Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Seated, and Susan B. Anthony between 1880 and 1902.
Votes for Women Pictures, 1850-1920

Stanton's verbal brilliance combined with the organizational ability and mental focus of her lifelong collaborator Susan B. Anthony made the two women a formidable resource to the early cause.

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

Although Stanton served as President of the "radical" National Woman Suffrage Association and its successor the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), she found it increasingly difficult to maintain her leadership role. Interestingly, her agenda was far more radical than that of many younger, more conservative feminists.

Stanton's belief that organized religion subjugated women alienated some supporters. In The Woman's Bible, she brought considerable notoriety upon herself by criticizing the treatment of women in the Old Testament.

Draft of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Woman's Bible,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, circa 1895.
Words and Deeds in American History

She expressed her philosophy of the natural rights of woman in an address she delivered before the Committee of the Judiciary of the United States Congress at the venerable age of seventy-seven:

The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties…emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear, is the…solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life…

To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to match the wind and waves and know when to take in the sail, and to read the signs in the firmament over all. It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman.

"Solitude of Self,"
Address Delivered by Mrs. Stanton before the Committee of the Judiciary of the United States Congress, Monday, January 18, 1892.
Votes for Women, 1848-1921

Elizabeth Cady was educated at an all-boys school, where she was permitted to learn Latin, Greek and mathematics. Barred from obtaining a college degree because of her gender, she continued her studies at Emma Willard's academy, where she discovered natural rights philosophy. She read law with her father, Judge Daniel Cady, but was not admitted to the New York Bar because women were excluded. Her legal and philosophical studies and her own experiences convinced her of the discriminatory nature of the laws regarding women, and she resolved to work for the reform of those laws.

In 1840, Cady married anti-slavery activist Henry Stanton, refusing to use the word "obey" in the ceremony. The mother of seven children, she lectured on the subjects of family life and child rearing, abolition, temperance, and woman's rights until her death at the age of eighty-seven. Her daughter Harriet Stanton Blatch followed in her footsteps to continue the fight for women's rights.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Daughter, Harriot,
photograph taken circa 1890-1910 of a daguerreotype taken 1856.
Votes for Women Pictures, 1850-1920

Mrs. Stanton was the most brilliant conversationalist I have ever known…Most of the conversation…was contributed by Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, while the rest of us sat…at their feet…Mrs. Stanton…was rarely accurate in giving figures or dates, while Miss Anthony was always very exact in such matters. She frequently corrected Mrs. Stanton's statements, and Mrs. Stanton usually took the interruption in the best possible spirit…On one occasion I recall, however, she held fast to her opinion that she was right…

"No, Susan," she insisted, "you're wrong for once. I remember perfectly when that happened, for it was at the time I was beginning to wean Harriet." Aunt Susan, though somewhat staggered by the force of this testimony, still maintained that Mrs. Stanton must be mistaken, whereupon the latter repeated, in exasperation, "I tell you it happened when I was weaning Harriet…What event have you got to reckon from?" Miss Anthony meekly subsided.

Anna Howard Shaw,
The Story of a Pioneer, pages 241-242.
Pioneering the Upper Midwest

Elizabeth Cady Stanton died October 26, 1902 before the Woman's Suffrage Amendment was passed by Congress in 1919 . Her papers were donated to the Library of Congress, where they are held by the Manuscript Division.

• Search the collection Votes for Women, 1848-1921 on the name Elizabeth Cady Stanton to find a wealth of documents drafted by Stanton in support of woman's rights.
• Browse the collection Votes for Women Pictures, 1850-1920 for additional photographs of famous suffragists.
• Search the collection Words and Deeds in American History on Stanton to view the draft manuscript of The Woman's Bible.
• Search the Today in History Archive on woman's rights or women's rights to access features on the Seneca Falls Convention and individual feminist activists, including Carrie Chapman Catt, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Alice Paul.
• The Learning Page offers teachers Lesson Plans and Collection Connections designed for use with Votes for Women, 1848-1921.

Albert Ruger

American Panoramic Artists and Publishers in
Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929

Pioneering panoramic map artist Albert Ruger died on November 12, 1899 in Akron, Ohio. Ruger was born in Prussia and emigrated to the United States where he initially worked as a stonemason. While serving with the Ohio Volunteers during the Civil War he began drawing landscapes.

After the war, Ruger settled in Battle Creek, Michigan. In the late 1860s, Ruger joined forces with J.J. Stoner of Madison, Wisconsin to form Merchants Lithographing Company. Over the next three decades, Ruger produced maps of towns and cities in twenty-two states from New Hampshire to Minnesota and as far south as Alabama.

A form of cartography in which towns and cities are drawn as if viewed from above at an oblique angle, panoramic mapping became popular during the late nineteenth century. Panoramic cartographers abandoned restraints of scale to illustrate street patterns, individual buildings, and major landscape features in perspective.

Bird's Eye View of Guttenberg,
Clayton County, Iowa, 1869.
Merchants Lithographing Co.
Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929

Explore American Memory's rich map collections:

• Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929 contains hundreds of maps of United States and Canadian towns by some of the most prolific artists and publishers in the trade. In addition to the maps of Stoner and Ruger, it highlights the work of Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler, Oakley H. Bailey, Lucien R. Burleigh, Henry Wellge, and others. Explore the collection by geographic location, subject, or creator, or by searching the collection on a keyword.
• Mapping the National Parks documents the history, cultural aspects and geological formations of areas that eventually became National Parks. Special Presentations on Acadia, the Grand Canyon, the Great Smoky Mountains, and Yellowstone showcase the best of this collection.
• Railroad Maps, 1828-1900 illustrates the growth of travel and settlement as well as the development of industry and agriculture during a pivotal period in United States history. The Special Presentation History of Railroads and Maps provides both historical background and an overview of the collection.