Seneca Falls (1848)
From Declaration of Sentiments
“The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.
He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men – both natives and foreigners.
Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes, with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master – the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.”
Sojourner Truth (1851)
“May I say a few words? 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 women have a pint and 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 cant take more than our pint’ll hold.
The poor men seem to be all in confusion, and dont 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 wont be so much trouble.
I cant 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.”
Timeline
Stanton, Anthony, and the New Departure
Elizabeth C. Stanton & daughter Harriot, c. 1856
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, c. 1870
- 1863 –Women’s Loyal National League (WLNL) founded
- 1864 –WLNL presents abolition amendment petitions to Congress
- 1865 –American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) reorganizes without Garrison
- 1866 –WLNL and AASA merge as American Equal Rights Association
- 1869 –AERA dissolves amid acrimony over Fifteenth Amendment
- 1869 –Stanton and Anthony form National Woman Suffrage Association
- 1869 –Stone and Harper form American Woman Suffrage Association
- 1872 –NWSA (National) embraces “New Departure” strategy
- 1875 –Supreme Court rejects female voting (Minor v. Happersett)
Anthony Trial Statement (1873)
“My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor’s verdict, doomed to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government.”
Endgame
“Iron Jawed Angels” (2004)
Discussion Questions
- How might some Americans of that era, male or female, perceive this type of parade down Fifth Avenue on a Saturday afternoon to be dangerously provocative?
- Can you put the mobilization of suffrage parades, like this one by Harriot Stanton Blatch in New York City in 1912, into the context of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century struggles for women’s suffrage?