Elizabeth Cady Stanton Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Women's Suffrage Activists Influenced by Anti-Slavery Movement

One hundred years ago, women won the right to vote.

Many got their start as leaders in the anti-slavery movement. But when women delegates attended the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention, they were relegated to the gallery. This humiliation led to the seneca falls convention with broad goals for women’s rights, including the vote.

After the Civil War, suffragists expected legal changes to include women’s voting rights. A series of constitutional amendments abolished slavery, granted citizenship to persons born in the us, including former slaves, and guaranteed a right to vote regardless of race. However, the 14^th Amendment inserted “male” into the US Constitution for purposes of voting. The suffragists felt bitterly betrayed; some campaigned against the 14^th and 15^th Amendments. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote: “If that word ‘male’ be inserted, it will take us a century … to get it out.” Shamefully the former slaves enjoyed less than a decade of voting rights. Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws to prevent black voting.

Another century passed before the Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 accomplished what the 14^th and 15^th Amendments had not. So, in effect, white women got to vote nearly half a century before black citizens did.

This message is a produced by the Kanawha valley National Organization for Women with funding from the WV Humanities Council.

100 Years Ago – Elizabeth Cady Stanton Writes the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments

One hundred years ago, women won the right to vote.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one of the most consequential women in the battle for women’s rights. She fought for equality on all fronts. In her later years, she even took on the Bible as the root cause of women’s subordinate status in society. She came from a highly educated and wealthy New York family. Marriage and motherhood, with seven children, did not deter her from making equality for women her life’s work. On her honeymoon in 1840, in London, she and her husband attended the World Anti-Slavery convention. When she was relegated to the balcony because she was a woman, she joined with Lucretia Mott, another anti-slavery crusader, to fight for women’s equality.

Together they planned the first women’s rights convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. Attended by about 300 women and men, the convention delivered the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments and marked the beginning of the women’s movement for equal rights. Cady Stanton wrote most of that document and based it on the Declaration of Independence. Channeling Thomas Jefferson, she wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.”

This message is produced by the Kanawha Valley chapter of the National Organization for Women with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council.