1851 to thank her for sending a copy of the proceedings: "I hope you are aware of the interest excited in this country by that Convention, the strongest proof of which is the appearance of an article on
5670-639: A petition to the Faculty Board, signed by most members of her graduating class, asking that women chosen to write graduation essays be permitted to read them, themselves, as men so honored did, instead of having them read by faculty members. When the Faculty Board refused and Stone was elected to write an essay, she declined, saying she could not support a principle that denied women "the privilege of being co-laborers with men in any sphere to which their ability makes them adequate." Stone received her baccalaureate degree from Oberlin College on August 25, 1847, becoming
5880-568: A planning committee was formed in May 1868 to organize a pro-Republican women's suffrage organization in the Boston area that would support the proposal to enfranchise black males first. The New England Woman Suffrage Association was subsequently founded in November 1868. Several participants in new organization were also active in the AERA, including Lucy Stone, Frederick Douglass and the Fosters. Prominent Republican politicians were involved in
6090-654: A promise that became a reality for a brief period, violence and legal maneuvers prevented most African Americans in the South from voting until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.) Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony issued the call for the Eleventh National Women's Rights Convention , the first since the Civil War began, which met on May 10, 1866, in New York City. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper , an African American abolitionist and writer, spoke at
6300-705: A public letter praising Train. Stone and her allies angered Anthony by charging her with misuse of funds, a charge that was later disproved, and by blocking payment of her salary and expenses for her work in Kansas. Opposition to Train was not due solely to his racism. Henry Blackwell, Stone's husband, had just demonstrated that even AERA workers were not automatically free from the racial presumptions of that era by publishing an open letter to Southern legislatures assuring them that if they allowed both blacks and women to vote, "the political supremacy of your white race will remain unchanged" and that "the black race would gravitate by
6510-444: A regional Women's Rights Convention in New York City had been interrupted by unruly men in the audience, with most of the speakers being unheard over shouts and hisses. Organizers of the fourth national convention were concerned that a repetition of that mob scene does not take place. In Cleveland, objections were raised regarding Bible interpretations, and orderly discussion proceeded. Frances Dana Barker Gage served as president for
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6720-430: A resolution calling for legislation on marriage reform; they wanted laws that would give women the right to separate from or divorce a husband who had demonstrated drunkenness, insanity, desertion or cruelty. Wendell Phillips argued against the resolution, fracturing the executive committee on the matter. Susan B. Anthony also supported the measure, but it was defeated by vote after a heated debate. Horace Greeley wrote in
6930-569: A select committee of the Maine legislature. On July 4, 1856, in Viroqua, Wisconsin , Stone gave the first women's rights and anti-slavery speech delivered by a woman in the area. In January 1858, Stone staged a highly publicized protest that took the issue of taxation without representation across the nation. The previous summer she and Blackwell had purchased a house in Orange, New Jersey, and when
7140-410: A short skirt and trousers for a public dress. Stone accepted the offer. When Stone lectured in the dress in the fall of 1851, hers was the first Bloomer most of her audiences had ever seen. But by then, the dress had become controversial. Although newspapers had initially praised the practicality of the new style, they soon turned to ridicule and condemnation, now viewing the trousers as a usurpation of
7350-791: A similar predicament." St. Louis papers said her lectures attracted the largest crowds ever assembled, there, filling the city's largest auditorium beyond its capacity of two thousand. Chicago papers praised her lectures as the best of the season and said they were inspiring discussion and debate in the city's homes and meeting places. When Stone headed home, in January 1854, she left behind incalculable influence. From 1854 through 1858, Stone lectured on women's rights in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ontario. Elizabeth Cady Stanton would later write that "Lucy Stone
7560-539: A speaker." In addition to helping Stone develop as an orator, the antislavery agency introduced her to a network of progressive reformers within the Garrisonian wing of the abolition movement who assisted her women's rights work. In the fall of 1848, she received an invitation from Phoebe Hathaway of Farmington, New York, to lecture for the women who had organized the Seneca Falls women's rights convention and
7770-494: A standing committee to arrange its meetings, publish its proceedings, and execute adopted plans of action. Stone was appointed to the Central Committee of nine women and nine men. The following spring, she became secretary of the committee, and, except for one year, she retained that position, until 1858. As secretary, Stone took a leading part in organizing and setting the agenda for the national conventions, throughout
7980-511: A student at Ohio's Oberlin College and begun lecturing on women's rights after graduating in 1847, wrote to the Ohio organizers pledging Massachusetts to follow their lead. At the end of the New England Anti-Slavery Convention on May 30, 1850, an announcement was made that a meeting would be held to consider whether to hold a woman's rights convention. That evening, Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis presided over
8190-527: A suffrage statement within the proposed Declaration of Sentiments . One hundred of the attendees subsequently signed the Declaration. Signers of the Declaration hoped for "a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country" to follow their own meeting. Because of the fame and drawing power of Lucretia Mott, who would not be visiting the Upstate New York area for much longer, some of
8400-505: A walking or gardening dress, but a letter writer to the National Woman's Rights Convention urged women to adopt it as common attire. By the spring of 1851, women in several states were wearing the dress in public. In March, Amelia Bloomer , editor of the temperance newspaper The Lily, announced that she was wearing it and printed a description of her dress, along with instructions on how to make it. Soon, newspapers had dubbed it
8610-470: A whites-only Philadelphia lecture hall, but Stone insisted that she had replaced her planned speech that day with an appeal to the audience to boycott the facility. It took years, before the two reconciled. On October 14, 1853, following the National Woman's Rights Convention held in Cleveland, Ohio, Stone and Lucretia Mott addressed Cincinnati's first women's rights meeting, arranged by Henry Blackwell ,
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8820-428: A woman has enjoyed for as many centuries as we have the aid of books, the discipline of life, and the stimulus of fame, it will be time to begin the discussion of these questions: 'What is the intellect of woman? Is it equal to that of man?' Elizabeth Oakes Smith , journalist, author, and member of New York's literary circle attended the 1850 convention, and in 1851 was asked to take the platform. Afterward, she defended
9030-621: A woman has to pay taxes to maintain government, she has a right to participate in the formation and administration of it." Antoinette Brown called for more women to become ministers, claiming that the Bible did not forbid it. Ernestine Rose stood up in response, saying that the Bible should not be used as the authority for settling a dispute, especially as it contained much contradiction regarding women. Elizabeth Oakes Smith called for women to have their own journal so that they could become independent of
9240-449: A woman suffrage Constitutional amendment by winning woman suffrage at the local and state levels. Stone wrote, extensively, about a wide range of women's rights, publishing and distributing speeches by herself and others, and convention proceedings. In the long-running and influential Woman's Journal , a weekly periodical that she founded and promoted, Stone aired both her own and differing views about women's rights. Called "the orator",
9450-439: Is determined by what alone should determine it, her powers and capacities, strengthened and refined by an education in accordance with her nature". Another set of resolutions put forth women's claim for equal civil and political rights and demanded that the word "male" be stricken from every state constitution. Others addressed specific issues of property rights, access to education, and employment opportunities, while others defined
9660-543: Is more imperative than his own." Referring to Douglass's earlier assertion that "There are no KuKlux Clans seeking the lives of women", Stone cited state laws that gave men control over the disposition of their children, saying that children had been known to have been taken from their mothers by "Ku-Kluxers here in the North in the shape of men". Stone supported the Fifteenth Amendment and at the same time stressed
9870-416: Is no question of principle between us." Frederick Douglass objected to Stanton's use of "Sambo" to represent black men in an article she had written for The Revolution . The majority of the attendees supported the pending Fifteenth Amendment, but debate was contentious. Douglass said, "I do not see how anyone can pretend that there is the same urgency in giving the ballot to woman as to the negro. With us,
10080-416: Is said to have become merged in her husband. Has nature thus merged it? Has she ceased to exist and feel pleasure and pain? When she violates the laws of her being, does her husband pay the penalty? When she breaks the moral law does he suffer the punishment? When he satisfies his wants, is it enough to satisfy her nature? ... What an inconsistency that from the moment she enters the compact in which she assumes
10290-594: The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Many activists, especially from the Midwest, were distressed by the split and sought ways to overcome it. Theodore Tilton , an abolitionist and women’s rights advocate, organized a petition drive that gathered the names of more than a thousand people who wanted reunification. He then announced that members of the NWSA and AWSA would meet in New York in April 1870 to reunite
10500-624: The Bloomer dress , and the name stuck. The Bloomer became a fashion fad, during the following months, as women from Toledo to New York City and Lowell, Massachusetts, held reform-dress social events and festivals. Supporters gathered signatures to a "Declaration of Independence from the Despotism of Parisian Fashion" and organized dress-reform societies. A few Garrisonian supporters of women's rights took prominent part in these activities, and one offered silk to any of his friends who would make it into
10710-567: The Rochester women's rights convention , earlier that summer. These rights conventions provided continuity for the woman's rights movement, even though no official organization was actually formed, prior to the Civil War. Most of the well-known leaders, at the time, attended these conventions, except for those who were ill or sick. The best-known of them, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone, met and worked together, harmoniously, as they wrote, discussed, and circulated petitions for
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#173278679738010920-424: The Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Wendell Phillips was elected president of the Anti-Slavery Society and began to direct its resources toward winning political rights for blacks. He told women's rights activists that he continued to support women's suffrage but thought it best to set aside that demand until voting rights for African American men were assured. The women's movement began to revive when proposals for
11130-522: The Tribune that there were "One Thousand Persons Present, seven-eighths of them Women, and a fair Proportion Young and Good-looking". Greeley, a foe of marriage reform, continued against Stanton's proposed resolution with a jab at "easy Divorce", writing that the word 'Woman' should be replaced in the convention's title with "Wives Discontented". The coming of the American Civil War ended
11340-508: The "morning star," and the "heart and soul" of the women's rights movement, Stone influenced Susan B. Anthony to take up the cause of women's suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote that "Lucy Stone was the first person by whom the heart of the American public was deeply stirred on the woman question ." Together, Anthony, Stanton, and Stone have been called the 19th-century " triumvirate " of women's suffrage and feminism . Lucy Stone
11550-404: The 'self-evident truths' announced in the Declaration of Independence is this – 'All government derives its just power from the consent of the governed .'" The meeting decided to call a convention and set Worcester, Massachusetts, as the place and October 16 and 17, 1850, as the date. It appointed Davis, Stone, Abby Kelley Foster , Harriot Kezia Hunt , Eliza J. Kenney, Dora Taft, and Eliza H. Taft
11760-496: The 1,500 participants. Lucretia Mott, Amy Post , and Martha Coffin Wright served as officers; James Mott served on the business committee, and Lucretia Mott called the meeting to order. In a letter read aloud, William Henry Channing suggested that the convention issue its own Declaration of Women's Rights and petitions to state legislatures seeking woman suffrage, equal inheritance rights, equal guardianship laws, divorce for wives of alcoholics, tax exemptions for women until given
11970-549: The Anti-Slavery Society, the convention voted to transform itself into a new organization called the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) that would campaign for the rights of both women and blacks, advocating suffrage for both. The new organization elected Lucretia Mott as president and created an executive committee that included Stanton, Anthony and Lucy Stone. The AERA launched lobbying and petition campaigns in several states, hoping to create
12180-435: The Bible which assigned to women a subordinate role. Lucretia Mott flared up and debated him, saying that he was selectively using the Bible to put upon women a sense of order that originated in man's mind. She said "The pulpit has been prostituted, the Bible has been ill-used ... Instead of taking the truths of the Bible in corroboration of the right, the practice has been to turn over its pages to find examples and authority for
12390-992: The Church of the Puritans in New York City on May 14, 1863, and worked to gain 400,000 signatures by 1864 to petition the United States Congress to pass the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. On May 10 of 1866, the Eleventh National Women's Rights Convention was held at Church of the Puritans in Union Square. Called by Stanton and Anthony, the meeting included Ernestine L. Rose, Wendell Phillips, Reverend John T. Sargent, Reverend Octavius Brooks Frothingham , Frances D. Gage, Elizabeth Brown Blackwell, Theodore Tilton , Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Stephen Symonds Foster and Abbey Kelley Foster, Margaret Winchester and Parker Pillsbury , and
12600-452: The Civil War (1861–1865) as women's rights activists focused their energy on the campaign against slavery. In 1863 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony organized the Women's Loyal National League , the first national women's political organization in the U.S., to campaign for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would abolish slavery. After slavery in the U.S. was abolished by
12810-684: The Democratic Party of that era. Despite the growing number of Democratic leaders who advocated the acceptance of black political power in the South, Southern Democrats had already begun the process of re-establishing white supremacy there, including violent suppression of the voting rights of blacks. Several AERA members expressed anger and dismay over the activities of Stanton and Anthony during this period, including their deal with Train that gave him space to express his views in The Revolution . Some, including Lucretia Mott, president of
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#173278679738013020-492: The Democrats. Distressed at Stanton's and Anthony's association with George Francis Train and the hostilities it had generated, Lucretia Mott resigned as president of the AERA that same month. She said she thought it had been mistake to attempt to unite the women's and abolitionist movements, and she recommended that the AERA be disbanded. At the climactic AERA annual meeting on May 12, 1869, Stephen Symonds Foster objected to
13230-487: The Fifteenth Amendment was made irrelevant when that amendment was officially ratified. In 1872 disgust with corruption in government led to a mass defection of abolitionists and other social reformers from the Republicans to the short-lived Liberal Republican Party . Despite these events, the rivalry between the two women's groups was so bitter that a merger proved to be impossible for twenty years. Ellen Carol DuBois,
13440-575: The Fosters for their Unitarian beliefs. Intrigued, Stone began to engage in classroom discussions about the Trinitarian-Unitarian controversy and ultimately decided that she was a Unitarian. Expelled from her childhood church, she affiliated with the Unitarian church . Before her own marriage, Stone felt that women should be allowed to divorce drunken husbands, to formally end a "loveless marriage" so that "a true love may grow up in
13650-973: The Hovey Fund to support its Kansas campaign, which worked for the enfranchisement of both African Americans and women. The fund refused to finance the Kansas campaign, however, because Phillips opposed mixing those two causes, leaving the campaign desperately short of money. It was difficult for the women's movement itself to raise enough money for projects like this because few women had independent sources of income, and even those with employment generally were required by law to turn over their pay to their husbands. The AERA's Kansas campaign began when Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell arrived in April. The AERA workers were disconcerted when, after an internal struggle, Kansas Republicans decided to support suffrage for black men only, not merely refusing to support women's suffrage but forming an "Anti Female Suffrage Committee" to organize opposition to those who were campaigning for it. In
13860-417: The Kansas campaign, but growing differences made it difficult for its members to work together. Disagreement about the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution , which would prohibit the denial of suffrage because of race, was especially sharp because it did not also prohibit the denial of suffrage because of sex. The acrimonious AERA meeting in 1869 signaled the end of the organization and led to
14070-427: The Massachusetts legislature from 1849 through 1852 for the right of women to vote and serve in public office, Stone aimed her 1853 petitions at the convention that would meet on May 4, 1853, to revise the state constitution. Wendell Phillips drafted both the petition, asking that the word "male" be stricken, wherever it appeared in the constitution, and an appeal urging Massachusetts citizens to sign it. After canvassing
14280-456: The NWSA were women, as were all of its officers, but the AWSA actively sought male support and included men among its officers. Stanton and Anthony, the leading figures in the NWSA, were more widely known as leaders of the women's suffrage movement during this period and were more influential in setting its direction. Events soon removed the basis for two key differences of principle between the competing women's organizations. In 1870 debate about
14490-457: The NWSA. The AERA still existed although it was no longer an effective organization. Twenty leaders of the AERA, including Stanton, Anthony, Tilton and Stone, met in executive committee on May 14, 1870, to formally end its existence. Stone wanted the AERA simply to be dissolved, but the majority voted to merge its remnants into the UWSA. That organization itself had a short life. In 1872, the UWSA
14700-796: The Nebraska border, took up the work in that area, while the Indiana Woman's Rights Society, at least one of whose officers was at the Cincinnati convention, directed the work in Indiana. Stone had helped launch the New York campaign at a state woman's rights convention in Saratoga Springs in August, and at the Cleveland convention recruited workers for it, as well as for the work in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio. Stone took charge of
14910-639: The New Jersey legislature for woman's suffrage. Stone's protest inspired other tax-paying women to action: some followed her example and refused to pay taxes, with one case reaching the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1863, while others went to the polls to demand their right as taxpayers to vote. Henry Blackwell began a two-year courtship of Stone in the summer of 1853. Stone told him she did not wish to marry because she did not want to surrender control over her life and would not assume
15120-442: The North's recent victory over the slaveholding states during the Civil War. No such benefit could be expected to follow from women's suffrage, and the effort needed to mount an effective campaign for it, they believed, would endanger the chances of winning suffrage for African American men. (Their strategy did not work as planned. Even though the Constitution was amended in 1870 to prohibit the denial of voting rights because of race,
15330-574: The Province of Woman" (later republished as "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes"), and told a brother they only reinforced her resolve "to call no man master." She drew from these "Letters," when writing college essays and later, her women's rights lectures. Having determined to obtain the highest education she could, Stone enrolled at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1839, at the age of 21. But she
15540-419: The United States, Puerto Rican women were prevented from voting until 1929, and African Americans in southern states were for the most part prevented from voting until 1965, nearly a hundred years after the AERA was formed. National Women%27s Rights Convention The National Women's Rights Convention was an annual series of meetings that increased the visibility of the early women's rights movement in
15750-530: The United States. First held in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts , the National Women's Rights Convention combined both female and male leadership and attracted a wide base of support including temperance advocates and abolitionists . Speeches were given on the subjects of equal wages , expanded education and career opportunities, women's property rights , marriage reform, and temperance. Chief among
15960-567: The West Indies. In the fall of 1846, Stone informed her family of her intention to become a women's rights lecturer. Her brothers were, at once, supportive, and her father encouraged her to do what she considered her duty. Her mother and her only remaining sister, however, begged her to reconsider. To her mother's fears that she would be reviled, Stone said she knew she would be disesteemed and even hated, but she must "pursue that course of conduct which, to me, appears best calculated to promote
16170-464: The West set her a worthy example; and if the 'Pilgrim spirit is not dead,' we'll pledge Massachusetts to follow her." Some of the leaders asked Stone and Lucretia Mott to address the constitutional convention on their behalf, but believing such appeals should come from residents of the state, they declined. Women's rights conventions up to this point had been organized on a regional or state basis. During
16380-418: The amendment, but Stone supported it as a step towards universal suffrage . Frederick Douglass denounced it because it permitted states to disenfranchise blacks if those states were willing to accept reduced representation at the federal level. The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868. At a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society in January 1866, Stone and Anthony proposed a merger of that organization with
16590-451: The annual National Women's Rights Convention and focused women's activism on the issue of emancipation for slaves. The New York state legislature repealed in 1862 much of the gain women had made in 1860. Susan B. Anthony was "sick at heart" but could not convince women activists to hold another convention focusing solely on women's rights. In 1863, Elizabeth Cady Stanton recently moved to New York City to join with Susan B. Anthony to send
16800-405: The annual convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Boston in 1850, with the support of Garrison and other abolitionists, Stone and Paulina Wright Davis posted a notice for a meeting to consider the possibility of organizing a women's rights convention on a national basis. The meeting was held at Boston's Melodeon Hall on May 30, 1850. Davis presided while Stone presented the proposal to
17010-638: The appearance of moral laxity. She pushed "for the right of woman to the control of her own person as a moral, intelligent, accountable being." Other rights were certain to fall into place, after women were given control of their own bodies. Years later, Stone's position on divorce would change. In 1853, Stone drew large audiences with a lecture tour through several southern states. Former slave Frederick Douglass rebuked her in his abolitionist newspaper, accusing her of achieving success by putting her anti-slavery principles aside and speaking only of women's rights. Douglass, later, found Stone at fault for speaking at
17220-406: The appendages of Society; we want that Woman should be the coequal and help-meet of Man in all the interest and perils and enjoyments of human life. We want that she should attain to the development of her nature and womanhood; we want that when she dies, it may not be written on her gravestone that she was the " relict " of somebody." Susan B. Anthony , who was not at the convention, later said it
17430-432: The business committee and did not speak until the final evening. As an appointee to the committee on Civil and Political Functions, she urged the assemblage to petition their state legislatures for the right of suffrage, the right of married women to hold property, and as many other specific rights as they felt practical to seek in their respective states. Then she gave a brief speech, saying, "We want to be something more than
17640-569: The business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer." At the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City on November 25–26, 1856, Lucy Stone served as president, and recounted for the crowd the recent progress in women's property rights laws passing in nine states, as well as a limited ability for widows in Kentucky to vote for school board members. She noted with satisfaction that
17850-703: The call began circulating, Stone lay near death in a roadside inn. Having decided not to tarry in the disease-ridden Wabash Valley , she had begun a stagecoach trek back across Indiana with her sister-in-law, and within days contracted typhoid fever that kept her bed-ridden for three weeks. She arrived back in Massachusetts in October, just two weeks before the convention. The first National Women's Rights Convention met in Brinley Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts, on October 23–24, 1850. Some 900 people showed up for
18060-571: The campaign. They created a storm of controversy by accepting help during the last two and a half weeks of the campaign from George Francis Train , a Democrat , a wealthy businessman and a flamboyant speaker who supported women's rights. Train was a political maverick who had attended the Democratic convention during the presidential election year of 1864 but then campaigned vigorously for the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln . By 1867 he
18270-491: The cause of women's rights. It was not until the summer of 1848 that Mott, Stanton, and three other women organized the Seneca Falls Convention , the first women's rights convention. It was attended by some 300 people over two days, including about 40 men. The resolution on the subject of votes for women caused dissension until Frederick Douglass took the platform with a passionate speech in favor of having
18480-476: The circulation of petitions and saying it was "the duty of women in their respective States to ask the legislators for the elective franchise." Following the convention, suffrage petitioning took place in the New England states, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska, with resultant legislative hearings or action in Nebraska and Wisconsin. Amelia Bloomer, recently moved to Iowa near
18690-402: The concerns discussed at the convention was the passage of laws that would give women the right to vote . In 1840, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton traveled with their husbands to London for the first World Anti-Slavery Convention , but they were not allowed to participate because they were women. Mott and Stanton became friends there and agreed to organize a convention to further
18900-443: The conclusions drawn by the wing of the movement associated with Anthony and Stanton: "Our liberal men counseled us to silence during the war, and we were silent on our own wrongs; they counseled us again to silence in Kansas and New York, lest we should defeat 'negro suffrage,' and threatened if we were not, we might fight the battle alone. We chose the latter, and were defeated. But standing alone we learned our power... woman must lead
19110-549: The convention and its leaders in articles she wrote for the New York Tribune . Abby Kelley Foster gave testimony to the persecution she had suffered as a woman: "My life has been my speech. For fourteen years I have advocated this cause by my daily life. Bloody feet, sisters, have worn smooth the path by which you have come hither." Abby H. Price spoke about prostitution, as she had the year before, arguing that too many women fell to prostitution because they did not have
19320-401: The convention from the viewpoint of one who had to deal with issues faced by both women and black people: "You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. I, as a colored woman, have had in this country an education which has made me feel as if I were in the situation of Ishmael, my hand against every man, and every man's hand against me." In a variation of the idea proposed earlier to
19530-732: The conventions could serve as a declaration of principles. Reflecting its egalitarian principles, the business committee appointed a Central Committee of nine women and nine men. It also appointed committees on Education, Industrial Avocations, Civil and Political Functions, and Social Relations to gather and publish information useful for guiding public opinion toward establishing "Woman's co-equal sovereignty with Man". Convention speakers included William Lloyd Garrison , William Henry Channing , Wendell Phillips , Harriot Kezia Hunt , Ernestine Rose , Antoinette Brown , Sojourner Truth , Stephen Symonds Foster , Abby Kelley Foster , Abby H. Price, Lucretia Mott , and Frederick Douglass . Stone served on
19740-481: The country's first college to admit both women and African Americans . She entered the college, believing that women should vote and assume political office, that women should study the classic professions, and that women should be able to speak their minds in a public forum. Oberlin College did not share all of these sentiments. In her third year at Oberlin, Stone befriended Antoinette Brown , an abolitionist and suffragist who came to Oberlin in 1845 to study to become
19950-591: The decade. In May 1851, while in Boston attending the New England Anti-Slavery Society's annual meeting, Stone went to the exhibit of Hiram Powers 's statue The Greek Slave . She was so moved by the sculpture that when she addressed the meeting that evening, she poured out her heart about the statue being emblematic of all enchained womanhood. Stone said the society's general agent, Samuel May, Jr., reproached her for speaking on women's rights at an antislavery meeting, and she replied, "I
20160-446: The denial of suffrage because of race. In practice it would, theoretically at least, guarantee suffrage for virtually all males. Anthony and Stanton opposed passage of the amendment unless it was accompanied by a Sixteenth Amendment that would guarantee suffrage for women. Otherwise, they said, it would create an "aristocracy of sex" by giving constitutional authority to the belief that men were superior to women. Male power and privilege
20370-604: The difference between a Monarchy and a Republic". Anthony and Stanton also attacked the Republican Party and worked to develop connections with the Democrats. They wrote a letter to the 1868 Democratic National Convention that criticized Republican sponsorship of the Fourteenth Amendment (which granted citizenship to black men but introduced the word "male" into the Constitution), saying, "While
20580-566: The dominant party has with one hand lifted up two million black men and crowned them with the honor and dignity of citizenship, with the other it has dethroned fifteen million white women—their own mothers and sisters, their own wives and daughters—and cast them under the heel of the lowest orders of manhood." They urged liberal Democrats to convince their party, which did not have a clear direction at that point, to embrace universal suffrage. Their attempt to collaborate with Democrats did not go far, however, because their politics were too pro-black for
20790-565: The earliest possible moment, neither being denied for any supposed benefit to the other." Henry Ward Beecher , a prominent minister, said he was in favor of universal suffrage but believed that by demanding the vote for both blacks and women, the movement was likely to achieve at least a partial victory by winning the vote for black men. The state of New York organized a convention in June 1867 to revise its constitution. AERA workers prepared for it by organizing meetings in over 30 locations around
21000-516: The effective demise of the American Equal Rights Association, which held no further annual membership meetings. The split in the women’s movement soon became entrenched through the creation of rival organizations. Two days after the meeting, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton led the formation of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). In November 1869, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and others formed
21210-422: The fall of 1851, she wore a new style of dress that she had adopted during her winter convalescence, consisting of a loose, short jacket and a pair of baggy trousers, under a skirt that fell a few inches below the knees. The dress was a product of the health-reform movement and intended to replace the fashionable French dress of a tight bodice over a whalebone-fitted corset, and a skirt that dragged several inches on
21420-413: The first Seneca Falls Convention, contrasted the large hall packed with supporters to the much smaller gathering in 1848, called "in timidity and doubt of our own strength, our own capacity, our own powers". Antoinette Brown, Ernestine Rose, Josephine Sophia White Griffing and Frances Dana Barker Gage spoke to the crowd, listing for them the achievements and progress made thus far. Lucy Stone spoke for
21630-805: The first female college graduate from Massachusetts. Stone gave her first public speeches on women's rights in the fall of 1847, first at her brother Bowman's church in Gardner, Massachusetts , and a little later in Warren . Stone became a lecturing agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in June 1848, persuaded by Abby Kelley Foster that the experience would give her the speaking practice she still felt she needed, before beginning her women's rights campaign. Stone immediately proved to be an effective speaker, reported to wield extraordinary persuasive power over her audiences. She
21840-511: The first meeting of the American Equal Rights Association was held in Boston. An event that was reported as "The twelfth regular National Convention of Women's Rights" was held on January 19, 1869. Prominent speakers included Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Senator Samuel Clarke Pomeroy , Parker Pillsbury, John Willis Menard and Doctor Sarah H. Hathaway. Doctor Mary Edwards Walker and
22050-403: The first session, men forming the majority, with several newspapers reporting over a thousand attendees by the afternoon of the first day, and more turned away outside. Delegates came from eleven states, including one delegate from California – a state only a few weeks old. The meeting was called to order by Sarah H. Earle, a leader in Worcester's antislavery organizations. Paulina Wright Davis
22260-437: The first tax bill came, Stone returned it unpaid with the explanation that taxing women while denying them the right to vote was a violation of America's founding principles. On January 22, 1858, the city auctioned some of her household goods to pay the tax and attendant court costs. The following month, Stone and Blackwell spoke on taxation without representation before two large meetings in Orange, and circulated petitions asking
22470-585: The floor of the convention that Mrs. Horace Greeley had signed the petition in favor of women's suffrage. The History of Woman Suffrage , whose authors include Stanton and Anthony, said, "This campaign cost us the friendship of Horace Greeley and the support of the New York Tribune , heretofore our most powerful and faithful allies." Two referendums were placed before voters in Kansas in 1867, one that would extend suffrage to black men and one that would extend it to women. Kansas had an anti-slavery heritage and
22680-476: The floor, worn over several layers of starched petticoats with straw or horsehair sewn into the hems. Ever since the fall of 1849, when the Water-Cure Journal urged women to invent a style of dress that would allow them to use their legs, freely, women across the country had been wearing some form of pants and short skirt, generally called the "Turkish costume" or the "American dress." Most wore it as
22890-455: The formation of two competing women's suffrage organizations. The bitter disagreements that led to the demise of the AERA continued to influence the women's movement in subsequent years. The people who played significant roles in the AERA included some of the more prominent reform activists of that time, many of them already acquainted with one another as veterans of the anti-slavery and women's rights movements: Although still relatively small,
23100-407: The founding meeting, including a U.S. senator who was seated on the platform. Francis Bird, a leading Massachusetts Republican, said at the meeting, "Negro suffrage, being a paramount question, would have to be settled before woman suffrage could receive the attention it deserved." Julia Ward Howe , who was elected president of the new organization, said she would not demand suffrage for women until it
23310-563: The gathering, saying "Our claims are based on that great and immutable truth, the rights of all humanity. For is woman not included in that phrase, 'all men are created ... equal'?. ... Tell us, ye men of the nation ... whether woman is not included in that great Declaration of Independence ?" She continued "I will no more promise how we shall use our rights than man has promised before he obtained them, how he would use them." Susan B. Anthony spoke to urge attendees to petition their state legislatures for laws giving women equal rights. A committee
23520-615: The governing power than even our Saxon rulers are. I desire that we go into the kingdom together". Sojourner Truth , a former slave, said that, "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." Others disagreed. Abby Kelley Foster said that suffrage for black men was a more pressing issue than suffrage for women. Stephen Symonds Foster, arguing that ballot rights for one group of citizens should not be contingent on ballot rights for another, said, "The right of each should be accorded at
23730-527: The high responsibility of wife and mother, she ceases legally to exist and becomes a purely submissive being. Blind submission in women is considered a virtue, while submission to wrong is itself wrong, and resistance to wrong is virtue alike in women as in man." For the third convention, the city hall in Syracuse, New York , was selected as the site. Because Syracuse was nearer to Seneca Falls (two days' travel by horse, several hours' journey by rail ), more of
23940-524: The highest good of the world." Stone, then, tried to gain practical speaking experience. Although women students could debate each other in their literary society, it was considered inappropriate for them to participate in oral exercises with men; women members of the collegiate rhetoric class were expected to learn by observing their male classmates. So, Stone and first-year student Antoinette Brown , who also wanted to develop skill in public speaking, organized an off-campus women's debating club. After gaining
24150-468: The hollow of his hand". At the Cooper Union in New York City on May 10–11, 1860, the tenth national convention of 600–800 attendees was presided over by Martha Coffin Wright. A recent legislative victory in New York was praised, one which gave women joint custody of their children and sole use of their personal property and wages. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Antoinette Brown Blackwell moved to add
24360-406: The importance of women's rights by saying, "But I thank God for that XV. Amendment, and hope that it will be adopted in every State. I will be thankful in my soul if any body can get out of the terrible pit. But I believe that the safety of the government would be more promoted by the admission of woman as an element of restoration and harmony than the negro." The acrimonious 1869 meeting signaled
24570-486: The job opportunities or education that men had. A letter was read from two imprisoned French feminists, Pauline Roland and Jeanne Deroin , saying "Your courageous declaration of Woman's Rights has resounded even to our prison, and has filled our souls with inexpressible joy." Ernestine Rose gave a speech about the loss of identity in marriage that Davis later characterized as "unsurpassed". Rose said of woman that "At marriage, she loses her entire identity, and her being
24780-470: The labor a male student had to do to pay the same costs. Stone frequently rose at two o'clock to fit in work and study, and she found her health declining. In February 1845, having decided to submit to the injustice no longer, she asked the Faculty Board for the same pay given two lesser-experienced male colleagues. When her request was denied, she resigned her position. Pleading with the faculty to restore Stone, her former students said they would pay Stone "what
24990-426: The large and responsive audience and served as secretary. Seven women were appointed to organize the convention, with Davis and Stone assigned to conduct the correspondence needed to solicit signatures to the call and recruit speakers and attendance. A few months before the convention, Stone contracted typhoid fever, while traveling in Indiana, and she nearly died. The protracted nature of Stone's illness left Davis as
25200-532: The law of nature toward the tropics." Opposition to Train was partly due to the loyalty many reformers felt to the national Republican Party , which had provided political leadership for the elimination of slavery and was still in the difficult process of consolidating that victory. Train harshly attacked the Republican Party, making no secret of his desire to blemish its progressive image and create splits within it by campaigning for women's rights when Kansas Republicans were refusing to do so. The abolitionist movement
25410-505: The laws and determining the action of government." Stone called a New England Woman's Rights Convention in Boston on June 2, 1854, to expand her petitioning efforts. The convention adopted her resolution for petitioning all six New England legislatures, as well as her proposed form of petition, and it appointed a committee, in each state, to organize the work. In a speech before the second New England Woman's Rights Convention, held in June 1855, Stone urged that one reason women needed suffrage
25620-631: The legal position occupied by a married woman. Blackwell maintained that despite the law, couples could create a marriage of equal partnership, governed by their mutual agreement. They could also take steps to protect the wife against unjust laws, such as placing her assets in the hands of a trustee. He also believed that marriage would allow each partner to accomplish more than he or she could alone, and to show how he could help advance Stone's work, he arranged her highly successful western lecturing tour of 1853. Over an eighteen-month courtship conducted primarily through correspondence, Stone and Blackwell discussed
25830-430: The legislature. At the national convention of 1856, Stone presented a new strategy suggested by Antoinette Brown Blackwell to send a memorial to the various state legislatures signed by the officers of the National Woman's Rights Convention. Antoinette Brown had married Samuel Charles Blackwell on January 24, 1856, becoming Stone's sister-in-law in the process. Stone, Brown Blackwell, and Ernestine Rose were appointed
26040-488: 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." After first saying in another article, "There is only one safe, sure way to build a government, and that is on the equality of all its citizens, male and female, black and white", Stanton then objected to laws being made for women by "Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung who do not know
26250-422: The male-owned press, saying "We should have a literature of our own, a printing press and a publishing house, and tract writers and distributors, as well as lectures and conventions; and yet I say this to a race of beggars, for women have no pecuniary resources." Antoinette Brown lectured about how masculine law can never fully represent womankind. Lucy Stone wore a trousered dress often referred to as "bloomers",
26460-459: The matter is a question of life and death, at least in fifteen States of the Union." Anthony replied, "Mr. Douglass talks about the wrongs of the negro; but with all the outrages that he to-day suffers, he would not exchange his sex and take the place of Elizabeth Cady Stanton." Lucy Stone disagreed with Douglass's assertion that suffrage for blacks should have precedence, saying that "woman suffrage
26670-541: The meeting, but was never adopted. The Plain Dealer printed an extensive account of the convention, opining of Ernestine Rose that she "is the master-spirit of the Convention. She is described as a Polish lady of great beauty, being known in this country as an earnest advocate of human liberty." After commenting on the bloomer costume worn by Lucy Stone, The Plain Dealer continued: "Miss Stone must be set down as
26880-558: The most prominent figures in the women's movement, circulated a letter in late 1865 calling for petitions against any wording that excluded females. A version of the amendment that referred to "persons" instead of "males" passed the House of Representatives in early 1866 but failed in the Senate . The version that Congress eventually approved and sent to the states for ratification included the word "male" three times. Stanton and Anthony opposed
27090-446: The movement as an effort to secure the "natural and civil rights" of all women, including women held in slavery. The convention considered how best to organize to promote their goals. Mindful of many members' opposition to organized societies, Wendell Phillips said there was no need for a formal association or founding document: annual conventions and a standing committee to arrange them was organization enough, and resolutions adopted at
27300-406: The nature of marriage, actual and ideal, as well as their own natures and suitability for marriage. Stone gradually fell in love and in November 1854 agreed to marry Blackwell. Stone and Blackwell developed a private agreement aimed at preserving and protecting Stone's financial independence and personal liberty. In monetary matters, they agreed that the marriage be like a business partnership, with
27510-418: The new Republican Party was interested in female participation during the 1856 elections. Lucretia Mott encouraged the assembly to use their new rights, saying, "Believe me, sisters, the time is come for you to avail yourselves of all the avenues that are opened to you." A letter was read aloud from Antoinette Brown Blackwell : "Would it not be wholly appropriate, then, for this National Convention to demand
27720-401: The next several years, shaped her evolving philosophy on women's rights. A debate over whether women were entitled to a political voice had begun, when many women responded to William Lloyd Garrison 's appeal to circulate antislavery petitions and sent thousands of signatures to Congress, only to have them rejected, in part, because women had sent them. Women abolitionists responded by holding
27930-506: The number of female legislators should equal that of male. Frederick Douglass took the stage to speak after repeated calls from the audience. Lucy Stone, Reverend Antoinette Brown Blackwell (now married to Samuel Charles Blackwell ), Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Lucretia Mott were among those that spoke. Stephen Pearl Andrews startled the assemblage by advocating free love and unconventional approaches to marriage. He hinted at birth control by insisting that women should have
28140-405: The organization, and African Americans Frederick Douglass and Frances Harper, voiced their disagreements with Stanton and Anthony but continued to maintain working relationships with them. Particularly in the case of Lucy Stone, however, the disputes of this period led to a personal rift, one that had important consequences for the women's movement. To counter the initiatives of Anthony and Stanton,
28350-595: The original signers of the Declaration of Sentiments were able to attend than the previous two conventions in Massachusetts. Lucretia Mott was named president; at one point she felt it necessary to silence a minister who offended the assembly by using biblical references to keep women subordinate to men. A letter from Elizabeth Cady Stanton was read and its resolutions voted on. At sessions taking place September 8–10, 1852, Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage made their first public speeches on women's rights. Ernestine Rose spoke denouncing duties without rights, saying "as
28560-621: The participants at Seneca Falls organized another regional meeting two weeks later, the Rochester Women's Rights Convention of 1848 , featuring many of the same speakers. The first women's rights convention to be organized on a statewide basis was the Ohio Women's Convention at Salem in 1850 . In April 1850, Ohio women held a convention to begin petitioning their constitutional convention for women's equal legal and political rights. Lucy Stone , who had agitated for women's rights while
28770-738: The partners being "joint proprietors of everything except the results of previous labors." Neither would have claim to lands belonging to the other, nor any obligation for the other's costs of holding them. While married and living together they would share earnings, but if they should separate, they would relinquish claim to the other's subsequent earnings. Each would have the right to will their property to whomever they pleased unless they had children. Over Blackwell's objections, Stone refused to be supported and insisted on paying half of their mutual expenses. In addition to financial independence, Stone and Blackwell agreed that each would enjoy personal independence and autonomy: "Neither partner shall attempt to fix
28980-409: The post of president. William Lloyd Garrison spoke, saying "Those who have inaugurated this movement are worthy to be ranked with the army of martyrs ... in the days of old. Blessings on them! They should triumph, and every opposition be removed, that peace and love, justice and liberty, might prevail throughout the world." Garrison proposed not only that women should serve as elected officials, but that
29190-458: The principal organizer of the first National Women's Rights Convention , which met on October 23–24, 1850, in Brinley Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts, with an attendance of about a thousand. Stone was able to attend the Worcester convention, but her frail health limited her participation, and she made no formal address, until the closing session. The convention decided not to establish a formal association but to exist as an annual convention with
29400-496: The proposal for women's suffrage. Greeley had earlier clashed with Anthony and Stanton by insisting that their New York campaign should focus on the rights of African Americans rather than also including women's issues. When they refused, he threatened to end his newspaper's support for their work. Soon he began to attack the women's movement. Responding to Greeley's repeated claim that the best women he knew did not want to vote, Stanton and Anthony arranged for it to be announced from
29610-451: The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to open the way for a Republican push for women's suffrage. (That did not happen; the high point of Republican support was a non-committal reference to women's suffrage in the 1872 Republican platform.) The NWSA worked on a wider range of women's issues than the AWSA, which criticized its rival for mixing women's suffrage with issues like divorce reform and equal pay for women . Almost all members of
29820-461: The relationship between husband and wife should be. Wright proposed that because women bore the results of sexual intercourse, wives should govern a couple's marital relations. In accordance with that view, Blackwell agreed that Stone would choose "when, where and how often" she would "become a mother." In addition to this private agreement, Blackwell drew up a protest of laws, rules, and customs that conferred superior rights on husbands and, as part of
30030-659: The remaining five votes. After completing a year at coeducational Monson Academy in the summer of 1841, Stone learned that Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Ohio had become the first college in the nation to admit women and had bestowed college degrees on three women. Stone enrolled at Quaboag Seminary in neighboring Warren, where she read Virgil and Sophocles and studied Latin and Greek grammar, in preparation for Oberlin's entrance examinations. In August 1843, just after she turned 25, Stone traveled by train, steamship, and stagecoach to Oberlin College in Ohio,
30240-402: The renomination of Stanton and Anthony as officers. He denounced their willingness to associate with Train despite his disparagement of blacks, and he charged them with advocating "Educated Suffrage", thereby repudiating the AERA's principle of universal suffrage. Henry Blackwell responded, "Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton believe in the right of the negro to vote. We are united on that point. There
30450-458: The residence, employment, or habits of the other, nor shall either partner feel bound to live together any longer than is agreeable to both." During their discussion of marriage, Stone had given Blackwell a copy of Henry C. Wright 's book Marriage and Parentage; Or, The Reproductive Element in Man, as a Means to His Elevation and Happiness, and asked him to accept its principles as what she considered
30660-424: The resolutions including one intended to be sent to every state legislature, urging that body to "secure to women all those rights and privileges and immunities which in equity belong to every citizen of a republic". Another unruly crowd made it difficult to hear the speeches of Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Caroline Dall, Lucretia Mott and Ernestine Rose. Wendell Phillips stood to speak and "held that mocking crowd in
30870-410: The right ground on this question.") Most AERA members supported the Fifteenth Amendment. Among prominent African American AERA members, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper , Frederick Douglass, George Downing and Dr. Charles Purvis supported the amendment, but Dr. Purvis' father, Robert Purvis , joined Anthony and Stanton in opposition to it. Congress approved the Fifteenth Amendment in February 1869, and it
31080-425: The right of each person to establish for themselves which sphere, domestic or public, they should be active in. A heckler interrupted the proceedings, calling female speakers "a few disappointed women". Stone responded with a retort that became widely quoted, saying that yes, she was indeed a "disappointed woman". "...In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of woman. It shall be
31290-555: The right of suffrage for her from the Legislature of each State in the Nation? We can not petition the General Government on this point. Allow me, therefore, respectfully to suggest the propriety of appointing a committee, which shall be instructed to prepare a memorial adapted to the circumstances of each legislative body; and demanding of each, in the name of this Convention, the elective franchise for woman." A motion
31500-531: The right of women to vote and hold public office. Wendell Phillips drafted the first petitions and accompanying appeals for circulation, and William Lloyd Garrison published them in The Liberator for readers to copy and circulate. When Stone sent petitions to the legislature in February 1850, over half were from towns where she had lectured. In April 1850, the Ohio Women's Convention met in Salem, Ohio,
31710-426: The right to put a limit on "the cares and sufferings of maternity". Eliza Farnham presented her view that women were superior to men, a concept that was hotly debated. The convention, marred by interruption and rowdyism, "adjourned amid great confusion". Held again at Mozart Hall in New York City on May 12, 1859, the ninth national convention opened with Lucretia Mott presiding. Caroline Wells Healey Dall read out
31920-485: The right to vote, and right to trial before a jury of female peers. Lucretia Mott moved the adoption of the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, which was read to the convention, debated, then referred to a committee to draft a new declaration. Antoinette Brown, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, Ernestine Rose and Lucy Stone worked to shape a new declaration, and the result was read at the end of
32130-465: The rights of African Americans and those who worked primarily for the rights of women, and it also created divisions within the women's movement itself. The New York campaign had been financed partly by the Hovey Fund , which was created by a bequest that provided a large sum of money to support abolitionism, women's rights and other reform movements. According to the terms of the bequest, if slavery
32340-415: The same time and worked toward a politically independent women's movement that would no longer be dependent on abolitionists. Stanton and Anthony expressed their views in a newspaper called The Revolution , which began publishing in January 1868 with initial funding from the controversial George Francis Train . Disagreement was especially sharp over the proposed Fifteenth Amendment , which would prohibit
32550-429: The school committee that she had taught all the subjects Bowman had, it replied that they could give her "only a woman's pay." Lower pay for women was one of the arguments cited by those promoting the hiring of women as teachers: "To make education universal, it must be at moderate expense, and women can afford to teach for one-half, or even less, the salary which men would ask." Although Stone's salary increased along with
32760-513: The school's manual labor program. For this, she was paid three cents an hour—less than half what male students received for their work in the program. Among measures taken to reduce her expenses, Stone prepared her own meals in her dormitory room. In 1844, Stone was given a position teaching arithmetic in the Ladies Department, but, again, received reduced pay, because of her sex. Oberlin's compensation policies required Stone to do twice
32970-414: The short skirt convenient, during her travels, and she defended it against those who said it was a distraction that hurt the women's rights cause. Nevertheless, she disliked the instant attention it drew, whenever she arrived in a new place. In the fall of 1854, she added a dress a few inches longer, for occasional use. In 1855, she abandoned the dress, altogether, and she was not involved in the formation of
33180-415: The size of her schools, until she finally received $ 16 a month, it was always lower than the male rate. In 1836, Stone began reading newspaper reports of a controversy raging throughout Massachusetts that some referred to as the "woman question" – what was woman's proper role in society; should she assume an active and public role in the reform movements of the day? Developments within that controversy, over
33390-444: The soul of the injured one from the full enjoyment of which no legal bond had a right to keep her Whatever is pure and holy, not only has a right to be, but it has a right, also, to be recognized, and further, I think it has no right not to be recognized." Stone's friends often felt differently about the issue; "Nettee" Brown wrote to Stone, in 1853, that she was not ready to accept the idea, even if both parties wanted divorce. Stanton
33600-463: The state and collecting over 20,000 signatures on petitions that supported women's suffrage and the removal of property requirements that discriminated specifically against black voters. The suffrage committee of the convention was chaired by Horace Greeley , a prominent newspaper editor and abolitionist who had been a supporter of the women's movement. His committee approved the removal of discriminatory property requirements for black voters but rejected
33810-505: The state for nine months, Stone sent the convention petitions bearing over five thousand signatures. On May 27, 1853, Stone and Phillips addressed the convention's Committee on Qualifications of Voters. In reporting Stone's hearing, the Liberator noted: "Never before, since the world was made, in any country, has woman publicly made her demand in the hall of legislation to be represented in her own person, and to have an equal part in framing
34020-443: The strongest laws for the protection of women's rights outside New York. The AERA concentrated its resources on this campaign with high hopes of winning both referendums, which would boost the chances of winning suffrage for both blacks and woman at the national level. Both referendums failed, however, and the AERA campaign ended in disarray and recrimination. The Kansas campaign created divisions between those who worked primarily for
34230-468: The subject in the Westminster Review ... I am not without hope that this article will materially strengthen your hands, and I am sure it can not but cheer your hearts." A second national convention was held October 15–16, 1851, again in Brinley Hall, with Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis presiding. Harriet Kezia Hunt and Antoinette Brown gave speeches, while a letter from Elizabeth Cady Stanton
34440-528: The symbol of male authority. Many women retreated, in the face of criticism, but Stone continued to wear the short dress, exclusively, for the next three years. She also wore her hair short, cut just below her jaw line. After Stone lectured in New York City in April 1853, the report of her speeches in the Illustrated News was accompanied by this engraving of Stone in the Bloomer dress. Stone found
34650-546: The way to her own enfranchisement." After the Kansas campaign ended in disarray in November 1867, the AERA increasingly divided into two wings, both 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 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, insisted that women and black men should be enfranchised at
34860-466: The wedding ceremony, pledged never to avail himself of those laws. The wedding took place at Stone's home in West Brookfield, Massachusetts, on May 1, 1855, with Stone's close friend and co-worker Thomas Wentworth Higginson officiating. Higginson sent a copy of Stone and Blackwell's Protest to the Worcester Spy , and from there it spread across the country. While some commentators viewed it as
35070-551: The woman's rights movement. Although Stone accepted and expected to begin working for them in the fall of 1849, the agency never materialized. In April 1849, Stone was invited to lecture for the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society , and Lucretia Mott took advantage of her presence to hold Pennsylvania's first women's rights meeting on May 4, 1849. With the help of abolitionists, Stone conducted Massachusetts' first petition campaigns for
35280-402: The women's rights movement had grown in the years before the American Civil War , aided by the introduction of women to social activism through the abolitionist movement. The American Anti-Slavery Society , led by William Lloyd Garrison , was particularly encouraging to those who championed women's rights. The planning committee for the first National Women's Rights Convention in October 1850
35490-414: The women's rights movement to create a new organization that would advocate for the rights for African Americans and women, including suffrage for both. The proposal was blocked by Phillips, who once again argued that the key issue of the day was suffrage for African American men. Phillips and other abolitionist leaders expected a constitutional provision of voting rights for former slaves to help preserve
35700-536: The women’s movement. The leaders of both these organizations angrily opposed Tilton’s project at first. The NWSA eventually decided to cooperate with him, but the AWSA did not. Tilton’s meeting, which included some non-affiliated activists, led to the creation of the Union Woman Suffrage Association (UWSA) with Tilton as president. The NWSA merged into the UWSA, resulting in an organization with structure and policies that mirrored those of
35910-509: The work in Ohio, her new home state, drafting its petition, placing it in Ohio newspapers and circulating it during lectures across southern Ohio while her recruit worked in the northern part of the state. Stone also lectured in Illinois and Indiana, in support of the petition drives, there, and she personally introduced the work in Wisconsin, where she found volunteers to circulate the petition and legislators to introduce them, in both houses of
36120-467: The wrong." Mott cited Bible passages that proved Grew wrong. William Lloyd Garrison stood up to halt the debate, saying that nearly everyone present agreed that all were equal in the eyes of God. At Smith & Nixon's Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio , on October 17–18, 1855, Martha Coffin Wright presided over the standing room only crowd. Wright, a younger sister of Lucretia Mott and a founding member of
36330-766: Was a woman, before I was an abolitionist. I must speak for women." Three months later, Stone notified May that she intended to lecture on women's rights, full-time, and she would not be available for antislavery work. Stone launched her career as an independent women's rights lecturer on October 1, 1851. When May continued to press antislavery work upon her, she agreed to lecture for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society on Sundays. Arranging women's rights lectures around these engagements, she used pay for her antislavery work to defray expenses of her independent lecturing, until she felt confident enough to charge admission. When Stone resumed lecturing in
36540-541: Was abolished, the remainder of the money was to go to the other reform movements, which meant that the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment should have freed up a significant stream of money for the women's movement. However, Wendell Phillips, the head of the fund, declared that slavery would not truly be abolished until blacks were enfranchised on the same basis as whites, and he channeled much of fund's money toward that cause. The AERA nonetheless expected
36750-526: Was achieved for blacks. The AERA accomplished little during 1868 except hold its annual meeting on May 14, which was marked by hostilities. At that meeting, Olympia Brown denounced the Kansas Republicans for opposing women's suffrage and stressed the need for a party that would support universal suffrage. Lucy Stone criticized the Republican Party also, but Frederick Douglass defended it as more supportive of suffrage for both blacks and women than
36960-442: Was at the root of society's ills, Stanton argued, and nothing should be done to strengthen it. Anthony and Stanton also warned that black men, who would have voting power under the amendment, were overwhelmingly opposed to women's suffrage. (They were not alone in being unsure of black male support for women's suffrage. Frederick Douglass, a strong supporter of women's suffrage, said, "The race to which I belong have not generally taken
37170-481: Was born on August 13, 1818, on her family's farm at Coy's Hill in West Brookfield, Massachusetts. She was the eighth of nine children born to Hannah Matthews and Francis Stone. She grew up with three brothers and three sisters, two siblings having died before her own birth. Another member of the Stone household was Sarah Barr, "Aunt Sally" to the children – a sister of Francis Stone who had been abandoned by her husband and left dependent upon her brother. Although farm life
37380-771: Was chosen member of the committee tasked with framing the issue of suffrage before the New York Legislature . A motion was made to form a national organization for women, but after animated discussion, no consensus was reached. Elizabeth Smith Miller suggested the women form organizations at the state level, but even this milder suggestion met with opposition. Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis said, "I hate organizations ... they cramp me." Lucretia Mott concurred, saying "the seeds of dissolution be less likely to be sown." Angelina Grimké Weld , Thomas M'Clintock and Wendell Phillips agreed, with Phillips saying "you will develop divisions among yourselves." No national organization
37590-407: Was chosen to preside and in her opening address called for "the emancipation of a class, the redemption of half the world, and a conforming re-organization of all social, political, and industrial interests and institutions". The first resolution from the business committee defined the movement's objective: "to secure for [woman] political, legal, and social equality with man until her proper sphere
37800-419: Was converted into a reconstituted NWSA with the same name as the original organization and with Anthony as its president. Attitudes toward the Fifteenth Amendment formed a key distinction between the two rival suffrage organizations, but there were other differences as well. The NWSA took a stance of political independence, but the AWSA at least initially maintained close ties with the Republican Party, expecting
38010-437: Was described as "a little meek-looking Quakerish body, with the sweetest, modest manners, and yet, as unshrinking and self-possessed as a loaded cannon." One of her assets, in addition to a storytelling ability that could move audiences to tears or laughter, as she willed, was said to be an unusual voice that contemporaries compared to a "silver bell,” and of which it was said, "no more perfect instrument had ever been bestowed upon
38220-401: Was distraught over what appeared to be divine sanction of women's subjugation, but then, she reasoned that the injunction applied only to wives. Resolving to "call no man my master,” she determined to keep control over her own life by never marrying, obtaining the highest education she could, and earning her own livelihood. One of her biographers, Andrea Moore Kerr, writes, "Stone's personality
38430-502: Was formed by people who were attending a convention of the Anti-Slavery Society earlier that year. The women's movement was loosely structured during this period, with legislative campaigns and speaking tours organized by a small group of women acting on personal initiative. An informal coordinating committee organized national women's rights conventions, but there were only a few state associations and no formal national organization. The movement largely disappeared from public notice during
38640-416: Was formed to publish tracts and to place articles in national newspapers. Once again, the convention could not agree on a motion to create a national organization, resolving instead to continue work at the local level with coordination provided by a committee chaired by Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis. Henry Grew took the speaker's platform to condemn women who demanded equal rights. He described examples from
38850-427: Was hard work for all and Francis Stone tightly managed the family resources, Lucy remembered her childhood as one of "opulence,” the farm producing all the food the family wanted and enough extra to trade for the few store-bought goods they needed. When Stone recalled that "There was only one will in our family, and that was my father's", she described the family government characteristic of her day. Hannah Stone earned
39060-535: Was here that Stone delivered impromptu remarks that became famous as her "disappointment" speech. When a heckler interrupted the proceedings, calling female speakers "a few disappointed women,” Stone retorted that yes, she was, indeed, a "disappointed woman." "In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of woman. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart, until she bows down to it no longer." The convention adopted Stone's resolution calling for
39270-441: Was impressed less by her costume than by her electrifying address, printing "Well, whether we like it or not, little woman, God made you an ORATOR !" Reverend Lydia Ann Jenkins of Geneva, New York , spoke at the convention and asked, "Is there any law to prevent women from voting in this State? The Constitution says 'white male citizens' may vote, but does not say that white female citizens may not." The next year, Jenkins
39480-459: Was in the process of revising its state constitution, AERA workers collected petitions in support of women's suffrage and the removal of property requirements that discriminated specifically against black voters. In Kansas they campaigned for referendums that would enfranchise African Americans and women. In both places they encountered increasing resistance to the campaign for women's suffrage from former abolitionist allies who viewed it as
39690-425: Was known for using her birth name, after marriage , contrary to the custom of women taking their husband's surname. Stone's organizational activities for the cause of women's rights yielded tangible gains in the difficult political environment of the 19th century. Stone helped initiate the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, and she supported and sustained it, annually, along with
39900-501: Was left to settle his affairs and accompany his pregnant widow back east. Fearing she might not be able to return for three months, she wrote to Davis asking her to take charge of issuing the call. The call began appearing in September, with the convention date pushed back one week and Stone's name heading the list of eighty-nine signatories: thirty-three from Massachusetts, ten from Rhode Island, seventeen from New York, eighteen from Pennsylvania, one from Maryland, and nine from Ohio. While
40110-430: Was less inclined to clerical orthodoxy; she was very much in favor of giving women the right to divorce, eventually coming to the view that the reform of marriage laws was more important than women's voting rights. In the process of planning for women's rights conventions, Stone worked against Stanton to remove from any proposed platform the formal advocacy of divorce. Stone wished to keep the subject separate, to prevent
40320-454: Was one of those, having expelled a deacon for anti-slavery activities. In 1851, the church expelled Stone, herself. Stone had already moved significantly away from that church's Trinitarian doctrines. While at Oberlin, Stone had arranged for her friend, Abby Kelley Foster, and her new husband, Stephen Symonds Foster , to speak, there, on the abolition of slavery. Afterwards, Charles Finney , a prominent professor of theology at Oberlin, denounced
40530-472: Was passed approving of the suggestion, and Wendell Phillips recommended that women in each state be contacted and encouraged to take the memorial petition to their respective legislative bodies. For the eighth and subsequent national conventions, the meetings were changed from various dates in autumn to a more consistent mid-May schedule. 1857 was skipped – the next meeting was held in 1858. At Mozart Hall in New York City on May 13–14, 1858, Susan B. Anthony held
40740-413: Was preparing for the ministry. On Davis's list to contact was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who sent her regrets along with a letter of support and a speech to be read in her name. Stanton wished to stay at home because she would be in the late stages of pregnancy. After completing her part of the correspondence, Stone went to Illinois to visit a brother. Within days of her arrival, he died of cholera and Stone
40950-453: Was presided over by Stanton. A stirring speech against racial discrimination was given by African-American activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper , in which she said "You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. I, as a colored woman, have had in this country an education which has made me feel as if I were in the situation of Ishmael, my hand against every man, and every man's hand against me." A few weeks later, on May 31, 1866,
41160-791: Was promoting himself as an independent candidate for president. Train was also a racist who openly disparaged the integrity and intelligence of African Americans, supporting women's suffrage partly in the belief that the votes of women would help contain the political power of blacks. The usual procedure was for Anthony to speak first, declaring that the ability to vote rightfully belonged to both women and blacks. Train would speak next, declaring that it would be an outrage for blacks to vote but not women also. The willingness of Anthony and Stanton to work with Train alienated many AERA members and other reform activists. Stone said she considered Train to be "a lunatic, wild and ranting". Anthony and Stanton angered Stone by including her name, without her permission, in
41370-494: Was ratified by the states a year later. During the debate over the Fifteenth Amendment, Stanton wrote articles for The Revolution with language that was sometimes elitist and racially condescending. She believed that a long process of education would be needed before what she called the "lower orders" of former slaves and immigrant workers would be able to participate meaningfully as voters. Stanton wrote, "American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish
41580-578: Was read. Lucretia Mott served as an officer of the meeting. Wendell Phillips made a speech which was so persuasive that it would be sold as a tract until 1920: Throw open the doors of Congress; throw open those court-houses; throw wide open the doors of your colleges, and give to the sisters of the De Staëls and the Martineaus the same opportunity for culture that men have, and let the results prove what their capacity and intellect really are. When
41790-500: Was reading this speech that converted her to the cause of women's rights. Stone paid to have the proceedings of the convention printed as booklets; she would repeat this practice after each of the next six annual conventions. The booklets were sold at her lectures and at subsequent conventions as Woman's Rights Tracts. The report of the convention in the New York Tribune for Europe inspired women in Sheffield, England, to draw up
42000-504: Was right," if the college would not. Stone had planned to borrow money from her father, when funds ran out, but Francis Stone, moved by his daughter's description of her struggles, promised to provide money when needed. Help from home was not needed, however, because after three months of pressure, the faculty yielded and hired Stone back, paying both her and other women student teachers at the same rate paid male student teachers. In February 1846, Stone intimated to Abby Kelley Foster that she
42210-660: Was sensitive to attacks on the Republican Party, with which it collaborated closely, serving in some ways as its left wing. The women's rights movement depended heavily on abolitionist resources, with its articles published in their newspapers and some of its funding provided by abolitionists. After the Kansas debacle, women's suffragists who distanced themselves from abolitionist and Republican leadership found those resources increasingly unavailable. Wendell Phillips worked to prevent discussion of women's suffrage at abolitionist meetings, and abolitionist journals began to downplay those issues as well. The History of Woman Suffrage stated
42420-493: Was so disappointed in Mary Lyon 's intolerance of antislavery and women's rights that she withdrew, after only one term. The very next month, she enrolled at Wesleyan Academy (later Wilbraham & Monson Academy ), which she found more to her liking: "It was decided by a large majority in our literary society the other day," she reported to a brother "that ladies ought to mingle in politics, go to Congress, etc. etc." Stone read
42630-468: Was stirring the West on women's rights "as it is seldom stirred on any subject, whatsoever." After four lectures in Louisville, Kentucky, Stone was begged to repeat the entire course and told she was having more effect there than she could have anywhere else. An Indianapolis newspaper reported that Stone "set about two-thirds of the women in the town crazy, after women's rights, and placed half the men in
42840-465: Was striking: her unquestioning willingness to take responsibility for other people's actions; her 'workaholic' habits; her self doubt; her desire for control." At age 16, Stone began teaching in district schools, as her brothers and her sister, Rhoda, also did. Her beginning pay of $ 1.00 a day was much lower than that of male teachers, and when she substituted for her brother, Bowman, one winter, she received less pay than he received. When she protested to
43050-421: Was the first speaker who really stirred the nation's heart on the subject of woman's wrongs." In addition to being the women's rights movement's most prominent spokesperson, Lucy Stone led the movement's petitioning efforts. She initiated petition efforts in New England and several other states and assisted the petitioning efforts of state and local organizations in New York, Ohio, and Indiana. After petitioning
43260-721: Was the key force in the new organization. Stone, nominally the chair of its executive committee, in practice was involved only peripherally. Women's suffrage, a key goal of the AERA, was achieved in 1920 with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment , popularly known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. Despite the passage of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments, the AERA's goal of securing equal rights for all citizens, especially suffrage, still had not yet been fully achieved. Although Puerto Ricans were by law citizens of
43470-539: Was thinking of becoming a public speaker, but not until the following summer did a storm of controversy over Foster's speaking at Oberlin decide the matter for her. Faculty opposition to Foster ignited impassioned discussion of women's rights, among the students, especially of a woman's right to speak in public, which Stone vigorously defended in a joint meeting of the men's and women's literary societies. She followed that campus demonstration by making her first public speech at Oberlin's August 1 commemoration of Emancipation in
43680-411: Was to blame, and the injustice only demonstrated "the necessity of making custom right, if it must rule." From the examples of her mother, Aunt Sally, and a neighbor neglected by her husband and left destitute, Stone early learned that women were at the mercy of their husbands' good will. When she came across the biblical passage, "and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee,” she
43890-519: Was to form until after the Civil War . At Melodeon Hall in Cleveland, Ohio , on October 6–8, 1853, William Lloyd Garrison spoke to say "...the Declaration of Independence as put forth at Seneca Falls. ... was measuring the people of this country by their own standard. It was taking their own words and applying their own principles to women, as they have been applied to men." Earlier in the year,
44100-451: Was to protect any gains achieved, reminding them that "the next Legislature may undo all that the last have done for women." The convention adopted a resolution calling the ballot "woman's sword and shield; the means of achieving and protecting all other civil rights" and another urging the national convention to make suffrage petitioning its priority. The next National Woman's Rights Convention met in Cincinnati on October 17 and 18, 1855. It
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