Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“ We see, if left to her own resources, the intellect which she possesses, and which has remained in a comparatively dormant state, displayed in its full power. What a depth of heart lay hidden in that woman! She takes her husband's business — guides it as though it were a trifle; she takes her sons, and leads them; sets her daughters an example; like a master-leader, she governs the whole household. That is woman's influence. What made that woman? Responsibility. Call her out from weakness, lay upon her soul the burden of her children's education, and she is no longer a girl, but a woman! ”

“ It is idle to say that the guilt is common, that the women are as deeply involved in this matter as the men. Never can it be said that the victims are as much to be blamed as the victimizer; that the slaves are to be as much blamed as the slaveholders and slave-drivers; that the women who have no rights, are to be as much blamed as the men who have played the part of robbers and tyrants. We must deal with conscience. The men of this nation, and the men of all nations, have no just respect for woman. ”

“ No parchments, however venerable with the mould of ages, no human institutions, can bound the immortal wants of the royal sons and daughters of the great I Am,—rightful heirs of the joys of time, and joint heirs of the glories of eternity.
If in marriage either party claims the right to stand supreme, to woman, the mother of the race, belongs the scepter and the crown. Her life is one long sacrifice for man. You tell us that among all womankind there is no Moses, Christ, or Paul,—no Michael Angelo, Beethoven, or Shakspeare,—no Columbus, or Galileo,—no Locke or Bacon. ”

“ Any person who ponders the startling fact that there are four millions of African slaves in this republic, will instantly put the question to himself, "Why do these people submit to the cruel tyranny that our government exercises over them?" The answer is apparent—"simply because they are ignorant of their power." Should they rise en masse, assert and demand their rights, their freedom would be secure. It is the same with woman. Why is it that one-half the people of this nation are held in abject dependence—civilly, politically, socially, the slaves of man? ”

“ Truth falling from the lips of a Lucretia Mott in long skirts is none the less truth, than if uttered by a Lucy Stone in short dress, or a Helen Maria Weber in pants and swallow-tail coat. And I can not yet think so meanly of manly justice, as to believe it will yield simply to a change of garments. Let us assert our right to be free. Let us get out of our prison-house of law. Let us own ourselves, our earnings, our genius; let us have power to control as well as to earn and to own; then will each woman adjust her dress to her relations in life. ”

“ But not all women. This is an age of iconoclasms; and daring hands are raised to sweep from its pedestal, and dash to fragments, this false image of woman. We care not how soon, if the true woman but take its place. This is also, and most emphatically, an age of progress. One old idea, one mouldering form of prejudice after another, is rapidly swept away. Thought, written and spoken, acts upon the mass of mind in this day of railroads and telegraphs, with a thousandfold more celerity than in the days of pillions and slow coaches. ”

“ Think you we should cherish and defend, in the heart of our nation, such a wholesale system of piracy, cruelty, licentiousness, and ignorance as is our slavery? Think you that relic of barbarism, the gallows, by which the wretched murderer is sent with blood upon his soul, uncalled for, into the presence of his God, would be sustained by law? Verily, no, or I mistake woman's heart, her instinctive love of justice, and mercy, and truth! ”

“ Shall the frenzied mother, who, to save herself and child from exposure and disgrace, ended the life that had but just begun, be dragged before such a tribunal to answer for her crime? How can man enter into the feelings of that mother? How can he judge of the agonies of soul that impelled her to such an outrage of maternal instincts? How can he weigh the mountain of sorrow that crushed that mother's heart when she wildly tossed her helpless babe into the cold waters of the midnight sea? Where is he who by false vows thus blasted this trusting woman? ”

“ Whoever heard of a Philadelphia lady setting up for a reformer, or standing out for woman's rights, or assisting to man the election grounds, raise a regiment, command a legion, or address a jury? Our ladies glow with a higher ambition. They soar to rule the hearts of their worshipers, and secure obedience by the sceptre of affection. The tenure of their power is a law of nature, not a law of man, and hence they fear no insurrection, and never experience the shock of a revolution in their dominions. But all women are not as reasonable as ours of Philadelphia. ”

“ How my heart throbs to see women assembling in convention to inquire what part they have in the great moral struggles of humanity! Verily a new era is dawning upon the world, when woman, hitherto the mere dependent of man, the passive recipient alike of truth and error, at length shakes off her lethargy, the shackles of a false education, customs and habits, and stands upright in the dignity of a moral being, and not only proclaims her own freedom, but demands what she shall do to save man from the slavery of his own low appetites. ”

“ Now, gentlemen, do you talk to woman of a rude jest or jostle at the polls, where noble, virtuous men stand ready to protect her person and her rights, when, alone in the darkness and solitude and gloom of night, she has trembled on her own threshold, awaiting the return of a husband from his midnight revels?—when, stepping from her chamber, she has beheld her royal monarch, her lord and master—her legal representative—the protector of her property, her home, her children, and her person, down on his hands and knees slowly crawling up the stairs? ”

“ When I find a man who is obstinate against Woman's Rights, I try to find out either what sort of a mother or what sort of a wife that man has, and there I find the key to his position; fur how can you expect any man to have a noble and equal idea of woman, when his mother knows nothing in the universe beyond a cooking-stove, and his wife has not much experimental acquaintance even with that?
No; the first obstacle to this Woman's Rights movement is the feminine, that builds all its hopes upon the wretched adulation and flattery of men — that thinks "the gentlemen admire weakness in a woman." ”

“ Yes, sir, there are women, pure and virtuous and noble as yourself, spending every day of all the years of their existence in the most intimate association with infamous men, kept so by that monstrous and unnatural artifice, baptized by the sacred name of marriage. I might take you through many, many phases of woman's life, into those sacred relations of which we speak not in our conventions, where woman feels her deepest wrongs, where in blank despair she drags out days, and weeks, and months, and years of silent agony. ”

“ This reform is designed, by its originators, to make woman womanly in the highest sense of that term — to exalt, not to degrade — to perfect, not to impair her refining influence in every sphere. The demand is made only to take off burdens, to remove hindrances, to leave women free as men are free, to follow conscience and judgment in all scenes of duty. On what ground — except the right of might — do men, claiming to be Republicans and Christians, deny to woman privileges which they would die to gain and keep for themselves? ”

“ I found a great many men, especially those of the better class, disposed to accord equal rights to our sex. And, now, as the highest tribute that I can pay to the memory of a husband, I may say that during our companionship of thirty-five years, I was most cordially sustained by mine, in my advocacy of equal rights to women. Amongst my own sex, I found too many on whom ages of repression had wrought their natural effect, and whose ideas and aspirations were narrowed down to the confines of "woman's sphere," beyond whose limits it was not only impious, but infamous to tread. ”

“ Justice, humanity, patriotism; every high and every holy motive urge us forward, and we dare not refuse to obey. The way of duty lies open before us, and though no pillar of fire be visible to the outward sense, yet an unerring light shall illumine our pathway, guiding us through the sea of persecution and the wilderness of prejudice and error, to the promised land of freedom, whore "every man shall sit under his own vine and fig-tree, and none shall make him afraid." ”

“ Nothing was too sacred for her to question, as to its rightfulness in principle and practice. "Truth for authority, not authority for truth," was not only the motto of her life, but it was the fixed mental habit in which she most rigidly held herself. It seemed to me like meeting a being from some larger planet, to find a woman who dared to question the opinions of Popes, Kings, Synods, Parliaments, with the same freedom that she would criticise an editorial in the London Times, recognizing no higher authority than the judgment of a pure-minded, educated woman. ”

“ There is no reform question of the day that meets so ready, so full, so deep a response from the masses, as does this Woman's Rights question. To ensure a speedy triumph, we have only to take earnest hold of the work of disseminating its immutable truths. Let us, then, agitate the question, hold public meetings, widely circulate Woman's Rights Tracts, and show to the world that we are in earnest—that we will be heard—that our demands stop not short of justice and perfect equality to every human being. ”

“ Where all the young girls, taught to believe that marriage is the only legitimate object of a woman's pursuit—they who stand listlessly on life's shores, waiting, year after year, like the sick man at the pool of Bethesda, for some one to come and put them in? These are they who by their ignorance and folly curse almost every fireside with some human specimen of deformity or imbecility. These are they who fill the gloomy abodes of poverty and vice in our vast metropolis. These are they who patrol the streets of our cities, to give our sons their first lessons in infamy. ”

“ I reply, "I want to exercise my God-given right to vote." Such a taunt as this would be no more insulting than those now cast at women, when they demand rights so unjustly denied.
I make no claim that woman is fit to be a member of Congress or President; all I ask for her is what I ask for the negro, a fair field. All will admit that woman has a right to herself, to her own powers of locomotion, to her own earnings, but how few are prepared to admit her right to the ballot. ”

“ How can she devoutly subscribe to a theology which makes her the conscientious victim of another's will, forever subject to the triple bondage of the man, the priest, and the law? How can she tolerate our social customs, by which womankind is stripped of all true virtue, dignity, and nobility? How can she endure our present marriage relations, by which woman's life, health, and happiness are held so cheap, that she herself feels that God has given her no charter of rights, no individuality of her own. ”

“ The last is ours—the dominion of brains. We live in a government where The New York Herald and New York Tribune, thank God, are more really the government than Franklin Pierce and Caleb Cushing. Ideas reign. I know some men do not appreciate this fact; they are overawed by the iron arm, by the marble capitol, by the walls of granite—palpable power, felt, seen. I have seen the palace of the Cæsars, built of masses that seemed as if giants alone could have laid them together, to last for eternity, as if nothing that did not part the solid globe could move them. ”

“ Shall an erring woman be dragged before a bar of grim-visaged judges, lawyers, and jurors, there to be grossly questioned in public on subjects which women scarce breathe in secret to one another? Shall the most sacred relations of life be called up and rudely scanned by men who, by their own admission, are so coarse that women could not meet them even at the polls without contamination? ”

“ To regard any state of society as fixed, is to regard it as the ultimate good, as the best condition to which we can attain. But when man has progressed, when his morality and his religion have assumed a higher tone, it is impossible to perpetuate his childhood, or to give permanence to institutions and opinions whose days are numbered. When reform has truth for its basis and is instinct with the life of progression, no power can dress it in the habiliments of the grave, and bury it out of sight, either in the Potter's-field or under the magnificent mausoleum. ”