STANTON'S FAMILY LIFE

Elizabeth Cady Stanton managed to become the leading feminist philosopher of the first generation of women's rights activists despite raising a family of seven children. Henry, her husband was supportive of Stanton's endeavors. During the 1840's and 1850's, Stanton, busy with her maternal chores, still found time to write and plan a strategy for the feminist movement. (Sochen, 131)
STANTON'S POLITICAL WRITING
Stanton wrote speeches for Susan B. Anthony; she drafted the 1848 Seneca Falls declaration. In addition Stanton spoke at the annual women's rights conventions held after 1848. Her speeches were known throughout New England and the Middle Atlantic States. Her rhetoric is said to be "dramatic and to the point." (Sochen, 131) She told the following to the New York legislature in 1860: There are certain natural rights as inalienable to civilization as are the rights of air and motion to the savage in the wilderness. The Prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex...The Negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man. (Sochen, 132)
THE CONNECTIONS LINKED TO STANTON'S POLITICAL AGENDA
According to Sochen, "Bringing the two reform movements together may have personally strengthened the women involved, but it convinced many others that both movements were radical, would lead to disruption and chaos, and were therefore totally undesirable." (Sochen, 132) For Stanton, abolitionism and feminism were linked together." (Sochen, 137)
STANTON'S ARGUMENTS
Elizabeth Cady Stanton reached back to the roots of American history and discussed the Declaration of Independence. She argued that women were not immorally inferior, rather, they were morally superior and should be granted access to the political arena. According to Ryan, " these ideals and experiences commingled in such a way as to give birth to an organized feminist movement and generated a score of subsequent women's rights conventions throughout the Northeast and Ohio Valley." (Ryan 164)
HOW STANTON WAS PERCEIVED BY HER CONTEMPORARIES
These women were considered "cranks" among their contemporaries." Comments on the Seneca Falls convention usually hidden in the back pages of local newspapers said " "We respect woman as woman. She fills a place higher, more useful and far more appropriate than she could in any other capacity." (Ryan, 165)