Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
US History/Napp Name: ______
Do Now:
Elizabeth Cady Stanton / Susan B. Anthony1. 1815 – 1902
2. Ms. Stanton grew up with four sisters in the well-to-do household of conservative Judge Cady, in upstate New York.
a) The only boy in the family had died as a youth, and nothing any of the girls did could ever make up to Judge Cady for the fact that he had no son.
b) Elizabeth grew up keenly resentful of the inferiority attached to being a girl.
3. She married Henry Stanton over the strong objections of her father, who resented the young man’s radical, abolitionist views.
4. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is believed to have been the driving force behind the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, and for the next fifty years played a leadership role in the women's rights movement. / 1. 1820 – 1906
2. At the time Elizabeth Cady Stanton met young Susan B. Anthony in 1851, the Quaker schoolteacher was an abolitionist and active worker in temperance reform.
3. She was a poor writer, but had a marvelous ability to inspire others to work as unceasingly as she did.
4. Her collaboration with Mrs. Stanton, to whom writing and felicity of expression came naturally, was of immense value to her, and gradually she became a most effective and accomplished speaker.
5. Unmarried and free from domestic responsibility, Susan B. Anthony could provide the drive and energy both women needed if they were to accomplish their goal.
6. She one said, “I have never lost my faith, not for a moment. Failure is impossible.”
~ Adapted from Gerda Lerner’s The Woman in American History
Questions:
1- What did the U.S. Constitution deny women? ______
2- What did women suffragists want? ______
3- Identify three significant facts about Elizabeth Cady Stanton: ______
4- Identify three significant facts about Susan B. Anthony: ______
5- Why were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony a successful team? ______
Women’s Rights:
“Among the reform movements of the 1830s was the women’s rights movement that sought to overcome the inferior status of women. Chief among the issues were women’s lack of rights concerning property, voting, and education. In 1848, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York. Minimal gains were made, and by the 1850s, women were focusing more and more on the issue of suffrage.” ~ U.S. History and Government
“In July of 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott spearheaded the first women’s rights convention in American history. Although the Convention was hastily organized and hardly publicized, over 300 men and women came to Seneca Falls, New York to protest the mistreatment of women in social, economic, political, and religious life. The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions issued by the Convention, which was modeled after the Declaration of Independence, detailed the ‘injuries and usurpations’ that men had inflicted upon women and demanded that women be granted all of the rights and privileges that men possessed, including the right to vote.” ~ faculty.uml.edu
Questions:
1- What did the women’s rights movement of the 1830s seek to overcome? ______
2- What were the chief concerns of women? ______
3- Who organized the Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York? ______
4- What did the participants of the Seneca Falls convention protest? ______
5- What document was issued by the Convention? ______
6- What was the document modeled on and what was its main demand? ______
7- Do you think the demands of these early women’s rights activists have been fully realized today? Explain your answer. ______
Multiple-Choice Questions:
1. How did Elizabeth Cady Stanton learn so much about the laws of the United States?(1) She went to law school.
(2) Her husband was a Supreme Court Judge.
(3) Her father was a lawyer and a judge.
(4) Her mother taught her.
2. In 1872, Susan B. Anthony argued that this amendment to the United States Constitution gave her the right to vote.
(1) the Fourteenth Amendment
(2) the Fifteenth Amendment
(3) the Nineteenth Amendment
(4) the First Amendment
3. Antisuffragists made all of the following claims EXCEPT:
(1) Women were represented in politics by male family members.
(2) The enfranchisement of women would disrupt families and destroy homes.
(3) Women were emotionally and mentally incapable of voting.
(4) Women’s votes would purify politics and effect needed reforms.
(5) Exercising the vote would undermine and corrupt female character.
4. The first woman's rights convention in America was held in:
(1) Boston, MA
(2) Seneca Falls, NY
(3) Cheyenne, WY
(4) Jamestown, VA / 5. Which of the following statements best expresses the “justice” argument for woman suffrage?
(1) As women were morally superior, their enfranchisement would improve political life.
(2) Women voters would defeat corruption, gambling, and the saloon.
(3) Women’s votes were needed to protect the family and promote progressive reform.
(4) Women deserved the same rights as men and were entitled to vote.
(5) Modern municipal government would benefit from female competence and expertise.
6. In the late 1860s, after the end of the Civil War, Susan B. Anthony:
(1) opposed the Fourteenth Amendment because it did away with provisions counting slaves as three fifths of a person
(2) supported the Fourteenth Amendment because it would provide the justification for women to vote
(3) supported the Fourteenth Amendment because it allowed women to submit petitions to their representatives
(4) opposed the Fourteenth Amendment because it limited the right of voting to male citizens
7. In 1873, Susan B. Anthony went on trial, charged with:
(1) protesting in front of the White House
(2) voting in a presidential election
(3) founding an illegal organization
(4) preventing men from voting
Primary Source:
“After Susan B. Anthony succeeded in voting in the congressional and presidential elections of 1872, the federal government launched a criminal prosecution of her for voting without a legal right to do so. After her indictment in January 1873, she went on trial in the U.S. Circuit Court for the Northern District of New York in June 1873. Found guilty, she was fined $100 and ordered to pay the costs of the prosecution. She paid neither sum.”
~ rutgers.edu
This speech was delivered in 1873, after Anthony was arrested, tried and fined $100 for voting in the 1872 presidential election. ~ nationalcenter.org
______
The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:
“We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people – women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government – the ballot…
For any State to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people is to pass a bill of attainder, or an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are for ever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the right govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household – which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord and rebellion into every home of the nation.
Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office.
The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no State has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several States is today null and void, precisely as in every one against Negroes.”
Questions:
1- Why was Susan B. Anthony arrested? ______
2- What does Susan B. Anthony believe about the “we” in the Preamble to the Constitution? ______
3- How does denying women the right to vote alter the concept of “consent of the governed”? ______
4- How does denying women the right to vote impact every family? ______
5- According to Susan B. Anthony, what is the only question left? ______
6- What is your answer to that question? ______
7- Do you believe that Susan B. Anthony’s speech was effective? Explain your answer. ______
“The Apotheosis of Suffrage,” a cartoon mocking Stanton and Anthony
CREDIT: Coffin, George Yost, artist. “The Apotheosis of Suffrage.” 1896. Cartoon Drawings, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.
What attitudes in society affected men’s perceptions of women and how did these attitudes influence ideas on women’s suffrage?
______
Do you believe the leaders in the women’s suffrage movement were heroic? Explain your answer. ______