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While the legal definitions of consent may vary by location and circumstance, the general concept is always the same: Consent is an ongoing process of discussing boundaries and what you're comfortable with. Let's get specific about how consent plays out in real life.

What is consent?

Consent is an agreement between participants to engage in sexual activity. Consent should be clearly and freely communicated. A verbal and affirmative expression of consent can help both you and your partner to understand and respect each other's boundaries.

Consent cannot be given by individuals who are underage, intoxicated or incapacitated by drugs or alcohol, or asleep or unconscious. If someone agrees to an activity under pressure of intimidation or threat, that isn't considered consent because it was not given freely. Unequal power dynamics, such as engaging in sexual activity with an employee or student, also mean that consent cannot be freely given.

How does consent work?

When you're engaging in sexual activity, consent is about communication. And it should happen every time for every type of activity. Consenting to one activity, one time, does not mean someone gives consent for other activities or for the same activity on other occasions. For example, agreeing to kiss someone doesn't give that person permission to remove your clothes. Having sex with someone in the past doesn't give that person permission to have sex with you again in the future. It's important to discuss boundaries and expectations with your partner prior to engaging in any sexual behavior.

You can change your mind at any time.

You can withdraw consent at any point if you feel uncomfortable. One way to do this is to clearly communicate to your partner that you are no longer comfortable with this activity and wish to stop. Withdrawing consent can sometimes be challenging or difficult to do verbally, so non-verbal cues can also be used to convey this. The best way to ensure that all parties are comfortable with any sexual activity is to talk about it, check in periodically, and make sure everyone involved consents before escalating or changing activities.

What is enthusiastic consent?

Enthusiastic consent is a newer model for understanding consent that focuses on a positive expression of consent. Simply put, enthusiastic consent means looking for the presence of a "yes" rather than the absence of a "no." Enthusiastic consent can be expressed verbally or through nonverbal cues, such as positive body language like smiling, maintaining eye contact, and nodding. These cues alone do not necessarily represent consent, but they are additional details that may reflect consent. It is necessary, however, to still seek verbal confirmation. The important part of consent, enthusiastic or otherwise, is checking in with your partner regularly to make sure that they are still on the same page.

Enthusiastic consent can look like this:

Asking permission before you change the type or degree of sexual activity with phrases like "Is this OK?"

Confirming that there is reciprocal interest before initiating any physical touch.

Letting your partner know that you can stop at any time.

Periodically checking in with your partner, such as asking "Is this still okay?"

Providing positive feedback when you're comfortable with an activity.

Explicitly agreeing to certain activities, either by saying "yes" or another affirmative statement, like "I'm open to trying."

Using physical cues to let the other person know you're comfortable taking things to the next level (see note below).

Note: Physiological responses like an erection, lubrication, arousal, or orgasm are involuntary, meaning your body might react one way even when you are not consenting to the activity. Sometimes perpetrators will use the fact that these physiological responses occur to maintain secrecy or minimize a survivor's experience by using phrases such as, "You know you liked it." In no way does a physiological response mean that you consented to what happened. If you have been sexually abused or assaulted, it is not your fault.

Consent does NOT look like this:

Refusing to acknowledge "no"

A partner who is disengaged, nonresponsive, or visibly upset

Assuming that wearing certain clothes, flirting, or kissing is an invitation for anything more

Someone being under the legal age of consent, as defined by the state

Someone being incapacitated because of drugs or alcohol Pressuring someone into sexual activity by using fear or intimidation

Assuming you have permission to engage in a sexual act because you've done it in the past

If you've experienced sexual assault, you're not alone. To speak with someone who is trained to help, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) or chat online at online.rainn.org.
Legal Disclaimer

The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) website provides general information that is intended, but not guaranteed, to be correct and up-to-date. The information is not presented as a source of legal advice. You should not rely, for legal advice, on statements or representations made within the website or by any externally referenced Internet sites. If you need legal advice upon which you intend to rely in the course of your legal affairs, consult a competent, independent attorney. RAINN does not assume any responsibility for actions or non-actions taken by people who have visited this site, and no one shall be entitled to a claim for detrimental reliance on any information provided or expressed.

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While the legal definitions of consent may vary by location and circumstance, the general concept is always the same: Consent is an ongoing process of discussing boundaries and what you're comfortable with. Let's get specific about how consent plays out in real life. Consent is an agreement between participants to engage in sexual activity.

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😍💜💚❤️💛💘💝🧡😍💜💚💞💘💝 outloud

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About 10 years ago, after I'd graduated college but when I was still waitressing full-time, I attended an empowerment seminar. It was the kind of nebulous weekend-long event sold as helping people discover their dreams and unburden themselves from past trauma through honesty exercises and the encouragement to "be present." But there was one moment I've never forgotten. The group leader, a man in his 40s, asked anyone in the room of 200 or so people who'd been sexually or physically abused to raise their hands. Six or seven hands tentatively went up. The leader instructed us to close our eyes, and asked the question again. Then he told us to open our eyes. Almost every hand in the room was raised.

For a long time, most women defined their own sexual harassment and assault in this way: as something unspoken, something private, something to be ashamed of acknowledging. Silence, although understandable, has its cost. A decade ago, I couldn't have conceived of the fact that so many women had experienced sexual coercion or intimidation; now, I'd be surprised if I could find a single one who hadn't. On Sunday afternoon, the actress Alyssa Milano used her Twitter account to encourage women who'd been sexually harassed or assaulted to tweet the words #MeToo. In the last 24 hours, a spokesperson from Twitter confirmed, the hashtag had been tweeted nearly half a million times.

If you've been sexually harassed or assaulted write 'me too' as a reply to this tweet. pic.twitter.com/k2oeCiUf9n
- Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) October 15, 2017

#MeToo wasn't just mushrooming on Twitter-when I checked Facebook Monday morning, my feed was filled with friends and acquaintances acknowledging publicly that they, too, had experienced harassment or assault. Some shared their stories, some simply posted the hashtag to add their voices to the fray. And it wasn't just women: Men also spoke up about their experiences with assault. Actors including Anna Paquin, Debra Messing, Rosario Dawson, Gabrielle Union, and Evan Rachel Wood joined in. The writer Alexis Benveniste used it to remind people that the messages they were seeing were only the tip of the iceberg. For every woman stating her own experiences out loud, there were likely just as many choosing not to do so.

Reminder that if a woman didn't post #MeToo, it doesn't mean she wasn't sexually assaulted or harassed. Survivors don't owe you their story.
- Alexis Benveniste (@apbenven) October 16, 2017

Related Stories

For all the frequent grumbles about the passivity of most forms of Twitter activism, this was a moment in which the form fit perfectly with the message: The goal of #MeToo, as Milano's friend told her, was simply to give people a sense of "the magnitude of the problem." Waking up to a feed dominated by women discussing their experiences of harassment and assault, it turns out, will do that. For more than a week, social media has been filled with stories told by women about their interactions with the producer Harvey Weinstein, accusations that range from verbal coercion to rape. But as horrifying as the allegations against Weinstein have been, more appalling still is the sense that his behavior isn't uncommon. That in industries across the world, from media to music to modeling to academia, women have encountered their own Weinsteins and have deduced, for whatever reason, that nothing could be done about it and nobody cared.

The power of #MeToo, though, is that it takes something that women had long kept quiet about and transforms it into a movement. Unlike many kinds of social-media activism, it isn't a call to action or the beginning of a campaign, culminating in a series of protests and speeches and events. It's simply an attempt to get people to understand the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault in society. To get women, and men, to raise their hands. Recent revelations about the alleged abuses of Weinstein and Bill Cosby and Jimmy Savile and R. Kelly have proven that truth has power. There's a monumental amount of work to be done in confronting a climate of serial sexual predation-one in which women are belittled and undermined and abused and sometimes pushed out of their industries altogether. But uncovering the colossal scale of the problem is revolutionary in its own right.

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About 10 years ago, after I'd graduated college but when I was still waitressing full-time, I attended an empowerment seminar. It was the kind of nebulous weekend-long event sold as helping people discover their dreams and unburden themselves from past trauma through honesty exercises and the encouragement to "be present."

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I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes." They will say, "Women don't have what it takes." ~Clare Boothe Luce

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Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Baumfree; c. 1797 - November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist of New York Dutch heritage and activist for African-American civil rights, women's rights, and alcohol temperance. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son in 1828, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man.

She gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 after she became convinced that God had called her to leave the city and go into the countryside "testifying to the hope that was in her." Her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. The speech became widely known during the Civil War by the title " Ain't I a Woman?", a variation of the original speech that was published in 1863 as being spoken in a stereotypical Black dialect, then more commonly spoken in the South. Sojourner Truth, however, was from New York and grew up speaking Dutch as her first language.

During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for formerly enslaved people (summarized as the promise of " forty acres and a mule"). She continued to fight on behalf of women and African Americans until her death. As her biographer Nell Irvin Painter wrote, "At a time when most Americans thought of slaves as male and women as white, Truth embodied a fact that still bears repeating: Among the blacks are women; among the women, there are blacks."

A memorial bust of Truth was unveiled in 2009 in Emancipation Hall in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. She is the first African American woman to have a statue in the Capitol building. In 2014, Truth was included in Smithsonian magazine's list of the "100 Most Significant Americans of All Time."

Early years

House of Col. Johannes Hardenbergh

Sojourner Truth once estimated that she was born between 1797 and 1800. Truth was one of the 10 or 12 children born to James and Elizabeth Baumfree (or Bomefree). Her father was an enslaved man captured from present-day Ghana, while her mother - nicknamed "Mau-Mau Bet" - was the daughter of slaves captured from Guinea. Colonel Hardenbergh bought James and Elizabeth Baumfree from slave traders and kept their family at his estate in a big hilly area called by the Dutch name Swartekill (just north of present-day Rifton), in the town of Esopus, New York, 95 miles (153 km) north of New York City. Her first language was Dutch, and she continued to speak with a Dutch accent for the rest of her life. Charles Hardenbergh inherited his father's estate and continued to enslave people as a part of that estate's property.

When Charles Hardenbergh died in 1806, nine-year-old Truth (known as Belle), was sold at an auction with a flock of sheep for $100 (~$1,871 in 2022) to John Neely, near Kingston, New York. Until that time, Truth spoke only Dutch, and after learning English, she spoke with a Dutch accent and not a stereotypical dialect. She later described Neely as cruel and harsh, relating how he beat her daily and once even with a bundle of rods. In 1808 Neely sold her for $105 (~$1,924 in 2022) to tavern keeper Martinus Schryver of Port Ewen, New York, who owned her for 18 months. Schryver then sold Truth in 1810 to John Dumont of West Park, New York. John Dumont raped her repeatedly, and considerable tension existed between Truth and Dumont's wife, Elizabeth Waring Dumont, who harassed her and made her life more difficult.

Around 1815, Truth met and fell in love with an enslaved man named Robert from a neighboring farm. Robert's owner ( Charles Catton, Jr., a landscape painter) forbade their relationship; he did not want the people he enslaved to have children with people he was not enslaving, because he would not own the children. One day Robert sneaked over to see Truth. When Catton and his son found him, they savagely beat Robert until Dumont finally intervened. Truth never saw Robert again after that day and he died a few years later. The experience haunted Truth throughout her life. Truth eventually married an older enslaved man named Thomas. She bore five children: James, her firstborn, who died in childhood; Diana (1815), the result of a rape by John Dumont; and Peter (1821), Elizabeth (1825), and Sophia ( c.  1826), all born after she and Thomas united.

In 1799, the State of New York began to legislate the abolition of slavery, although the process of emancipating those people enslaved in New York was not complete until July 4, 1827. Dumont had promised to grant Truth her freedom a year before the state emancipation, "if she would do well and be faithful". However, he changed his mind, claiming a hand injury had made her less productive. She was infuriated but continued working, spinning 100 pounds (45 kg) of wool, to satisfy her sense of obligation to him.

Late in 1826, Truth escaped to freedom with her infant daughter, Sophia. She had to leave her other children behind because they were not legally freed in the emancipation order until they had served as bound servants into their twenties. She later said, "I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right."

She found her way to the home of Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen in New Paltz, who took her and her baby in. Isaac offered to buy her services for the remainder of the year (until the state's emancipation took effect), which Dumont accepted for $20. She lived there until the New York State Emancipation Act was approved a year later.

Truth learned that her son Peter, then five years old, had been sold by Dumont and then illegally resold to an owner in Alabama. With the help of the Van Wagenens, she took the issue to the New York Supreme Court. Using the name Isabella van Wagenen, she filed a suit against Peter's new owner Solomon Gedney. In 1828, after months of legal proceedings, she got back her son, who had been abused by those who were enslaving him. Truth became one of the first black women to go to court against a white man and win the case. The court documents related to this lawsuit were rediscovered by the staff at the New York State Archives c.  2022.

In 1827, she became a Christian and participated in the founding of the Methodist church of Kingston, New York. In 1829, she moved to New York City and joined the John Street Methodist Church ( Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church).

In 1833, she was hired by Robert Matthews, also known as the Prophet Matthias, leader of a sect who identified with Judaism, went to work for him as a housekeeper in the communal settlement, and became a member of the group. In 1834, Matthews and Truth were charged with the murder of Elijah Pierson, but were acquitted due to lack of evidence and Truth's presentation of several letters confirming her reliability as a servant. The trial then focused on the reported beating of his daughter of which he was found guilty and sentenced to three months and an additional thirty days for contempt of court. This event prompted Truth to leave the sect in 1835.Afterwards, she retired to New York City until 1843.

In 1839, Truth's son Peter took a job on a whaling ship called the Zone of Nantucket. From 1840 to 1841, she received three letters from him, though in his third letter he told her he had sent five. Peter said he also never received any of her letters. When the ship returned to port in 1842, Peter was not on board and Truth never heard from him again.

The result of freedom

The year 1843 was a turning point for her. On June 1, Pentecost Sunday, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth. She chose the name because she heard the Spirit of God calling on her to preach the truth. She told her friends: "The Spirit calls me, and I must go", and left to make her way traveling and preaching about the abolition of slavery. Taking along only a few possessions in a pillowcase, she traveled north, working her way up through the Connecticut River Valley, towards Massachusetts.

At that time, Truth began attending Millerite Adventist camp meetings. Millerites followed the teachings of William Miller of New York, who preached that Jesus would appear in 1843-1844, bringing about the end of the world. Many in the Millerite community greatly appreciated Truth's preaching and singing, and she drew large crowds when she spoke. Like many others disappointed when the anticipated second coming did not arrive, Truth distanced herself from her Millerite friends for a time.

In 1844, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Florence, Massachusetts. Founded by abolitionists, the organization supported women's rights and religious tolerance as well as pacifism. There were, in its four-and-a-half-year history, a total of 240 members, though no more than 120 at any one time. They lived on 470 acres (1.9 km ²), raising livestock, running a sawmill, a gristmill, and a silk factory. Truth lived and worked in the community and oversaw the laundry, supervising both men and women. While there, Truth met William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and David Ruggles. Encouraged by the community, Truth delivered her first anti-slavery speech that year.

In 1845, she joined the household of George Benson, the brother-in-law of William Lloyd Garrison. In 1846, the Northampton Association of Education and Industry disbanded, unable to support itself. In 1849, she visited John Dumont before he moved west.

Truth started dictating her memoirs to her friend Olive Gilbert and in 1850 William Lloyd Garrison privately published her book, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: a Northern Slave. That same year, she purchased a home in Florence for $300 and spoke at the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1854, with proceeds from sales of the narrative and cartes-de-visite captioned, "I sell the shadow to support the substance", she paid off the mortgage held by her friend from the community, Samuel L. Hill.

"Ain't I a Woman?"

In 1851, Truth joined George Thompson, an abolitionist and speaker, on a lecture tour through central and western New York State. In May, she attended the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, where she delivered her famous extemporaneous speech on women's rights, later known as " Ain't I a Woman?". Her speech demanded equal human rights for all women. She also spoke as a former enslaved woman, combining calls for abolitionism with women's rights, and drawing from her strength as a laborer to make her equal rights claims.

The convention was organized by Hannah Tracy and Frances Dana Barker Gage, who both were present when Truth spoke. Different versions of Truth's words have been recorded, with the first one published a month later in the Anti-Slavery Bugle by Rev. Marius Robinson, the newspaper owner and editor who was in the audience. Robinson's recounting of the speech included no instance of the question "Ain't I a Woman?", nor did any of the other newspapers reporting of her speech at the time. Twelve years later, in May 1863, Gage published another, very different, version. In it, Truth's speech pattern appeared to have characteristics of Black slaves located in the southern United States, and the speech was vastly different from the one Robinson had reported. Gage's version of the speech became the most widely circulated version, and is known as "Ain't I a Woman?" because that question was repeated four times. It is highly unlikely that Truth's own speech pattern was like this, as she was born and raised in New York, and she spoke only upper New York State low-Dutch until she was nine years old.

In the version recorded by Rev. Marius Robinson, Truth said:

I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman's rights. [] I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now. As for intellect, all I can say is, if a woman have a pint, and a man a quart - why can't she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much, - for we can't take more than our pint'll hold. The poor men seems to be all in confusion, and don't know what to do. Why children, if you have woman's rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won't be so much trouble. I can't read, but I can hear. I have heard the Bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again. The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept and Lazarus came forth. And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and the woman who bore him. Man, where was your part? But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.

In contrast to Robinson's report, Gage's 1863 version included Truth saying her 13 children were sold away from her into slavery. Truth is widely believed to have had five children, with one sold away, and was never known to boast more children. Gage's 1863 recollection of the convention conflicts with her own report directly after the convention: Gage wrote in 1851 that Akron in general and the press, in particular, were largely friendly to the woman's rights convention, but in 1863 she wrote that the convention leaders were fearful of the "mobbish" opponents. Other eyewitness reports of Truth's speech told a calm story, one where all faces were "beaming with joyous gladness" at the session where Truth spoke; that not "one discordant note" interrupted the harmony of the proceedings. In contemporary reports, Truth was warmly received by the convention-goers, the majority of whom were long-standing abolitionists, friendly to progressive ideas of race and civil rights. In Gage's 1863 version, Truth was met with hisses, with voices calling to prevent her from speaking. Other interracial gatherings of black and white abolitionist women had in fact been met with violence, including the burning of Pennsylvania Hall.

According to Frances Gage's recount in 1863, Truth argued, "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me any best place. And ain't I a woman?" Truth's "Ain't I a Woman" showed the lack of recognition that black women received during this time and whose lack of recognition will continue to be seen long after her time. "Black women, of course, were virtually invisible within the protracted campaign for woman suffrage", wrote Angela Davis, supporting Truth's argument that nobody gives her "any best place"; and not just her, but black women in general.

Over the next 10 years, Truth spoke before dozens, perhaps hundreds, of audiences. From 1851 to 1853, Truth worked with Marius Robinson, the editor of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Bugle, and traveled around that state speaking. In 1853, she spoke at a suffragist "mob convention" at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City; that year she also met Harriet Beecher Stowe. In 1856, she traveled to Battle Creek, Michigan, to speak to a group called the Friends of Human Progress.

Other speeches

Truth sold cartes-de-visite and cabinet cards, such as this one, to raise money for her work. The text above her name reads "I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance".[46][38]

Northampton Camp Meeting - 1844, Northampton, Massachusetts: At a camp meeting where she was participating as an itinerant preacher, a band of "wild young men" disrupted the camp meeting, refused to leave, and threatened to burn down the tents. Truth caught the sense of fear pervading the worshipers and hid behind a trunk in her tent, thinking that since she was the only black person present, the mob would attack her first. However, she reasoned with herself and resolved to do something: as the noise of the mob increased and a female preacher was "trembling on the preachers' stand", Truth went to a small hill and began to sing "in her most fervid manner, with all the strength of her most powerful voice, the hymn on the resurrection of Christ". Her song, "It was Early in the Morning", gathered the rioters to her and quieted them. They urged her to sing, preach, and pray for their entertainment. After singing songs and preaching for about an hour, Truth bargained with them to leave after one final song. The mob agreed and left the camp meeting.

Abolitionist Convention - 1840s, Boston, Massachusetts: William Lloyd Garrison invited Sojourner Truth to give a speech at an annual antislavery convention. Wendell Phillips was supposed to speak after her, which made her nervous since he was known as such a good orator. So Truth sang a song, "I am Pleading for My people", which was her own original composition sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.

Mob Convention - September 7, 1853: At the convention, young men greeted her with "a perfect storm", hissing and groaning. In response, Truth said, "You may hiss as much as you please, but women will get their rights anyway. You can't stop us, neither". Sojourner, like other public speakers, often adapted her speeches to how the audience was responding to her. In her speech, Sojourner speaks out for women's rights. She incorporates religious references in her speech, particularly the story of Esther. She then goes on to say that, just as women in scripture, women today are fighting for their rights. Moreover, Sojourner scolds the crowd for all their hissing and rude behavior, reminding them that God says to "Honor thy father and thy mother".

American Equal Rights Association - May 9-10, 1867: Her speech was addressed to the American Equal Rights Association, and divided into three sessions. Sojourner was received with loud cheers instead of hisses, now that she had a better-formed reputation established. The Call had advertised her name as one of the main convention speakers. For the first part of her speech, she spoke mainly about the rights of black women. Sojourner argued that because the push for equal rights had led to black men winning new rights, now was the best time to give black women the rights they deserve too. Throughout her speech she kept stressing that "we should keep things going while things are stirring" and fears that once the fight for colored rights settles down, it would take a long time to warm people back up to the idea of colored women's having equal rights.

In the second sessions of Sojourner's speech, she used a story from the Bible to help strengthen her argument for equal rights for women. She ended her argument by accusing men of being self-centered, saying: "Man is so selfish that he has got women's rights and his own too, and yet he won't give women their rights. He keeps them all to himself." For the final session of Sojourner's speech, the center of her attention was mainly on women's right to vote. Sojourner told her audience that she owned her own house, as did other women, and must, therefore, pay taxes. Nevertheless, they were still unable to vote because they were women. Black women who were enslaved were made to do hard manual work, such as building roads. Sojourner argues that if these women were able to perform such tasks, then they should be allowed to vote because surely voting is easier than building roads.

Eighth Anniversary of Negro Freedom - New Year's Day, 1871: On this occasion the Boston papers related that "...seldom is there an occasion of more attraction or greater general interest. Every available space of sitting and standing room was crowded". She starts off her speech by giving a little background about her own life. Sojourner recounts how her mother told her to pray to God that she may have good masters and mistresses. She goes on to retell how her masters were not good to her, about how she was whipped for not understanding English, and how she would question God why he had not made her masters be good to her. Sojourner admits to the audience that she had once hated white people, but she says once she met her final master, Jesus, she was filled with love for everyone. Once enslaved folks were emancipated, she tells the crowd she knew her prayers had been answered. That last part of Sojourner's speech brings in her main focus. Some freed enslaved people were living on government aid at that time, paid for by taxpayers. Sojourner announces that this is not any better for those colored people than it is for the members of her audience. She then proposes that black people are given their own land. Because a portion of the South's population contained rebels that were unhappy with the abolishment of slavery, that region of the United States was not well suited for colored people. She goes on to suggest that colored people be given land out west to build homes and prosper on.

Second Annual Convention of the American Woman Suffrage Association - Boston, 1871: In a brief speech, Truth argued that women's rights were essential, not only to their own well-being, but "for the benefit of the whole creation, not only the women, but all the men on the face of the earth, for they were the mother of them".

On a mission

Truth dedicated her life to fighting for a more equal society for African Americans and for women, including abolition, voting rights, and property rights. She was at the vanguard of efforts to address intersecting social justice issues. As historian Martha Jones wrote, "[w]hen Black women like Truth spoke of rights, they mixed their ideas with challenges to slavery and to racism. Truth told her own stories, ones that suggested that a women's movement might take another direction, one that championed the broad interests of all humanity."

Truth-along with Stephen Symonds Foster and Abby Kelley Foster, Jonathan Walker, Marius Robinson, and Sallie Holley-reorganized the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society in 1853 in Adrian, Michigan. The state society was founded in 1836 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In 1856, Truth bought a neighboring lot in Northampton, but she did not keep the new property for long. On September 3, 1857, she sold all her possessions, new and old, to Daniel Ives and moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, where she rejoined former members of the Millerite movement who had formed the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Antislavery movements had begun early in Michigan and Ohio. Here, she also joined the nucleus of the Michigan abolitionists, the Progressive Friends, some who she had already met at national conventions. From 1857 to 1867 Truth lived in the village of Harmonia, Michigan, a Spiritualist utopia. She then moved into nearby Battle Creek, Michigan, living at her home on 38 College St. until her death in 1883. According to the 1860 census, her household in Harmonia included her daughter, Elizabeth Banks (age 35), and her grandsons James Caldwell (misspelled as "Colvin"; age 16) and Sammy Banks (age 8).

Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army during the Civil War. Her grandson, James Caldwell, enlisted in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. In 1864, Truth was employed by the National Freedman's Relief Association in Washington, D.C., where she worked diligently to improve conditions for African-Americans. In October of that year, she was invited to the White House by President Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, while working at the Freedman's Hospital in Washington, Truth rode in the streetcars to help force their desegregation.

Truth is credited with writing a song, " The Valiant Soldiers", for the 1st Michigan Colored Regiment; it was said to be composed during the war and sung by her in Detroit and Washington, D.C. It is sung to the tune of " John Brown's Body" or " The Battle Hymn of the Republic". Although Truth claimed to have written the words, it has been disputed (see " Marching Song of the First Arkansas").

In 1867, Truth moved from Harmonia to Battle Creek. In 1868, she traveled to western New York and visited with Amy Post, and continued traveling all over the East Coast. At a speaking engagement in Florence, Massachusetts, after she had just returned from a very tiring trip, when Truth was called upon to speak she stood up and said, "Children, I have come here like the rest of you, to hear what I have to say."

In 1870, Truth tried to secure land grants from the federal government to former enslaved people, a project she pursued for seven years without success. While in Washington, D.C., she had a meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant in the White House. In 1872, she returned to Battle Creek, became active in Grant's presidential re-election campaign, and even tried to vote on Election Day, but was turned away at the polling place.

Truth spoke about abolition, women's rights, prison reform, and preached to the Michigan Legislature against capital punishment. Not everyone welcomed her preaching and lectures, but she had many friends and staunch support among many influential people at the time, including Amy Post, Parker Pillsbury, Frances Gage, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Laura Smith Haviland, Lucretia Mott, Ellen G. White, and Susan B. Anthony.

Illness and death

Truth's grave at Oak Hill Cemetery

Truth was cared for by two of her daughters in the last years of her life. Several days before Sojourner Truth died, a reporter came from the Grand Rapids Eagle to interview her. "Her face was drawn and emaciated and she was apparently suffering great pain. Her eyes were very bright and mind alert although it was difficult for her to talk."

Truth died early in the morning on November 26, 1883, at her Battle Creek home. On November 28, 1883, her funeral was held at the Congregational-Presbyterian Church officiated by its pastor, the Reverend Reed Stuart. Some of the prominent citizens of Battle Creek acted as pall-bearers; nearly one thousand people attended the service. Truth was buried in the city's Oak Hill Cemetery.

Frederick Douglass offered a eulogy for her in Washington, D.C. "Venerable for age, distinguished for insight into human nature, remarkable for independence and courageous self-assertion, devoted to the welfare of her race, she has been for the last forty years an object of respect and admiration to social reformers everywhere."

Monuments and statues

There have been many memorials erected in honor of Sojourner Truth, commemorating her life and work. These include memorial plaques, busts, and full-sized statues.

1999 marked the estimated bicentennial of Sojourner's birth. To honor the occasion, a larger-than-life sculpture of Sojourner Truth by Tina Allen was added to Monument Park in Battle Creek. The 12-foot tall Sojourner monument is cast in bronze.

In 1981, an Ohio Historical Marker was unveiled on the site of the Universalist "Old Stone" Church in Akron, Ohio, where Sojourner Truth gave her famous "And aren't (ain't) I a woman?" speech on May 29, 1851.

In 1998, on the 150th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention, a life-sized, terracotta statue of Truth by artists A. Lloyd Lillie, Jr., and Victoria Guerina was unveiled at the Women's Rights National Historical Park visitor's center. Although Truth did not attend the convention, the statue marked Truth's famous 1851 speech in Akron, Ohio, and recognized her important role in the fight for women's suffrage.

In 2020, a statue was unveiled at the Walkway Over the Hudson park in Highland, New York. It was created by Yonkers sculptor Vinnie Bagwell, commissioned by the New York State Women's Suffrage Commission. The statue includes text, braille, and symbols. The folds of her skirt act as a canvas to depict Sojourner's life experiences, including images of a young enslaved mother comforting her child, a slavery sale sign, images of her abolitionist peers, and a poster for a women's suffrage march.

On August 26, 2020, on the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a statue honoring Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony was unveiled in Central Park in New York City. The sculpture, entitled " Women's Rights Pioneers Monument", was created by American artist Meredith Bergmann. It is the first sculpture in Central Park to depict historical women. A statue to the fictional character Alice in Wonderland is the only other female figure depicted in the park. Original plans for the memorial included only Stanton and Anthony, but after critics raised objections to the lack of inclusion of women of color, Truth was added to the design.

California

In 1999, Sojourner, a Mexican limestone statue of Sojourner Truth by sculptor Elizabeth Catlett, was unveiled in Sacramento, California on the corner of K and 13th Street. It was vandalized in 2013, where it was found smashed into pieces.

A bronze statue by San Diego sculptor Manuelita Brown was dedicated on January 22, 2015, on the campus of the Thurgood Marshall College of Law, of the University of California, San Diego, California. The artist donated the sculpture to the college.

Massachusetts

In 2002, the Sojourner Truth Memorial statue by Oregon sculptor Thomas "Jay" Warren was installed in Florence, Massachusetts, in a small park located on Pine Street and Park Street, on which she lived for ten years.

Washington, D.C.

In 2009, a bust of Sojourner Truth was installed in the U.S. Capitol. The bust was sculpted by noted artist Artis Lane. It is in Emancipation Hall of the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. With this installation, Truth became the first black woman to be honored with a statue in the Capitol building.

Additional recognition

In regard to the magazine , which began in 1972, Gloria Steinem has stated, "We were going to call it Sojourner, after Sojourner Truth, but that was perceived as a travel magazine.

Truth was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1981. She was also inducted to the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame, in Lansing, Michigan. She was part of the inaugural class of inductees when the museum was established in 1983.

The U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative, 22-cent postage stamp honoring Sojourner Truth in 1986. The original artwork was created by Jerry Pinkney, and features a double portrait of Truth. The stamp was part of the Black Heritage series. The first day of issue was February 4, 1986.

The calendar of saints of the Episcopal Church remembers Sojourner Truth annually, together with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer and Harriet Ross Tubman, on July 20. The calendar of saints of the Lutheran Church remembers Sojourner Truth together with Harriet Tubman on March 10.

In 1997, The NASA Mars Pathfinder mission's robotic rover was named "Sojourner". The following year, S.T. Writes Home appeared on the web offering "Letters to Mom from Sojourner Truth", in which the Mars Pathfinder Rover at times echoes its namesake.

In 2009 Truth was inducted into the National Abolition Hall of Fame, in Peterboro, New York.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced in 2016 that an image of Sojourner Truth will appear on the back of a newly designed $10 bill along with Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul and the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession. Designs for new $5, $10 and $20 bills were originally scheduled to be unveiled in 2020 in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of American women winning the right to vote via the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced that plans for the $20 redesign, which was to feature Harriet Tubman, have been postponed.

On September 19, 2018, the U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced the name of the last ship of a six unit construction contract as USNS Sojourner Truth (T-AO 210). This ship will be part of the latest John Lewis-class of Fleet Replenishment Oilers named in honor of U.S. civil and human rights heroes currently under construction at General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego, CA.

A Google Doodle was featured on February 1, 2019, in honor of Sojourner Truth. The doodle was showcased in Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Israel, Ireland and Germany.

Works of art

In 1862, American sculptor William Wetmore Story completed a marble statue, inspired by Sojourner Truth, named The Libyan Sibyl. The work won an award at the London World Exhibition. The original sculpture was gifted to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City, by the Erving Wolf Foundation in 1978.

In 1945, Elizabeth Catlett created a print entitled I'm Sojourner Truth as part of a series honoring the labor of black women. The print is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection. She would later create a full-size statue of Truth, which was displayed in Sacramento, California.

In 1958, African-American artist John Biggers created a mural called the Contribution of Negro Woman to American Life and Education as his doctoral dissertation. It was unveiled at the Blue Triangle Community Center (former YWCA) - Houston, Texas and features Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Phillis Wheatley.

Inspired by the work of pioneer women's historian Gerda Lerner, feminist artist Judy Chicago (Judith Sylvia Cohen) created a collaborative masterpiece - The Dinner Party, a mixed-media art installation, between the years 1974 and 1979. The Sojourner Truth placesetting is one of 39. The Dinner Party is gifted by the Elizabeth Sackler Foundation to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum - New York in 2000.

African-American composer Gary Powell Nash composed In Memoriam: Sojourner Truth, in 1992.

The Broadway musical The Civil War, which premiered in 1999, includes an abridged version of Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech as a spoken-word segment. On the 1999 cast recording, the track was performed by Maya Angelou.

In 2018, a crocheted mural, Sojourner Truth: Ain't I A Woman?, was hung on display at the Akron Civic Theatre's outer wall at Lock 3 Park in Ohio. It was one of four projects in New York and North Carolina as part of the "Love Across the U.S.A.", spearheaded by fiber artist OLEK.

Woodrow Nash work

Sojourner Truth, c. 1864

Libraries, schools, and buildings

Sojourner Truth Library at New Paltz State University of New York was named in Truth's honor in 1971.

In 1980, the Inter Cooperative Council at the University of Michigan and the residents of the then Lenny Bruce House rename it as Sojourner Truth House in her honor.

Summit County, Ohio, dedicates the renovated Danner Press Building as the Sojourner Truth Building in Akron in 1991 and unveils the reinstalled Ohio Historical Marker on the building wall.

The King's College, located inside the Empire State Building in New York City, names one of their houses "The House of Sojourner Truth" in 2004.

In recognition that Truth and her parents were enslaved by people related to their first president, Rutgers University renamed its College Avenue Apartments to the Sojourner Truth Apartments.

Sojourner-Douglass College in Baltimore, which closed in 2019, was named after Truth and Frederick Douglass.

As of February 2020, elementary schools and K-12 schools in several states are named after Truth.

Organizations

In 1969, the left-wing political group Sojourner Truth Organization was established.

In 1996, visual artist and community activist Shonna McDaniels establishes the Sojourner Truth African American (Art) Heritage Museum in South Sacramento, California (popularly known as "SOJO" Museum).

In 1998, Velma Laws Clay founded the Sojourner Truth Institute in Battle Creek, to "expand the historical and biographical knowledge of Sojourner Truth's life work and carry on her mission by teaching, demonstrating and promoting projects that accentuate the ideals and principles for which she stood."

Sojourner Truth Houses have been established in many U.S. cities to provide shelter and services to women facing homelessness or domestic abuse. These include Sojourner Truth Houses in Boston, MA, Providence, RI, and Pittsburgh, PA.

References

Further reading

Andrews, William L., ed. Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century (Indiana University Press, 1986).

Bernard, Jacqueline. Journey toward freedom: The story of Sojourner Truth (Feminist Press at CUNY, 1990).

Field, Corinne T. "Old-Age Justice and Black Feminist History: Sojourner Truth's and Harriet Tubman's Intersectional Legacies." Radical History Review 2021.139 (2021): 37-51.

Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo (2015). Enduring Truths: Sojourner's Shadows and Substance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226192130.

Johnson, Paul E.; Wilentz, Sean (1994). The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195098358.

Mabee, Carleton; Mabee Newhouse, Susan (1993). Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend. New York and London: New York University Press. ISBN 0814755259.

Mabee, Carleton. "Sojourner Truth, Bold Prophet: Why Did She Never Learn to Read?." New York History 69.1 (1988): 55-77. online

Mandziuk, Roseann M., and Suzanne Pullon Fitch. "The rhetorical construction of Sojourner Truth." Southern Journal of Communication 66.2 (2001): 120-138.

Murphy, Larry G. Sojourner Truth: A Biography (ABC-CLIO, 2011).

Painter, Nell Irvin (1996). Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-31708-0.

Painter, Nell Irvin. "Truth, Sojourner" in American National Biography (2000) doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1500706

Painter, Nell Irvin. "Sojourner Truth in life and memory: Writing the biography of an American exotic." Gender & History 2.1 (1990): 3-16. online

Peterson, Carla. "Doers of the Word": African American Women Speakers and Writers in the North (1830-1880) (Rutgers University Press, 1998).

Piepmeier, Alison (2004). Out in Public: Configurations of Women's Bodies in Nineteenth-Century America'. The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807855693.

Redding, Saunders. "Sojourner Truth," Edward T. James ed. Notable American Women vol 3 (1971) 481

Sheehan, Jacqueline (2003). Truth: A Novel. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-4444-3.

Smiet, Katrine. Sojourner Truth and Intersectionality: Traveling Truths in Feminist Scholarship (Routledge, 2020).

Stetson, Erlene; David, Linda (1994). Glorying in Tribulation: The Lifework of Sojourner Truth. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. ISBN 0-87013-337-3.

Stone, William Leete (1835). Matthias and his Impostures- or, The Progress of Fanaticism. New York.

Vale, Gilbert (1835). Fanaticism - Its Source and Influence Illustrated by the Simple Narrative of Isabella, in the Case of Matthias, Mr. and Mrs. B. Folger, Mr. Pierson, Mr. Mills, Catherine, Isabella, &c. &c. New York: G. Vale. p. 1. Fanaticism -. - online edition (pdf format, 9.9 MB

Vetter, Lisa Pace. The Political Thought of America's Founding Feminists (New York UP, 2017)( pp. 198-212.

Williams, Michael Warren (1993). The African American encyclopedia. Vol. 6. Marshall Cavendish Corp. ISBN 1-85435-551-1.

Yee, Shirley J. Black women abolitionists: A study in activism, 1828-1860 (Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1992). online

Yellin, Jean Fagan. Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture (Yale University Press, 1989).

External links

Works by Sojourner Truth at Project Gutenberg

Works by or about Sojourner Truth at Internet Archive

Works by Sojourner Truth at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

McMillian, Angela. "Sojourner Truth: Online Resources". Library of Congress.

Nyquist, Corinne. "On the Trail of Sojourner Truth in Ulster County, New York". Sojourner Truth Library. SUNY New Paltz.

"Home Page". Sojourner Truth Institute of Battle Creek. Archived from the original on February 17, 2022.

"Sojourner Truth Biography". biography.com. January 6, 2021.

"Writings of Sojourner Truth". American Writers: A Journey Through History. C-SPAN. April 30, 2001.

Michals, Debra (2015). "Sojourner Truth". National Women's History Museum. Archived from the original on March 31, 2018.

Part of her life is retold in the 1948 radio drama "Truth Goes to Washington", a presentation from Destination Freedom, written by Richard Durham

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Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Baumfree; c. 1797 - November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist of New York Dutch heritage and activist for African-American civil rights, women's rights, and alcohol temperance. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826.

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Within the past 200 years, feminist change has primarily come about in three separate waves, each of which tackle different issues.

1st Wave (1830-1900)- Equal contract and property rights

2nd Wave (1960-1980)- Workplace, family, and reproductive rights

3rd Wave (1990-present)- Micropolitics of previous issues

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the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

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women's rights activist

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Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 - October 26, 1902) was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-1800s. She was the main force behind the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first convention to be called for the sole purpose of discussing women's rights, and was the primary author of its Declaration of Sentiments. Her demand for women's right to vote generated a controversy at the convention but quickly became a central tenet of the women's movement. She was also active in other social reform activities, especially abolitionism.

In 1851, she met Susan B. Anthony and formed a decades-long partnership that was crucial to the development of the women's rights movement. During the American Civil War, they established the Women's Loyal National League to campaign for the abolition of slavery, and they led it in the largest petition drive in U.S. history up to that time. They started a newspaper called The Revolution in 1868 to work for women's rights.

After the war, Stanton and Anthony were the main organizers of the American Equal Rights Association, which campaigned for equal rights for both African Americans and women, especially the right of suffrage. When the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was introduced that would provide suffrage for black men only, they opposed it, insisting that suffrage should be extended to all African Americans and all women at the same time. Others in the movement supported the amendment, resulting in a split. During the bitter arguments that led up to the split, Stanton sometimes expressed her ideas in elitist and racially condescending language, for which her old friend Frederick Douglass reproached her.

Stanton became the president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, which she and Anthony created to represent their wing of the movement. When the split was healed more than twenty years later, Stanton became the first president of the united organization, the National American Woman Suffrage Association. This was largely an honorary position; Stanton continued to work on a wide range of women's rights issues despite the organization's increasingly tight focus on women's right to vote.

Stanton was the primary author of the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage, a massive effort to record the history of the movement, focusing largely on her wing of it. She was also the primary author of The Woman's Bible, a critical examination of the Bible that is based on the premise that its attitude toward women reflects prejudice from a less civilized age.

Elizabeth Cady was born into the leading family of Johnstown, New York. Their family mansion on the town's main square was handled by as many as twelve servants. Her conservative father, Daniel Cady, was one of the richest landowners in the state. A member of the Federalist Party, he was an attorney who served one term in the U.S. Congress and became a justice in the New York Supreme Court. Her mother, Margaret Livingston Cady, was more progressive, supporting the radical Garrisonian wing of the abolitionist movement and signing a petition for women's suffrage in 1867.

Elizabeth was the seventh of eleven children, six of whom died before reaching full adulthood, including all of the boys. Her mother, exhausted by giving birth to so many children and the anguish of seeing so many of them die, became withdrawn and depressed. Tryphena, the oldest daughter, together with her husband Edward Bayard, assumed much of the responsibility for raising the younger children.

In her memoir, Eighty Years & More, Stanton said there were three African American menservants in her household when she was young. Researchers have determined that one of them, Peter Teabout, was a slave and probably remained so until all enslaved people in New York state were freed on July 4, 1827. Stanton recalled him fondly, saying that she and her sisters attended the Episcopal church with Teabout and sat with him in the back of the church rather than in front with the white families.

In her memoirs, Stanton said that during her student days in Troy she was greatly disturbed by a six-week religious revival conducted by Charles Grandison Finney, an evangelical preacher and central figure in the revivalist movement. His preaching, combined with the Calvinistic Presbyterianism of her childhood, terrified her with the possibility of her own damnation: "Fear of judgment seized my soul. Visions of the lost haunted my dreams. Mental anguish prostrated my health." Stanton credited her father and brother-in-law with convincing her to disregard Finney's warnings. She said they took her on a six-week trip to Niagara Falls during which she read works of rational philosophers who restored her reason and sense of balance. Lori D. Ginzberg, one of Stanton's biographers, says there are problems with this story. For one thing, Finney did not preach for six weeks in Troy while Stanton was there. Ginzberg suspects that Stanton embellished a childhood memory to underline her belief that women harm themselves by falling under the spell of religion.

As a young woman, Stanton traveled often to the home of her cousin, Gerrit Smith, who also lived in upstate New York. His views were very different from those of her conservative father. Smith was an abolitionist and a member of the " Secret Six," a group of men who financed John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in an effort to spark an armed uprising of enslaved African Americans. At Smith's home, she met Henry Brewster Stanton, a prominent abolitionist agent. Despite her father's reservations, the couple married in 1840, omitting the word "obey" from the marriage ceremony. Stanton later wrote, "I obstinately refused to obey one with whom I supposed I was entering into an equal relation." While uncommon, this practice was not unheard of; Quakers had been omitting "obey" from the marriage ceremony for some time. Stanton took her husband's surname as part of her own, signing herself Elizabeth Cady Stanton or E. Cady Stanton, but not Mrs. Henry B. Stanton.

Soon after returning from their European honeymoon, the Stantons moved into the Cady household in Johnstown. Henry Stanton studied law under his father-in-law until 1843, when the Stantons moved to Boston (Chelsea), Massachusetts, where Henry joined a law firm. While living in Boston, Elizabeth enjoyed the social, political, and intellectual stimulation that came with a constant round of abolitionist gatherings. Here, she was influenced by such people as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1847, the Stantons moved to Seneca Falls, New York, in the Finger Lakes region. Their house, which is now a part of the Women's Rights National Historical Park, was purchased for them by Elizabeth's father.

The couple had seven children. At that time, child-bearing was considered to be a subject that should be handled with great delicacy. Stanton took a different approach, raising a flag in front of her house after giving birth, a red flag for a boy and a white one for a girl. One of her daughters, Harriot Stanton Blatch, became, like her mother, a leader of the women's suffrage movement. Because of the spacing of their children's births, one historian has concluded that the Stantons must have used birth control methods. Stanton herself said her children were conceived by what she called "voluntary motherhood." In an era when it was commonly held that a wife must submit to her husband's sexual demands, Stanton believed that women should have command over their sexual relationships and childbearing. She also said, however, that "a healthy woman has as much passion as a man."

Lucretia Mott, a Quaker minister, abolitionist and women's rights advocate, was one of the women who had been sent as a delegate. Although Mott was much older than Stanton, they quickly bonded in an enduring friendship, with Stanton eagerly learning from the more experienced activist. While in London, Stanton heard Mott preach in a Unitarian chapel, the first time Stanton had heard a woman give a sermon or even speak in public. Stanton later gave credit to this convention for focusing her interests on women's rights.

An accumulation of experiences was having an effect on Stanton. The London convention had been a turning point in her life. Her study of law books had convinced her that legal changes were necessary to overcome gender inequities. She had personal experience of the stultifying role of women as wives and housekeepers. She said, "the wearied, anxious look of the majority of women, impressed me with a strong feeling that some active measures should be taken to remedy the wrongs of society in general, and of women in particular." This knowledge, however, did not immediately lead to action. Relatively isolated from other social reformers and fully occupied with household duties, she was at a loss as to how she could engage in social reform.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Declaration of Sentiments of the Seneca Falls Convention

Stanton was the primary author of the convention's Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, which was modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Its list of grievances included the wrongful denial of women's right to vote, signaling Stanton's intent to generate a discussion of women's suffrage at the convention. This was a highly controversial idea at the time but not an entirely new one. Her cousin Gerrit Smith, no stranger to radical ideas himself, had called for women's suffrage shortly before at the Liberty League convention in Buffalo. When Henry Stanton saw the inclusion of woman suffrage in the document, he told his wife that she was acting in a way that would turn the proceedings into a farce. Lucretia Mott, the main speaker, was also disturbed by the proposal.

An estimated 300 women and men attended the two-day Seneca Falls Convention. In her first address to a large audience, Stanton explained the purpose of the gathering and the importance of women's rights. Following a speech by Mott, Stanton read the Declaration of Sentiments, which the attendees were invited to sign. Next came the resolutions, all of which the convention adopted unanimously except for the ninth, which read, "it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves the sacred right of the elective franchise." Following a vigorous debate, this resolution was adopted only after Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist leader who had formerly been enslaved, gave it his strong support.

Stanton's sister Harriet attended the convention and signed its Declaration of Sentiments. Her husband, however, made her remove her signature.

Although this was a local convention organized on short notice, its controversial nature ensured that it was widely noted in the press, with articles appearing in newspapers in New York City, Philadelphia and many other places. The Seneca Falls Convention is now recognized as an historic event, the first convention to be called for the purpose of discussing women's rights. The convention's Declaration of Sentiments became "the single most important factor in spreading news of the women's rights movement around the country in 1848 and into the future," according to Judith Wellman, a historian of the convention. The convention initiated the use of women's rights conventions as organizing tools for the early women's movement. By the time of the second National Women's Rights Convention in 1851, the demand for women's right to vote had become a central tenet of the United States women's rights movement.

A Rochester Women's Rights Convention was held in Rochester, New York two weeks later, organized by local women who had attended the one in Seneca Falls. Both Stanton and Mott spoke at this convention. The convention in Seneca Falls had been chaired by James Mott, the husband of Lucretia Mott. The Rochester convention was chaired by a woman, Abigail Bush, another historic first. Many people were disturbed by the idea of a woman chairing a convention of both men and women. How, for example, might people react if a woman ruled a man out of order? Stanton herself spoke in opposition to the election of a woman as the chair of this convention, although she later acknowledged her mistake and apologized for her action.

When the first National Women's Rights Convention was organized in 1850, Stanton was unable to attend because she was pregnant. Instead, she sent a letter to the convention that outlined the movement's goals. Thereafter it became a tradition to open national women's rights conventions with a letter by Stanton, who not did participate in person in a national convention until 1860.

Because Stanton was homebound with seven children while Anthony was unmarried and free to travel, Anthony assisted Stanton by supervising her children while Stanton wrote. Among other things, this allowed Stanton to write speeches for Anthony to give. One of Anthony's biographers said, "Susan became one of the family and was almost another mother to Mrs. Stanton's children." One of Stanton's biographers said, "Stanton provided the ideas, rhetoric, and strategy; Anthony delivered the speeches, circulated petitions, and rented the halls. Anthony prodded and Stanton produced." Stanton's husband said, "Susan stirred the puddings, Elizabeth stirred up Susan, and then Susan stirs up the world!" Stanton herself said, "I forged the thunderbolts, she fired them." By 1854, Anthony and Stanton "had perfected a collaboration that made the New York State movement the most sophisticated in the country," according to Ann D. Gordon, a professor of women's history.

After the Stantons moved from Seneca Falls to New York City in 1861, a room was set aside for Anthony in every house they lived in. One of Stanton's biographers estimated that, over her lifetime, Stanton spent more time with Anthony than with any other adult, including her own husband.

The relationship was not without its strains, especially as Anthony could not match Stanton's charm and charisma. In 1871, Anthony said, "whoever goes into a parlor or before an audience with that woman does it at the cost of a fearful overshadowing, a price which I have paid for the last ten years, and that cheerfully, because I felt that our cause was most profited by her being seen and heard, and my best work was making the way clear for her."

Excessive consumption of alcohol was a severe social problem during this period, one that began to diminish only in the 1850s. Many activists considered temperance to be a women's rights issue because of laws that gave husbands complete control of the family and its finances. The law provided almost no recourse to a woman with a drunken husband, even if his condition left the family destitute and he was abusive to her and their children. If she managed to obtain a divorce, which was difficult to do, he could easily end up with sole guardianship of their children.

At the organization's convention the following year, conservatives voted Stanton out as president, whereupon she and Anthony resigned from the organization. Temperance was not a significant reform activity for Stanton afterwards, although she continued to use local temperance societies in the early 1850s as conduits for advocating women's rights. She regularly wrote articles for , a monthly temperance newspaper that she helped transform into one that reported news of the women's rights movement. She also wrote for The Una, a women's rights periodical edited by Paulina Wright Davis, and for the New York Tribune, a daily newspaper edited by Horace Greeley.

Married Women's Property Act

The status of married women at that time was in part set by English common law which for centuries had set the doctrine of coverture in local courts. It held wives were under the protection and control of their husbands. In the words of William Blackstone's 1769 book Commentaries on the Laws of England : "By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage." The husband of a married woman became the owner of any property she brought into a marriage. She could not sign contracts, operate a business in her own name, or retain custody of their children in the event of a divorce. In practice some American courts followed the common law. Some Southern states like Texas and Florida provided more equality for women. Across the country state legislatures were taking control away from common law traditions by passing legislation.

In 1853, Susan B. Anthony organized a petition campaign in New York state for an improved property rights law for married women. As part of the presentation of these petitions to the legislature, Stanton spoke in 1854 to a joint session of the Judiciary Committee, arguing that voting rights were needed to enable women to protect their newly won property rights. In 1860, Stanton spoke again to the Judiciary Committee, this time before a large audience in the assembly chamber, arguing that women's suffrage was the only real protection for married women, their children and their material assets. She pointed to similarities in the legal status of woman and slaves, saying, "The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man." The legislature passed the improved law in 1860.

In 1851, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Stanton's cousin, brought a new style of dress to the upstate New York area. Unlike traditional floor-length dresses, it consisted of pantaloons worn under a knee-length dress. Amelia Bloomer, Stanton's friend and neighbor, publicized the attire in , a monthly magazine that she published. Thereafter it was popularly known as the "Bloomer" dress, or just " Bloomers." It was soon adopted by many female reform activists despite harsh ridicule from traditionalists, who considered the idea of women wearing any sort of trousers as a threat to the social order. To Stanton, it solved the problem of climbing stairs with a baby in one hand, a candle in the other, and somehow also lifting the skirt of a long dress to avoid tripping. Stanton wore "Bloomers" for two years, abandoning the attire only after it became clear that the controversy it created was distracting people from the campaign for women's rights. Other women's rights activists eventually did the same.

Stanton had already antagonized traditionalists in 1852 at the women's temperance convention by advocating a woman's right to divorce a drunken husband. In an hour-long speech at the Tenth National Women's Rights Convention in 1860, she went further, generating a heated debate that took up an entire session. She cited tragic examples of unhealthy marriages, suggesting that some marriages amounted to "legalized prostitution." She challenged both the sentimental and the religious views of marriage, defining marriage as a civil contract subject to the same restrictions of any other contract. If a marriage did not produce the expected happiness, she said, then it would be a duty to end it. Strong opposition to her speech was voiced in the ensuing discussion. Abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips, arguing that divorce was not a women's rights issue because it affected both women and men equally, said the subject was out of order and tried unsuccessfully to have it removed from the record.

In 1860 Stanton published a pamphlet called The Slaves Appeal written from what she imagined to be the viewpoint of a female slave. The fictional speaker uses vivid religious language ("Men and women of New York, the God of thunder speaks through you") that expresses religious views very different from those that Stanton herself held. The speaker describes the horrors of slavery, saying, "The trembling girl for whom thou didst pay a price but yesterday in a New Orleans market, is not thy lawful wife. Foul and damning, both to the master and the slave, is this wholesale violation of the immutable laws of God." The pamphlet called for defiance of the Federal Fugitive Slave Act, and it included petitions to be used for opposing the practice of hunting escaped slaves.

Women's Loyal National League

In 1863, Anthony moved into the Stantons' house in New York City and the two women began organizing the Women's Loyal National League to campaign for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would abolish slavery. Stanton became president of the new organization and Anthony was secretary. It was the first national women's political organization in the United States. In the largest petition drive in the nation's history up to that time, the League collected nearly 400,000 signatures to abolish slavery, representing approximately one out of every twenty-four adults in the Northern states. The petition drive significantly assisted the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery. The League disbanded in 1864 after it became clear that the amendment would be approved.

Although its purpose was the abolition of slavery, the League made it clear that it also stood for political equality for women, approving a resolution at its founding convention that called for equal rights for all citizens regardless of race or sex. The League indirectly advanced the cause of women's rights in several ways. Stanton pointedly reminded the public that petitioning was the only political tool available to women at a time when only men were allowed to vote. The success of the League's petition drive demonstrated the value of formal organization to the women's movement, which had traditionally resisted being anything other than loosely organized up to that point. Its 5000 members constituted a widespread network of women activists who gained experience that helped create a pool of talent for future forms of social activism, including suffrage. Stanton and Anthony emerged from this endeavor with significant national reputations.

Organizing opposition to this development required preparation because the women's movement had become largely inactive during the Civil War. In January 1866, Stanton and Anthony sent out petitions calling for a constitutional amendment providing for women's suffrage, with Stanton's name at the top of the list of signatures. Stanton and Anthony organized the Eleventh National Women's Rights Convention in May, 1866, the first since the Civil War began. The convention voted to transform itself into the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), whose purpose was to campaign for the equal rights of all citizens regardless of race or sex, especially the right of suffrage. Stanton was offered the post of president but declined in a favor of Lucretia Mott. Other officers included Stanton as first vice president, Anthony as a corresponding secretary, Frederick Douglass as a vice president, and Lucy Stone as a member of the executive committee. Stanton provided hospitality for some of the attendees at this convention. Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and women's rights activist who had formerly been enslaved, stayed at Stanton's house as, of course, did Anthony.

Leading abolitionists opposed the AERA's drive for universal suffrage. Horace Greeley, a prominent newspaper editor, told Anthony and Stanton, "This is a critical period for the Republican Party and the life of our Nation... I conjure you to remember that this is 'the negro's hour.'" Abolitionist leaders Wendell Phillips and Theodore Tilton arranged a meeting with Stanton and Anthony, trying to convince them that the time had not yet come for women's suffrage, that they should campaign for voting rights for black men only, not for all African Americans and all women. The two women rejected this guidance and continued to work for universal suffrage.

In 1866, Stanton declared herself a candidate for Congress, the first woman to do so. She said that although she could not vote, there was nothing in the Constitution to prevent her from running for Congress. Running as an independent against both the Democrat and Republican candidates, she received only 24 votes. Her campaign was noted by newspapers as far away as New Orleans.

In 1867, the AERA campaigned in Kansas for referenda that would enfranchise both African Americans and women. Wendell Phillips, who opposed mixing those two causes, blocked the funding that the AERA had expected for their campaign. By the end of summer, the AERA campaign had almost collapsed, and its finances were exhausted. Anthony and Stanton created a storm of controversy by accepting help during the last days of the campaign from George Francis Train, a wealthy businessman who supported women's rights. Train antagonized many activists by attacking the Republican Party and openly disparaging the integrity and intelligence of African Americans. There is reason to believe that Stanton and Anthony hoped to draw the volatile Train away from his cruder forms of racism, and that he had actually begun to do so. In any case, Stanton said she would accept support from the devil himself if he supported women's suffrage.

After the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, a sharp dispute erupted within the AERA over the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would prohibit the denial of suffrage because of race. Stanton and Anthony opposed the amendment, which would have the effect of enfranchising black men, insisting that all women and all African Americans should be enfranchised at the same time. Stanton argued in the pages of The Revolution that by effectively enfranchising all men while excluding all women, the amendment would create an "aristocracy of sex," giving constitutional authority to the idea that men were superior to women. Lucy Stone, who was emerging as a leader of those who were opposed to Stanton and Anthony, argued that suffrage for women would be more beneficial to the country than suffrage for black men but supported the amendment, saying, "I will be thankful in my soul if any body can get out of the terrible pit."

During the debate over the Fifteenth Amendment, Stanton wrote articles for The Revolution with language that was elitist and racially condescending. She believed that a long process of education would be needed before many of the 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 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." In another article, Stanton objected to laws being made for women by "Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung who do not know the difference between a Monarchy and a Republic." She also used the term "Sambo" on other occasions, drawing a rebuke from her old friend Frederick Douglass.

Early in 1869, Stanton called for a Sixteenth Amendment that would provide suffrage for women, saying, "The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition ... in the dethronement of woman we have let loose the elements of violence and ruin that she only has the power to curb."

-Elizabeth Cady Stanton

In 1868, Anthony and Stanton began publishing a sixteen-page weekly newspaper called The Revolution in New York City. Stanton was co-editor along with Parker Pillsbury, an experienced editor who was an abolitionist and a supporter of women's rights. Anthony, the owner, managed the business aspects of the paper. Initial funding was provided by George Francis Train, the controversial businessman who supported women's rights but who alienated many activists with his political and racial views. The newspaper focused primarily on women's rights, especially suffrage for women, but it also covered topics such as politics, the labor movement and finance. One of its stated goals was to provide a forum in which women could exchange opinions on key issues. Its motto was "Men, their rights and nothing more: women, their rights and nothing less."

Their goal was to grow The Revolution into a daily paper with its own printing press, all owned and operated by women. The funding that Train had arranged for the newspaper, however, was less than expected. Moreover, Train sailed for England after The Revolution published its first issue and was soon jailed for supporting Irish independence. Train's financial support eventually disappeared entirely. After twenty-nine months, mounting debts forced the transfer of the paper to a wealthy women's rights activist who gave it a less radical tone. Despite the relatively short time it was in their hands, The Revolution gave Stanton and Anthony a means for expressing their views during the developing split within the women's movement. It also helped them promote their wing of the movement, which eventually became a separate organization.

Stanton refused to take responsibility for the $10,000 debt the newspaper had accumulated, saying she had children to support. Anthony, who had less money than Stanton, took responsibility for the debt, repaying it over a six-year period through paid speaking tours.

In May 1869, two days after the final AERA convention, Stanton, Anthony and others formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), with Stanton as president. Six months later, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and others formed the rival American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which was larger and better funded. The immediate cause for the split in the women's suffrage movement was the proposed Fifteenth Amendment, but the two organizations had other differences as well. The NWSA was politically independent while the AWSA aimed for close ties with the Republican Party, hoping that ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment would lead to Republican support for women's suffrage. The NWSA focused primarily on winning suffrage at the national level while the AWSA pursued a state-by-state strategy. The NWSA initially worked on a wider range of women's issues than the AWSA, including divorce reform and equal pay for women.

As the new organization was being formed, Stanton proposed to limit its membership to women, but her proposal was not accepted. In practice, however, the overwhelming majority of its members and officers were women.

In 1869 Francis and Virginia Minor, husband and wife suffragists from Missouri, developed a strategy based on the idea that the U.S. Constitution implicitly enfranchised women. It relied heavily on the Fourteenth Amendment, which says, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States ... nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." In 1871 the NWSA officially adopted what had become known as the New Departure strategy, encouraging women to attempt to vote and to file lawsuits if denied that right. Soon hundreds of women tried to vote in dozens of localities. Susan B. Anthony actually succeeded in voting in 1872, for which she was arrested and found guilty in a widely publicized trial. In 1880, Stanton also tried to vote. When the election officials refused to let her place her ballot in the box, she threw it at them. When the Supreme Court ruled in 1875 in Minor v. Happersett that "the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone," the NWSA decided to pursue the far more difficult strategy of campaigning for a constitutional amendment that would guarantee voting rights for women.

Stanton traveled with her daughter Harriet to Europe in May 1882 and did not return for a year and a half. Already a public figure of some prominence in Europe, she gave several speeches there and wrote reports for American newspapers. She visited her son Theodore in France, where she met her first grandchild, and traveled to England for Harriet's marriage to an Englishman. After Anthony joined her in England in March 1883, they traveled together to meet with leaders of European women's movements, laying the groundwork for an international women's organization. Stanton and Anthony returned to the U.S. together in November 1883. Hosted by the NWSA, delegates from fifty-three women's organizations in nine countries met in Washington in 1888 to form the organization that Stanton and Anthony had been working toward, the International Council of Women (ICW), which is still active.

Stanton traveled again to Europe in October 1886, visiting her children in France and England. She returned to the U.S. in March 1888 barely in time to deliver a major speech at the founding meeting of the ICW. When Anthony discovered that Stanton had not yet written her speech, she insisted that Stanton stay in her hotel room until she had written it, and she placed a younger colleague outside her door to make sure she did so. Stanton later teased Anthony, saying, "Well, as all women are supposed to be under the thumb of some man, I prefer a tyrant of my own sex, so I shall not deny the patent fact of my subjection." The convention succeeded in bring increased publicity and respectability to the women's movement, especially when President Grover Cleveland honored the delegates by inviting them to a reception at the White House.

History of Woman Suffrage

In 1876, Anthony moved into Stanton's house in New Jersey to begin working with Stanton on the History of Woman Suffrage. She brought with her several trunks and boxes of letters, newspaper clippings, and other documents. Originally envisioned as a modest publication that could be produced quickly, the history evolved into a six-volume work of more than 5700 pages written over a period of 41 years.

The first three volumes, which cover the movement up to 1885, were produced by Stanton, Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Anthony handled the production details and the correspondence with contributors. Stanton wrote most of the first three volumes, with Gage writing three chapters of the first volume and Stanton writing the rest. Gage was forced to abandon the project afterwards because of the illness of her husband. After Stanton's death, Anthony published Volume 4 with the help of Ida Husted Harper. After Anthony's death, Harper completed the last two volumes, which brought the history up to 1920.

The History of Woman Suffrage preserves an enormous amount of material that might have been lost forever. Written by leaders of one wing of the divided women's movement it does not, however, give a balanced view of events where their rivals are concerned. It overstates the role of Stanton and Anthony, and it understates or ignores the roles of Stone and other activists who did not fit into the historical narrative they had developed. Because it was for years the main source of documentation about the suffrage movement, historians have had to uncover other sources to provide a more balanced view.

Her most popular lecture, "Our Girls," urged young women to be independent and to seek self-fulfillment. In "The Antagonism of Sex," she addressed the question of women's rights with a special ferver. Other popular lectures were "Our Boys," "Co-education," "Marriage and Divorce" and "The Subjugation of Women." On Sundays she would often speak on "Famous Women in the Bible" and "The Bible and Women's Rights."

After 15 years in Seneca Falls, Stanton moved to New York City in 1862 when her husband secured the position of deputy collector for the Port of New York. Their son Neil, who worked for Henry as his clerk, was caught taking bribes, causing both father and son to lose their jobs. Henry worked intermittently afterwards as a journalist and a lawyer.

When her father died in 1859, Stanton received an inheritance worth an estimated $50,000, or about $1,400,000 in today's dollars. In 1868, she bought a substantial country house near Tenafly, New Jersey, an hour's ride by train from New York City. The Stanton house in Tenafly is now a National Historic Landmark. Henry remained in the city in a rented apartment. Aside from visits, she and Henry afterwards mostly lived apart.

Six of the seven Stanton children graduated from college. Colleges were closed to women when Stanton sought higher education, but both of her daughters were educated at Vassar College. Because graduate studies were not yet available to women in the U.S., Harriet enrolled in a master's program in France, which she abandoned after she became engaged to be married. Harriet earned a master's degree from Vassar at the age of 35.

After 1884, Henry began to spend more time at Tenafly. In 1885, just before his 80th birthday, he published a short autobiography called Random Recollections. In it, he said that he had married the daughter of the famous Judge Cady, but he did not provide her name. In the third edition of his book, he mentioned his wife by name a single time. He died in 1887 while she was in England visiting their daughter.

In 1892, Stanton delivered the speech that became known as The Solitude of Self three different times in as many days, twice to Congressional committees and once as her final address to the NAWSA. She considered it her best speech, and many others agreed. Lucy Stone printed it in its entirety in the Woman's Journal in the space where her own speech normally would have appeared. In pursuit of her lifelong quest to overturn the belief that women were lesser beings than men and therefore not suited for independence, Stanton said in this speech that women must develop themselves, acquiring an education and nourishing an inner strength, a belief in themselves. Self-sovereignty was the essential element in a woman's life, not her role as daughter, wife or mother. Stanton said, "no matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone."

The Woman's Bible and views on religion

Stanton said she had been terrified as a child by a minister's talk of damnation, but, after overcoming those fears with the help of her father and brother-in-law, had rejected that type of religion entirely. As an adult, her religious views continued to evolve. While living in Boston in the 1840s, she was attracted to the preaching of Theodore Parker, who, like her cousin Gerritt Smith, was a member of the Secret Six, a group of men who financed John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in an effort to spark an armed slave rebellion. Parker was a transcendentalist and a prominent Unitarian minister who taught that the Bible need not be taken literally, that God need not be envisioned as a male, and that individual men and women had the ability to determine religious truth for themselves.

The years after the Civil War saw a significant increase in the variety of women's social reform organizations and the number of activists in them. Stanton was uneasy about the belief held by many of these activists that government should enforce Christian ethics through such actions as teaching the Bible in public schools and strengthening Sunday closing laws. In her speech at the 1890 unity convention that established the NAWSA, Stanton said, "I hope this convention will declare that the Woman Suffrage Association is opposed to all Union of Church and State and pledges itself ... to maintain the secular nature of our government.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, diary entry in 1988

In 1895, Stanton published The Woman's Bible, a provocative examination of the that questioned its status as the word of God and attacked the way it was being used to relegate women to an inferior status. Stanton wrote most of it, with the assistance of several other women, including Matilda Joslyn Gage, who had assisted with the History of Woman Suffrage. In it, Stanton methodically worked her way through the Bible, quoting selected passages and commenting on them, often sarcastically. A best-seller, with seven printings in six months, it was translated into several languages. A second volume was published in 1898.

The book created a storm of controversy that affected the entire women's rights movement. Stanton could not have been surprised, having earlier told an acquaintance, "Well, if we who do see the absurdities of the old superstitions never unveil them to others, how is the world to make any progress in the theologies? I am in the sunset of life, and I feel it to be my special mission to tell people what they are not prepared to hear."

The process of critically examining the text of the Bible, known as historical criticism, was already an established practice in scholarly circles. What Stanton did that was new was to scrutinize the Bible from a woman's point of view, basing her findings on the proposition that much of its text reflected not the word of God but prejudice against women during a less civilized age.

At the 1896 NAWSA convention, Rachel Foster Avery, a rising young leader, harshly attacked The Woman's Bible, calling it a "volume with a pretentious title ... without either scholarship or literary merit." Avery introduced a resolution to distance the organization from Stanton's book. Despite Anthony's strong objection that such a move was unnecessary and hurtful, the resolution passed by a vote of 53 to 41. Stanton told Anthony that she should resign from her leadership post in protest, but Anthony refused. Stanton afterwards grew increasingly alienated from the suffrage movement. The incident led many of the younger suffrage leaders to hold Stanton in low regard for the rest of her life.

When Stanton returned from her final trip to Europe in 1891, she moved in with two of her unmarried children who shared a home in New York City. She increased her advocacy of "educated suffrage," something she had long promoted. In 1894, she debated William Lloyd Garrison Jr. on this issue in the pages of Woman's Journal. Her daughter Harriot Stanton Blatch, who was then active in the women's suffrage movement in Britain and would later be a leading figure in the U.S. movement, was disturbed by the views that Stanton expressed during this debate. She published a critique of her mother's views, saying there were many people who had not enjoyed the opportunity to acquire an education and yet were intelligent and accomplished citizens who deserved the right to vote. In a letter to the 1902 NAWSA convention, Stanton continued her campaign, calling for "a constitutional amendment requiring an educational qualification" and saying that "everyone who votes should read and write the English language intelligently."

-Elizabeth Cady Stanton, advocating "educated suffrage"

In 1898, Stanton published her memoirs, Eighty Years and More, in which she presented the image of herself by which she wished to be remembered. In it, she minimized political and personal conflicts and omitted any discussion of the split in the women's movement. Largely dealing with political topics, the memoir barely mentions her mother, husband or children. Despite some degree of friction between Stanton and Anthony in their later years, on the dedication page Stanton said, "I dedicate this volume to Susan B. Anthony, my steadfast friend for half a century."

Stanton continued to write articles prolifically for a variety of publications right up until she died.

Death, burial, and remembrance

Stanton died in New York City on October 26, 1902, 18 years before women achieved the right to vote in the United States via the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The medical report said the cause of death was heart failure. According to her daughter Harriet, she had developed breathing problems that had begun to interfere with her work. The day before she died, Stanton told her doctor, a woman, to give her something to speed her death if the problem could not be cured. Stanton had signed a document two years earlier directing that her brain was to be donated to Cornell University for scientific study after her death, but her wishes in that regard were not carried out. She was interred beside her husband in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

After Stanton's death, Susan B. Anthony wrote to a friend: "Oh, this awful hush! It seems impossible that voice is stilled which I have loved to hear for fifty years. Always I have felt I must have Mrs. Stanton's opinion of things before I knew where I stood myself. I am all at sea."

Even after her death, foes of women's suffrage continued to use Stanton's more unorthodox statements to promote opposition to ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which became law in 1920. Younger women in the suffrage movement responded by belittling Stanton and glorifying Anthony. In 1923, Alice Paul, leader of the National Women's Party, introduced the proposed Equal Rights Amendment in Seneca Falls on the 75th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention. The planned ceremony and printed program made no mention of Stanton, the primary force behind the convention. One of the speakers was Stanton's daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, who insisted on paying tribute to her mother's role. Aside from a collection of her letters published by her children, no significant book about Stanton was written until a full-length biography was published in 1940 with the assistance of her daughter. Stanton began to regain recognition for her role in the women's rights movement with the rise of the new feminist movement in the 1960s and the establishment of academic women's history programs.

Stanton is commemorated, along with Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony, in the 1921 sculpture Portrait Monument by Adelaide Johnson in the United States Capitol. Placed for years in the crypt of the capitol building, it was moved in 1997 to a more prominent location in the U.S. Capitol rotunda.

In 1969, the group New York Radical Feminists was founded. It was organized into small cells or "brigades" named after notable feminists of the past; Anne Koedt and Shulamith Firestone led the Stanton- Anthony Brigade.

In 1973, Stanton was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

In 1999, Ken Burns and Paul Barnes produced the documentary Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony, which won a Peabody Award.

The Elizabeth Cady Stanton Pregnant and Parenting Student Services Act was introduced into Congress in 2005 to fund services for students who were pregnant or already were parents. It did not become law.

In 2008, 37 Park Row, the site of the office of Stanton and Anthony's newspaper, The Revolution, was included in the map of Manhattan historical sites related to women's history that was created by the Office of the Manhattan Borough President.

Stanton is commemorated, together with Amelia Bloomer, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Ross Tubman, in the calendar of saints of the Episcopal Church on July 20 of each year.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced in 2016 that an image of Stanton would appear on the back of a newly designed $10 bill along with Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul and the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession. New $5, $10 and $20 bills were planned to be introduced in 2020 in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of American women winning the right to vote, but were delayed.

1. Susan B. Anthony, "Fifty Years of Work for Woman" ^ Independent, 52 (February 15, 1900), pp. 414-17, as quoted in Sherr, Lynn, Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words, Random House, New York, 1995, p. 134

2. ^ Address to Judiciary Committee of the New York State Legislature, from the web site of the Catt Center at Iowa State University

3. Venet, p. 27. Confusingly, the Catt Center at Iowa State University reprints under the title A Slaves Appeal Stanton's speech to the New York Assembly in that same year, in which she compares the situation of women in some ways to slavery.

4. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Slaves Appeal, 1860, Weed, Parsons and Company, Printers; Albany, New York

5. ^ Judith E. Harper. "Biography". Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Public Broadcasting System.

6. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "The Sixteenth Amendment," ^ The Revolution, April 29, 1869, p. 266. Quoted in DuBois Feminism & Suffrage, p. 178.

7. Rakow and Kramarae, pp. 6, 14-18

8. DuBois, ^ Feminism & Suffrage, pp. 191-192. Henry Brown Blackwell, a member of the rival AWSA, said the NWSA's bylaws excluded men from membership, but Dubois says there is no evidence for that. According to Griffith, p. 142, Theodore Tilton was president of the NWSA in 1870.

9. Ann D. Gordon. "The Trial of Susan B. Anthony" (PDF). Federal Judicial Center. This article points out (p. 20) that Supreme Court rulings did not establish the connection between citizenship and voting rights until the mid-twentieth century.

10. ^ Griffith, pp.160-165, 169

11. DuBois, ^ The Elizabeth Cady Stanton - Susan B. Anthony Reader, pp. 191-192. The biography was Created Equal by Alma Lutz.

12. ^ "Architect of the Capitol; Portrait Monument of Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony". www.aoc.gov. Architect of the Capitol.

13. ^ Cathy A. Alexander (December 1, 1974). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Elizabeth Cady Stanton House" (PDF). National Park Service. and Accompanying three photos, exterior and interior, from 1974 (32 KB)

14. ^ Ward, Geoffrey C. (1999). "A Note about Contributors". Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. New York: Alfred Knopf. p. 241. ISBN 0-375-40560-7.

15. ^ "Scott Stringer - Manhattan Borough President". mbpo.org. Archived from the original on July 18, 2011.

16. ^ Rappeport, Alan (June 14, 2019). "See a Design of the Harriet Tubman $20 Bill That Mnuchin Delayed". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.

17. ^ Hines, Morgan (August 26, 2020). "'We have broken the bronze ceiling': First monument to real women unveiled in NYC's Central Park". .

Banner, Lois W. Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Women's Rights. Addison-Wesley Publishers, 1997. ISBN 0-673-39319-4.

Burns, Ken and Geoffrey C. Ward; Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony; Alfred A. Knoph; New York, NY, 1999. ISBN 0-375-40560-7.

Blatch, Harriot Stanton and Alma Lutz; Challenging Years: the Memoirs of Harriot Stanton Blatch; G.P. Putnam's Sons; New York, NY, 1940.

Cott, Nancy. Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (2000).

Gordon, Ann D., editor. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony Volume I: In the School of Anti-Slavery 1840-1866. Rutgers University Press; New Brunswick, NJ, 1997. ISBN 0-8135-2317-6.

Gordon, Ann D., editor. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony Volume II: Against an Aristocracy of Sex 1866-1873. Rutgers University Press; New Brunswick, NJ, 2000. ISBN 0-8135-2318-4.

Gordon, Ann D., editor. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony Volume III: National Protection for National Citizens 1873-1880. Rutgers University Press; New Brunswick, NJ, 2003. ISBN 0-8135-2319-2.

Gordon, Ann D., editor. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony Volume IV: When Clowns Make Laws for Queens 1880-1887. Rutgers University Press; New Brunswick, NJ, 2006. ISBN 0-8135-2320-6.

Gordon, Ann D., editor. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony Volume V: Their Place Inside the Body-Politic, 1887 to 1895. Rutgers University Press; New Brunswick, NJ, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8135-2321-7.

Gordon, Ann D., editor. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony Volume VI: An Awful Hush, 1895 to 1906 Rutgers University Press; New Brunswick, NJ, 2013. ISBN 978-08135-5345-0.

Harper, Ida Husted. The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Vol 1. Indianapolis & Kansas City: The Bowen-Merrill Company, 1899.

Lutz, Alma. Created Equal: A Biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1902, John Day Company, 1940.

McDaneld, Jen. "White Suffragist Dis/Entitlement: The Revolution and the Rhetoric of Racism." Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 30.2 (2013): 243-264. On racism of Anthony and Stanton in 1868-1869. online

Sigerman, Harriet. Elizabeth Cady Stanton: The Right Is Ours. (Oxford University Press, 2001). ISBN 0-19-511969-X.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Eighty Years & More (1815-1897): Reminiscences of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. European Publishing Company, New York, 1898.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. The Woman's Bible, Part 1, European Publishing Company, New York, 1895, and Part 2, 1898.

Stanton, Elizabeth, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, volumes 1, 2 and 3 of six volumes, 1881, 1882 and 1884.

Stanton, Theodore & Harriot Stanton Blatch, eds., Elizabeth Cady Stanton As Revealed in Her Letters Diary and Reminiscences in two volumes, Arno & The New York Times; New York, 1969. (Originally published by Harper & Brothers Publishers in 1922).

Declaration of Sentiments, with signatories, from the Women's Rights National Historical Park.

The first three volumes (Volume I, 1848-1861; Volume II, 1861-1876; Volume III, 1876-1885) of the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage, which were written primarily by Stanton, from the Internet Archive.

The Woman's Bible, Stanton's critical examination of what the says about women, from the Internet Archive.

Eighty Years and More, Stanton's memoirs, from the University of Pennsylvania digital library.

The Revolution, a women's rights newspaper co-edited by Stanton, from the Watzek Library of Lewis & Clark College. Stanton often signed her articles in this newspaper as "ECS".

"Solitude of Self", from "History Matters" at George Mason University. Stanton considered this to be her best speech.

Our Girls, from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Voices of Democracy Project. This was Stanton's most popular speech on the lecture circuit.

The Slave's Appeal, from the Internet Archive. Stanton wrote this pamphlet from what she imagined to be the viewpoint of a female slave. The fictional speaker expresses religious views very different from those that Stanton herself held.

Collections of Stanton's works

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Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 - October 26, 1902) was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-1800s. She was the main force behind the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first convention to be called for the sole purpose of discussing women's rights, and was the primary author of its Declaration of Sentiments.

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Transfeminism, also written trans feminism, has been defined by scholar and activist Emi Koyama as "a movement by and for trans women who view their liberation to be intrinsically linked to the liberation of all women and beyond."