Meet the Author
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
American · 1815–1902 · Women’s rights leader and writer
Portrait: Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A leader of the American women’s rights movement and the main author of the Declaration of Sentiments, read at Seneca Falls in 1848.
1 StoryBites Edition1 Speech or essay
Why read Elizabeth Cady Stanton?
Stanton borrowed the form of the Declaration of Independence and turned it on the men who claimed its ideals. The Declaration of Sentiments keeps the famous opening, adds ‘and women,’ and lists grievances against man instead of against a king. Read it to see how imitation can become an argument, and how early the demand for women’s right to vote was made.
A life in six dates
- 1815Born in Johnstown, New York
- 1840Marries Henry Brewster Stanton and attends the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London
- 1848Helps organize the Seneca Falls Convention and presents the Declaration of Sentiments
- 1851Meets Susan B. Anthony
- 1869Co-founds the National Woman Suffrage Association with Anthony
- 1895Publishes the first volume of The Woman’s Bible
- 1902Dies in New York City
Themes across the work
The StoryBites Editions
Context that actually matters
The Seneca Falls ConventionHeld in July 1848 in upstate New York, it is often called the first women’s rights convention in the United States.
AbolitionismStanton and many early women’s rights activists came out of the antislavery movement, and Frederick Douglass spoke for the voting resolution at Seneca Falls.
History of Woman SuffrageThe site’s text comes from the first volume of this history, which Stanton edited with Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage.