The Girl Who Helped to Draft Woman’s Declaration of Independence

“What a pity it is she’s a girl!”

Four-year-old Elizabeth heard this remark over and over again from the visitors who had come to see her baby sister. She thought that she ought to feel sorry for the baby, too. When she was a little older, Elizabeth Cady realized what a pity it was that girls and women could not have the same privileges and advantages as had boys and men.

Elizabeth Cady was born at Johnstown, New York, November 12, 1815. When this little girl grew up, she called the first Woman’s Rights Convention and worked all her life to gain more privileges for women. As a child she felt the disadvantages of being a girl in the early days of the 1800’s.

When her only brother, a fine promising college graduate, died, eleven-year-old Elizabeth realized that her father loved his son far more than all of his five daughters. Longing to comfort him Elizabeth climbed on his knee.

“Oh, my daughter, would that you were a boy!” was all that he could say.

From that moment Elizabeth resolved to equal boys. To be learned and courageous she decided was the way to accomplish her purpose. Before breakfast the next morning she went to her dear friend and pastor and asked him to teach her Greek. She insisted on beginning that very minute. To prove herself courageous she learned to drive a horse, and to leap a fence and ditch on horseback.

Within a short time she began to study Greek, Latin, and mathematics with a class of boys at the village academy. She did so well that she won the second prize, a Greek testament. Joyfully Elizabeth rushed home expecting to hear her father say, “Now, you are equal to a boy.” However, his kisses and praise failed to take away the sting of his remark, “Ah, you should have been a boy!” Elizabeth’s father was a distinguished lawyer and judge. His office adjoined the house, and there his little daughter spent much of her time talking with his students and listening to his clients.

Often his clients were widows who wept and complained that the property which they had brought into the family had been willed to their sons. Elizabeth could not understand why her father, who was wise and kind, could not help these poor women. Then Judge Cady would take down from the shelves a big volume and show her the law.

The students, seeing how interested she was in the laws about women, amused themselves by reading to her the most unfair laws that they could find. They often teased her, too, in order to hear her bright remarks.

Little Elizabeth was so distressed by the unfairness of the law in regard to women that she made up her mind to cut them all out of her father’s law books. She refrained from doing this upon learning that it would not help the situation.

Much to her disgust Elizabeth Cady could not go to college, as did her boy classmates, for at that time girls were not admitted. However, she entered the Willard Seminary for girls in Troy, New York, where she studied for some time. Later she went on with her studies at home, never losing her interest in laws for women.

In her twenty-fifth year Elizabeth Cady married Henry B. Stanton, a lecturer on antislavery, who later became a lawyer. After several happy years in Johnstown and Boston, the young couple settled in Seneca Falls, New York. By this time the champion of woman’s rights began to know by experience something of a woman’s home problems. She had a big house to manage with very little help, and her lively girls and boys needed constant care.

In her round of everyday duties, however, Mrs. Stanton did not forget the wrongs to women. She, together with Lucretia Mott and some others, called a big meeting, the first Woman’s Rights Convention, at Seneca Falls in 1848, to talk over this question.

At this meeting Mrs. Stanton and her coworkers presented a Declaration of Sentiments based upon the Declaration of Independence. They also presented eleven resolutions, one of which demanded the vote for women. Mrs. Stanton was entirely responsible for this resolution and placed great emphasis upon it. She believed that through the ballot for women all other rights for women could be secured.

The newspapers made a great deal of fun of all the reforms discussed at the convention, particularly the proposal that women should vote. In those days most people were quite ready to admit that a woman could manage her home capably and be bright and entertaining in company. However, they thought it very unwomanly that she should dream of helping to make laws to secure better schools or cleaner streets.

Mrs. Stanton was surprised and distressed to have her very serious purpose treated so lightly, but ridicule did not prevent her from upholding woman’s rights whenever she had an opportunity.

Three years after this she met Susan B. Anthony, the woman who was to be her lifelong friend and fellow-worker. Except for their lectures in the cause of temperance and antislavery, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony gave their whole lives to gaining more freedom for their fellow-women.

The two friends were very different in characteristics, but they were of one mind on the question of woman’s rights. Miss Anthony had not at first thought it necessary for women to have the vote, but she was soon won over to her friend’s opinion. Year after year these two earnest workers endeavored to arouse the country to do something for women. Never a jealous thought as to which one should have the glory for anything accomplished marred this fifty years of friendship.

Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony lectured in big cities and all sorts of little out-of-the way places. Together with their friend Mrs. Gage, they wrote a very complete history of what had been done to gain the vote for women.

Of Mrs. Stanton’s children, a daughter, Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, has followed directly in her mother’s footsteps as a public speaker for the cause of women. She has also written several books about woman’s place in the work of the world. Theodore Stanton, one of the sons, also writes in behalf of women.

Throughout a long lifetime Elizabeth Cady Stanton courageously and steadfastly pleaded the cause of women. She lived to see them enjoying better property rights and educational privileges, and in four states helping to make the laws. Eighteen years after her death the Nineteenth Amendment gave the vote to women throughout the United States.