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Quick Facts

Troy Female Seminary , Johnstown Academy

New York, New York, Unites States

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an early leader of the woman's rights movement, writing the Declaration of Sentiments as a call to arms for female equality.

Who Was Elizabeth Cady Stanton?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an abolitionist and leading figure of the early woman's movement. An eloquent writer, her Declaration of Sentiments was a revolutionary call for women's rights across a variety of spectrums. Stanton was the president of the National Woman Suffrage Association for 20 years and worked closely with Susan B. Anthony.

Early Life

Stanton was born on November 12, 1815, in Johnstown, New York. The daughter of a lawyer who made no secret of his preference for another son, she early showed her desire to excel in intellectual and other "male" spheres. She graduated from Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary in 1832, and then was drawn to the abolitionist, temperance and women's rights movements through visits to the home of her cousin, the reformer Gerrit Smith.

In 1840, Elizabeth Cady Stanton married a reformer Henry Stanton (omitting "obey" from the marriage oath), and they went at once to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London, where she joined other women in objecting to their exclusion from the assembly. On returning to the United States, Stanton and Henry had seven children while he studied and practiced law, and eventually, they settled in Seneca Falls, New York.

Women's Rights Movement

With Lucretia Mott and several other women, Stanton held the famous Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848. At this meeting, the attendees drew up its "Declaration of Sentiments" and took the lead in proposing that women be granted the right to vote. She continued to write and lecture on women's rights and other reforms of the day. After meeting Susan B. Anthony in the early 1850s, she was one of the leaders in promoting women's rights in general (such as divorce) and the right to vote in particular.

During the Civil War, Stanton concentrated her efforts on abolishing slavery, but afterward she became even more outspoken in promoting women suffrage. In 1868, she worked with Anthony on the Revolution, a militant weekly paper. The two then formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869. Stanton was the NWSA's first president, a position she held until 1890. At that time, the organization merged with another suffrage group to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Stanton served as the president of the new organization for two years.

Later Work and Death

As a part of her work on behalf of women's rights, Stanton often traveled to give lectures and speeches. She called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the right to vote. Stanton also worked with Anthony on the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage (1881-1886). Matilda Joslyn Gage also worked with the pair on parts of the project.

Besides chronicling the history of the suffrage movement, Stanton took on the role religion played in the struggle for equal rights for women. She had long argued that the Bible and organized religion played in denying women their full rights. With her daughter, Harriet Stanton Blatch, she published a critique, The Woman's Bible, which was published in two volumes. The first volume appeared in 1895 and the second in 1898. This brought considerable protest not only from expected religious quarters but from many in the woman suffrage movement.

Stanton died on October 26, 1902. More so than many other women in that movement, she was able and willing to speak out on a wide spectrum of issues - from the primacy of legislatures over the courts and constitution to women's right to ride bicycles - and she deserves to be recognized as one of the more remarkable individuals in American history.

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Troy Female Seminary , Johnstown Academy New York, New York, Unites States Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an early leader of the woman's rights movement, writing the Declaration of Sentiments as a call to arms for female equality. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an abolitionist and leading figure of the early woman's movement.

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July 19, 1848 The Seneca Falls Convention was held

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Susan B. Anthony (1820-1908) was an American civil rights leader during the 19th century and a prominent figure in the campaign to secure women's suffrage in the United States. A staunch abolitionist in her younger years, Anthony is known more for her role as a women's rights activist. Together with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony founded a number of organizations committed to social reform. They include the Women's Loyal National League, the American Equal Rights Association, a women's rights newspaper called The Revolution, and the National Woman Suffrage Association. Anthony became the first woman to be featured on U.S. currency in 1979 when her face appeared on the dollar coin.

"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation."

from On the Campaign for Divorce Law Reform (1860)

(h/t Wikiquote)

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Susan B. Anthony: "Cautious, careful people... never can bring about a reform."

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Susan B. Anthony (1820-1908) was an American civil rights leader during the 19th century and a prominent figure in the campaign to secure women's suffrage in the United States. A staunch abolitionist in her younger years, Anthony is known more for her role as a women's rights activist.

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Back then, women did not have many rights like they could not vote and their husbands were quote on quote owners of their wife. This was happening during when America was reforming the land. So this was a perfect time to take care of this situation.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the leader of this whole women's rights movement. Their a convention called the Seneca Falls convention.Susan B. Anthony was the leader of the convention.

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This is Harriet Tubman

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Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S HARRIET TUBMAN FACT CARD

Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

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Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

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Watch This!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Abolitionists were people who wanted to get rid of slavery and "Abolish" it. These people were doing this during when tons of people were trying to reform the world. There were many abolitionists that were white people and African Americans.

One of the Abolitionists was called Frederick Douglass made the newspaper called the North Star. Harriet Tubman was another one that made the underground railroad.Angelina and Sarah Grimke gave lectures of how evil slavery is.

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Frederick Douglass was a leader in the abolitionist movement, an early champion of women’s rights and author of ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.’

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These are the Grimke Sisters

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Carol Ezell-Gilson says it's time for Charleston to reclaim the Grimke sisters.

And she's just the person to make sure that happens.

The sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke were born into a prominent Charleston family at the turn of the 19th century. They didn't take to the life well, uncomfortable with the role of women in society of the day and appalled by the notion of slavery.

They would eventually become the nation's first female abolitionists and early pioneers of the women's rights movement. In the 1830's, they published an anti-slavery pamphlet that was the most famous treatise on abolition until "Uncle Tom's Cabin" came along.

But the Grimke sisters were largely forgotten, at least until Lowcountry writer Sue Monk Kidd made Sarah the protagonist of her novel, "The Invention of Wings." Now, a lot of people are catching up to Ezell-Gilson, who first learned about the sisters 30 years ago. She first read about them when studying the book given to Charleston tour guides. There was a brief mention, but not nearly enough detail for Ezell-Gilson.

"I'd never heard of abolitionists from Charleston, especially not women," she says. "I was fascinated."

Sarah Grimke was born in 1792, the sixth child of Judge John Grimke - a planter, lawyer, politician and veteran of the Revolutionary War. Her mother was the daughter of a prominent South Carolina banker.

From a young age, Sarah was frustrated by the limitations imposed on her by gender. The only thing that upset her more was the way slaves were treated. When she was given a slave girl of her very own, Sarah defied state law and taught her slave to read.

It was just the beginning of her revolt against the time.

Angelina was born 13 years after Sarah, and shared her views - and was much more vocal about it. Eventually, as adults they escaped the South and moved to Philadelphia (Sarah left first, Angelina followed 13 years later). They became Quakers, but soon found even that group stifled their beliefs too much.

In 1831, they began to read anti-slavery papers. When Angelina wrote to one publication's editor, praising his work, she found her private letter published in a subsequent issue. The sisters had found their voice.

Soon, Angelina wrote an "Appeal to Southern Women," reminding her audience that although they could not vote, they were the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of the men who made all the decisions.

They should exert their influence, Angelina wrote, as she was trying to exert hers.

When her "Appeal" was published in 1837, copies were publicly burned in Charleston. Their mother was warned the sisters would be arrested if they ever showed their face in the Holy City.

They would never return.

Sarah and Angelina ultimately became the first female abolitionist agents in the United States, and agitated for their cause for more than a decade, speaking in parlors and churches across the country.

In 1848, they participated in the first meeting for women's rights in Seneca Falls.

They were heroes and role models to the folks who organized it.

The Grimke sisters may have faded from Charleston memory because all of their life's work was done after they left the city.

Or it could be because most of that work was burned outside the Custom House.

But there are still remnants of their history here. Sarah actually grew up in the Heyward-Washington house - which her family bought shortly after George Washington stayed there in 1791.

In fact, Ezell-Gilson believes it should be known as the Heyward-Washington-Grimke house.

The family eventually moved, and Angelina grew up in an East Bay house that is currently a law office.

Ezell-Gilson is currently finishing a portrait of the sisters, perhaps the first ever done, and it will be on display at the Preservation Society of Charleston during its Fall Tour of Homes.

Also, she and fellow tour guide Lee Ann Bain have put together a Grimke sisters tour that will run Thursdays through Sundays the first four weeks of October.

To book a tour, call 1-800-514-3849 or go online at thefalltours.org.

There is a lot more to this story than you can learn in a few minutes, and Ezell-Gilson is right - it's time for Charleston reclaim this important chapter of its rich history.

Reach Brian Hicks at bhicks@postandcourier.com.

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Grimke sisters need to be a bigger part of Charleston's rich history

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Carol Ezell-Gilson says it's time for Charleston to reclaim the Grimke sisters. And she's just the person to make sure that happens. The sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke were born into a prominent Charleston family at the turn of the 19th century.