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…wherever we turn, the history of woman is sad and dark, without any alleviating circumstances, nothing from which we can draw consolation.


Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "Declaration of Rights and Sentiments,"
The First Convention Ever Called to Discuss the Civil and Political Rights of Women,
Seneca Falls, New York, July 19, 20, 1848.
Votes for Women, 1848-1921

On November 12, 1815, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, spokesperson for the rights of women, was born in Johnstown, New York. Stanton formulated the philosophical basis of the woman movement, blazing a trail many feared to follow.

In advocating suffrage for women as a central point in her manifesto of woman's rights, the "Declaration of Sentiments," Stanton forged ahead of Quaker minister, Lucretia Mott and other organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention of July 19 and July 20, 1848. As the suffragists gathered adherents to the cause, however, Stanton refused to limit her demands to the vote. She remained in the movement's vanguard, arguing vigorously for woman's right to higher education, to a professional life, and to a legal identity that included the right to own property and to obtain a divorce.

Miss Anthony…invariably gave Mrs. Stanton credit for all that was accomplished. She often said that Mrs. Stanton was the brains of the new association, while she herself was merely its hands and feet; but in truth the two women worked marvelously together, for Mrs. Stanton was a master of words and could write and speak to perfection of the things Susan B. Anthony saw and felt but could not herself express.

Anna Howard Shaw,  The Story of a Pioneer, page 240.
Pioneering the Upper Midwest

Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921



















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