Guide to the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, 1792-1981 (bulk 1839-1899)

Collection Summary

Biographical Note

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), a leader in the struggle for women's rights, was born on 12 November 1815, in Johnstown, NY, and graduated from Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary in 1832. Through her close relationship with her cousin Gerrit Smith, a wealthy landowner and reformer, and his daughter, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Stanton became interested in the antislavery and temperance movements, and married the abolitionist Henry Stanton in 1840. As reflected in her letters from 1839-1859, her concerns for the next twenty years appear to have been her children (seven born between 1842 and 1859) and family, but it was during this period that she became one of the leaders in the women's rights movement. She helped to organize the first convention in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848 and formed the friendship with Susan B. Anthony that was to be so important for the future of the feminist movement. At the well-attended convention in Seneca Falls, Stanton proposed a resolution advocating suffrage for women. The resolution was the first public demand by women for the vote and, eloquently defended by Frederick Douglass, was finally adopted.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton's letters, which span the years 1867-1885 and include several to Paulina Wright Davis, another feminist and suffragist, reveal the public person. She became a very popular lecturer on the Lyceum circuit at this time and used her fame and popularity to further the cause of women's rights throughout the United States and abroad. Stanton persuaded Aaron Sargent of California to introduce a federal woman suffrage amendment following the wording of the Fifteenth Amendment. It was reintroduced in every Congress until finally adopted in 1920. In the 1880s, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony prepared the monumental three-volume History of Woman Suffrage, the last volume of which appeared in 1886.

In later years, Stanton, famous and widely honored, devoted more time to writing for newspapers and magazines such as the Westminster Review, Arena, Forum, and North American Review. Still, another controversy involved her. Convinced that the church and its interpretation of the Bible were great obstacles to the progress of women, she demanded that women have an equal place in the church and published The Woman's Bible, a commentary analyzing the Bible's derogatory references to women. These activities are reflected in her letters from 1885-1902.

In 1898, Stanton published her reminiscences, Eighty Years and More, and continued to express her views on religion, divorce, and other subjects. She died at the age of eighty-six. For months afterwards, newspapers and magazines acknowledged Elizabeth Cady Stanton as "a statesman of the woman's rights movement and the mother of woman suffrage."

Scope and Content Note

The collection includes correspondence with Susan B. Anthony, Paulina Wright Davis, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Gerrit Smith, and others relating to family matters, her children, the women's movement, her lectures and travels, publication of her books and articles, women and religion, abolition, temperance, and other social causes, 1839-1902; phrenological report by L.N. Fowler on the character of Stanton, 1853; and clippings, articles, transcripts of her speeches, an autobiographical sketch, and photographs. Other items include correspondence by Margaret Stanton Lawrence and others on the women's movement, other social causes, and Stanton's career, 1792-1927; and manuscripts and typescripts by Margaret Stanton Lawrence about Elizabeth Cady Stanton's life and career.

Access and Use

Encoding Information

Encoded by Elizabeth Clarke, August 2007. Updated by Emma Gronbeck, May 2023.

Administrative Information