American Literature, 500 word essay, No Plagiarism and due by Nov 10,2020

Lisa Shawn Hogan 3

Lisa Shawn Hogan is jointly appointed in the Departments of Communication Arts & Sciences and Women’s Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. She has written several articles on the rhetoric of the nineteenth-century women’s rights movement. All correspondence can be made at [email protected].

Lisa Shawn Hogan

Wisdom, Goodness and Power: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the

History of Woman Suffrage

In the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her co-authors crafted a rhetorical history that not only celebrated Stanton’s role in the suffrage movement, but also promoted her broader, more radical vision of complete gender equality. In the context of a movement divided over strategy, Stanton and her editors made the case not just for the vote, but for expanding the role of women in all realms of Ameri- can social and political life. Documenting the contributions of women since the Revolu- tion, the History advocated the full political and legal “sovereignty” of women by showing how their wisdom, goodness, and power had contributed to the nation’s progress.

[W]e hope to rouse new thoughts in minds prepared to receive them.

—History of Woman Suffrage (1881)

On December 23, 1892 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the suffrage movement’s 77-year-old founding mother, delivered a speech recalling the heroic sacrifices of women at the time of the nation’s birth. Entitled “Our Foremothers,” the address urged two-hundred members of New York City’s Woman Suffrage League not only to remember the accomplishments of Revolutionary-era women like Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams, but also to continue the fight they started. “They struggled bravely for the material necessities of our young civilization,” Stanton stated, and she called upon her audience in New York to continue the struggle: “Let us be faith- ful in proclaiming the moral necessities of the time in which we live, demanding equal rights for all our people, men and women, of every color and nationality.”1

Women’s history was very much on Stanton’s mind as she spoke to the Woman Suffrage League. She had just completed her most ambitious project yet, the first

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three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage. Now she was back delivering speeches to suffrage conventions, and she took every opportunity to promote the volumes. “There too,” she said in reference to the History, “you can read of many heroic deeds of women.”2

Stanton began collecting documents for the History of Woman Suffrage as early as 1875.3 She did not begin working on the project full time until 1880, however, when she retired from James Redpath’s lyceum circuit.4 The History was an ambi- tious project that ultimately resulted in six volumes—each nearly a thousand pages— and took more than three decades to complete. Stanton joined with suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage to edit the first three volumes, while the final three volumes were completed by Anthony and Ida Husted Harper after Stanton’s death.5 Most historians agree that Stanton wrote the lengthy introductions to each of the first three volumes and most of the interpretive headnotes to the individual docu- ments.6 Stanton’s contributions to the History are readily identifiable by her distinc- tive style and by the many passages she borrowed from her previous writings and speeches. Her detailed letters to outside contributors provide further evidence that she did much of the editorial work herself.7

Although roughly chronological, the first three volumes of the History had no clear organizational structure. Volumes one and three (1848–1861 and 1876–1885 respectively) included chapters devoted to the suffrage campaign in particular states, enumerating women’s successes across the country. The chapter on New York, for example, described the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and included the original call in the Seneca County Courier, along with the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. Yet even that loose, state-by-state structure was disrupted by brief bio- graphical sketches of famous women, written by the activists themselves or by other suffragists in the movement. In many cases the editors digressed from the chronol- ogy altogether. A chapter written by Gage, “Preceding Causes,” for example, moved awkwardly from the Protestant Reformation in Europe to Colonial America, then concluded with a discussion of the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement. Pro- duced hurriedly under deadline, the volumes had no index and only brief chapter titles in the table of contents. Volume two, roughly covering the Civil War through Reconstruction (1861–1876), was the most disorganized of the three, with chapter headings defined by broad themes such as “Trials and Decisions,” “National Con- ventions,” and “Congressional Action.” Seemingly, the first three volumes of the History represented a disparate archive of documents from the women’s rights struggle, including regional and national convention announcements, speeches, reso- lutions, financial statements, congressional debates, Supreme Court decisions, press releases, newspaper clippings, biographies, reminiscences, and magazine articles.

Whatever the work’s shortcomings, the History of Woman Suffrage remained

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the definitive source on the suffrage struggle for more than a century. As historian Aileen Kraditor has written, the volumes contain a “treasure-house of suffrage in- formation,”8 and according to Nancy Isenberg, our understanding of the suffrage movement today has largely been “inherited” from the History.9 Yet, surprisingly, few have analyzed the rhetorical purposes and character of the History. While much has been written about Stanton’s speeches and writings,10 scholars only recently have begun to recognize the History as a rhetorical document. In her recent book on Stanton’s Woman’s Bible, for example, historian Kathi Kern noted that the History of Woman Suffrage was more than just an archive of documents; it also constructed a narrative history of the suffrage crusade that emphasized Stanton’s role as its found- ing mother.11 Likewise, historian Nancy Isenberg has written that the “History ex- plains the origins of things, providing an allegorical interpretation of the past.” More than a “documentary,” Isenberg concludes that the History constructed a “master narrative” that positioned Stanton herself as “the heir and founder of the suffrage campaign.”12

This essay suggests another way of reading the “master narrative” of a History of Woman Suffrage. Noting the broad historical reach of the History and the “les- sons” taught by its biographical and historical sketches, this essay shows how the History not only celebrated Stanton’s role in the suffrage movement, but also pro- moted her broader, more radical vision of complete gender equality. In selecting and editing documents for the History, Stanton and her collaborators took sides in a debate over strategy that had divided the suffrage movement. But more than that, they told a version of women’s history that made the case, in William Blackstone’s terms, for the full political and legal “sovereignty” of women.13 Demonstrating the “wisdom, goodness and power” of women,14 the History made the case not just for the vote, but for the role of women in nineteenth-century America. Documenting the contributions of women since the American Revolution, it linked women’s rights to the revolutionary founders and helped set a new agenda for the women’s rights move- ment. In the process, the History provided both the inspiration and an “arsenal of facts” for later generations of women’s rights activists.15

Stanton’s Rhetorical Archive: Politics and Controversy

Contemporary scholars have long recognized that the writing of history is in- herently rhetorical. “[H]istory writing,” as Susan Jaratt has argued, “is an interpre- tive act and has to do with the construction of a narrative by a writer located in time, place, and institution.”16 As Jacquelyn Down Hill has suggested, historians do more than simply preserve the past when they sort through the “tangled threads of memory and history.” They also create “new futures.” 17 By including or excluding certain

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documents and interpretations of events, history-writing both “reflects and creates relations of power.”18 Indeed, as historian Joan Scott has noted, those writing history often “consider themselves involved in a highly political effort to challenge prevail- ing authority.”19

Stanton certainly understood the rhetorical implications of history writing. In a diary entry of 1880, she noted a need for a record of the movement: “We are trying to collect everything that pertains to our cause, to exhume what women have done, and to rescue all the facts from being forgotten.”20 Yet she also recognized the power of such an archive to provoke new ideas and to guide the direction of the suffrage movement. As Stanton wrote in the introduction to the first volume, “we hope to rouse new thoughts in minds prepared to receive them.”21

At the start of the project, the task of documenting the history of the woman’s right movement seemed overwhelming. In her memoir, Eighty Years and More, Stanton recalled her horror as she first realized the magnitude of the project:

I had never thought that the publication of a book required the consideration of such endless details. We stood appalled before the mass of material, growing higher and higher with every mail, and the thought of all the reading involved made us feel as if our life work lay before us. Six weeks of steady labor all day, and often until midnight, made no visible decrease in the pile of documents.22

Editing the biographical sketches and other essays contributed by outside au- thors proved the biggest challenge. “Oh, what dreadful manuscripts some women send us,” Stanton recalled in her diary. “It is enough to destroy old eyes.” Yet con- vinced of the importance of the task, Stanton threw her full energies into the project. In her diary, she anticipated the joy she would feel upon completion of the project: “When it is completed I shall feel as happy as when delivered of a male child.”23

To help with the editing, Stanton enlisted the assistance of Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Stanton and Anthony had remained political partners for over three decades and had rallied together after the suffrage movement split in 1869.24 Gage, too, was a likely collaborator. In the fall of 1852, Gage had delivered a rousing speech on women’s history before the National Woman’s Rights Conven- tion in Syracuse, New York.25 She later would go on to publish a controversial cri- tique of organized religion’s attitude toward women, Woman, Church and State.26

Often at odds with the mainstream movement, Gage’s unconventional views fit well with Stanton’s broader view of the women’s rights struggle.27

Stanton recognized the potentially controversial nature of the History of Woman Suffrage, and she was quick to defend her project against critics who complained about its biases. Two years before she even published the first volume, Stanton jus- tified her subjective approach to history in an article in Gage’s suffrage newspaper, the National Citizen and Ballot Box. “[W]e who have made the history,” she wrote,

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“are best fitted to write it.”28 In the first volume of the History, Stanton again re- sponded to her critics, this time answering charges that it was too soon for a suffrage history. “In giving the inception and progress of this agitation,” Stanton responded, “we who have undertaken the task have been moved by the consideration that many of our co-workers have already fallen asleep, and that in a few years all who could tell the story will have passed away.”29

Lucy Stone—president of the rival American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA)—was among those who Stanton thought had “fallen asleep.” In November of 1869, Stone founded the AWSA as a way to distance herself from Stanton and Anthony’s National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). Stone complained that Stanton was stirring up new controversies and losing sight of the most important goal: the electoral franchise. As historian Ellen Carol DuBois explained, Stone be- lieved that the NWSA was too “heterogeneous” and “confounding woman suffrage with sexual and economic issues.”30 For her part, Stanton complained that Stone’s “social conservatism” was holding back women.31

The rivalry intensified when Stanton, at the insistence of her daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, requested that Stone provide a biographical sketch for the History. Stone refused, at first justifying her decision by saying that such a history was pre- mature. In a letter to Stanton in August of 1876, Stone wrote that there “will come a time when this greatest of all the world movements will have its history and then it can be written.” Stone concluded that she did not “wish to have any hand” in Stanton’s history.32 Later, in another letter to Stanton, Stone went even further, writing that she would not “furnish a biographical sketch and I hope you will not make one.” Addressing more directly the split within the suffrage movement, Stone expressed her concern that “any ‘wing’ of suffragists should attempt to write the history of the other.”33 In a letter to fellow suffragist Harriet Robinson, Susan B. Anthony lamented Stone’s refusal to cooperate and complained about her “narrow pig headedness.” In Anthony’s view, Stone had “repelled everybody’s efforts to establish a cooperation among all the suffragists in a most dogged manner.”34 The conflict between the two organizations would continue for more than two decades.

In the context of these divisions and rivalries within the women’s movement, the History of Woman Suffrage inevitably became a rhetorical history. It did not merely “record” or “document” the history of woman suffrage, but rather promoted Stanton’s own agenda for moving the women’s movement beyond the narrow con- fines of agitation for the vote. The editors of the History made no claims to histori- cal objectivity. As Stanton herself summarized her attitude in the first volume, “there is an interest in history written from a subjective point of view that may compensate the reader in this case for any seeming egotism or partiality he may discover.”35

Glossing over the disagreements between the two rival organizations, Stanton ad-

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vanced her own contributions and her own ideas, including her view that the women’s rights movement should push for equality in all realms of life.

In the introduction to the first volume of the History, Stanton quoted famed eighteenth-century legal scholar William Blackstone on the requirements of “sover- eignty,” or full citizenship in a democratic state. “The elements of sovereignty,” Blackstone had written, were “wisdom, goodness and power.” Stanton then explained why she believed that women already possessed those virtues: “Conceding to woman wisdom and goodness, as they are not strictly masculine virtues, and substituting moral power for physical force, we have the necessary elements of government for most of life’s emergencies.” In the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suf- frage, Stanton and her co-editors further documented that women possessed the “el- ements of sovereignty” with almost three thousand pages detailing their contribu- tions to history. In telling this story, the History sometimes reinforced conventional stereotypes, assuring readers that women’s rights activists posed no threat to prevail- ing conceptions of femininity and respectability. In the final analysis, however, the History promoted the same broad agenda of social and political reform that Stanton promoted in all of her speeches and writings. In recalling the historical contribu- tions of women, the History of Woman Suffrage made the case not just for the vote but for complete gender equality in both the private and the public spheres.

Civic Wisdom and the Revolutionary Heritage

“Throughout history,” as Kathleen Hall Jamieson has written, “women have been identified as bodies not minds, wombs not brains.”36 The very idea of a wise woman seemed an oxymoron: women were praised for their motherly intuition and moral reasoning in the private sphere of domesticity, but never for their civic wis- dom. “Those who chose to exercise their intellects in public life,” Jamieson ex- plained, “upended the natural order, endangered the family, and called into question whether they were really women.”37 Biographies and histories written by women in the nineteenth-century reflected this “double bind.” Even as they became “public speakers and social commentators,” women of the Victorian era insisted that they were still exercising their “conventional roles as mothers.”38 The portrait of the fe- male activist of the nineteenth-century was that of a “wise mother called reluctantly from her domestic duties to the podium only because her female sympathy impels her to speak out for the helpless and weak.”39 As Nan Johnson has suggested, the only appropriate public role for women in the nineteenth century was that of a ma- ternal figure who exercised a “healthy moral influence over domestic life.”40

In some ways, the History of Woman Suffrage actually reaffirmed this conven- tional view by assuring readers that women’s rights activists throughout history had

Lisa Shawn Hogan 9

not neglected their familial responsibilities. In her chapter on the Colonial and Revo- lutionary periods, for example, Gage repeatedly referred to the “feminine” roles of the earliest women’s rights activists, suggesting that their activism grew naturally out of their interests as mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters.41 Gage even described the earliest women’s rights activists in America as “Revolutionary Mothers” who fought principally to protect their families.42 Portraying these activists as “happy wives and faithful mothers, who in a higher development, demanded the rights and privileges” of men, the History countered critical portraits of women’s rights activ- ists as “sour old maids,” “childless women,” or “divorced wives.”43 The History suggested that women became social reformers not out of political ambition, but because they naturally had “souls large enough to feel the wrongs of others.”44

At the same time, the History of Woman Suffrage suggested that women pos- sessed as much “common-sense” and “good judgment” as men,45 and that their political activism was all the more remarkable because they had to juggle their pub- lic lives with their domestic duties. In describing Gage’s role at the Woman’s Rights Convention of 1851 in Akron, for example, Stanton offered the following praise of her colleague’s remarkable success, both as a homemaker and a suffrage leader:

When we consider that Mrs. Gage had led the usual arduous domestic life, of wife, mother, and housekeeper, in a new country, overburdened with the care and anxiety incident to a large family, reading and gathering information in short intervals, taken from the hours of rest of excessive toil, it is remarkable, that she should have presided over the Convention, in the easy manner she is said to have done, and should have given so graceful and appropriate an extemporaneous speech, on taking the chair.46

Beyond the skills and stamina to participate in public life, the women profiled in the History of Woman Suffrage possessed the political insight and patriotism nec- essary for full citizenship. Since the Revolutionary War years, the History suggested, women with “freedom surging in their veins” had been “active, determined, and self-sacrificing” in their service to their country. Moreover, the “deep political in- sights” of women such as Mercy Otis Warren, Abigail Smith Adams, and Hannah Lee Corbin had contributed significantly to the ideological heritage of the nation. In a chapter written by Gage, the History even implied that Mercy Ottis Warren had coined some of the phrases that Jefferson used in the Declaration of Independence.47

Warren, Gage wrote, was the “first one who based the struggle upon ‘inherent rights,’ a phrase afterward made the corner-stone of political authority.”48 Similarly, Gage praised Abigail Smith Adams, insisting that her “political insight was worthy of remark.”49 For over a century, Gage concluded, women had been “continually rais- ing their voices against political tyranny, and demanding for themselves equality of opportunity in every department of life.”50 The History thus portrayed “full sover-

10 Gender Issues / Spring 2006

eignty” for women as a natural extension of the nation’s revolutionary ideals, as well as something that women had earned through their contributions to history. Since the Revolution, the History concluded, American women had demonstrated both the “highest morality” and the “purest wisdom.”51

The History of Woman Suffrage thus redefined women’s activism in American history. Celebrating women’s patriotism, civic responsibility, and political acumen, the History demonstrated that women had earned full political sovereignty, not just the vote. The History did not disparage women’s conventional roles as mothers and wives, but rather presented political activism as a natural extension of those roles. Women, the History suggested, were not only wise enough to exercise full political sovereignty, but had earned those rights throughout American history.

The Good Woman Speaking Well

Although the History of Woman Suffrage ostensibly told the story of the suf- frage campaign, it situated that effort within a broader context of social reform. The biographical sketches and reminiscences from activists themselves addressed a va- riety of issues, including abolition, temperance, prison reform, and co-education. In addition, the volumes took on many of the most controversial issues of the day, including dress reform and the status of women in the Christian church. By telling the stories of women who spoke out publicly on a broad range of issues, the History not only illustrated the wisdom and historical contributions of women, but also the courage, skill, and moral virtue they displayed from the public platform. Countering the prevailing belief that women compromised their moral virtue by participating in politics, the History told the story of women who proved their civic virtue by speak- ing out in public.

The laws, customs, and mores of the nineteenth century defined women al- most exclusively in terms of their morality and Christian virtue. Women, as Beth Waggenspack has explained, were celebrated as the “repository of life-giving mater- nity”; they “possessed intuition and refinement” and were “morally and spiritually superior to man.” Men, on the other hand, were thought naturally superior in the skills necessary for participation in politics, such as logical reasoning and platform eloquence.52 As historian Linda Kerber has explained, the “woman’s sphere” served as a “metaphor for complex power relations in social and economic contexts.”53 In the nineteenth century, religion and morality dictated that women be restricted to the domestic sphere.54 As Barbara Welter has explained, American women were ex- pected to be “Defenders of the Faith.”55

In the History of Woman Suffrage, Stanton and her colleagues told the stories of many famous women who challenged these conventional gender roles. These

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women possessed all the skills, talents, and civic wisdom of their male counterparts in the public arena, and many had achieved true “eloquence.” Yet they still held on to the moral virtues traditionally associated with women, and they never compromised their femininity in fighting for their causes. In discussing the abolitionist movement of the 1830s and 1840s, for example, Stanton used the word “eloquent” or “elo- quence” three times on the first page alone to describe female abolitionists. Yet she also assured readers that female abolitionists had not compromised their morality or their femininity by speaking out in public. Indeed, the History documented how some women had achieved “eloquence,” in part at least, by exploiting their beauty and feminine charms, thereby countering the prevailing view that speaking in public made women masculine, unattractive, or “unwomanly.” In effect, the History of Woman Suffrage thus feminized the ideal orator—Quintillian’s “good man skilled at speak- ing.” It showed how women could be “eloquent” and maintain their feminine vir- tues.

The History’s portrait of abolitionist Angelina Grimké provided one case-in- point. Not only did Angelina and her sister Sarah both display “glowing eloquence,” according to the History, but they were “women of the purest moral character.”56

“Angelina, especially,” Stanton wrote, “possessed a rare gift of eloquence, a calm power of persuasion, a magnetic influence over those that listened to her, which carried conviction to hearts that nothing before had reached.”57 Stanton praised Angelina’s “serene, commanding eloquence” as “a wonderful gift, which enchained attention, disarmed prejudice, and carried her hearers with her.”58 According to Stanton, there “was no more effective or eloquent speaker in the cause than Angelina Grimké,”59 yet she never sacrificed her moral virtue or femininity by participating in politics. Possessing “the eloquence of a broken heart,”60 Grimké “never lost one of her purely feminine qualities,”61 Stanton concluded. Men succumbed “readily to the power and magic of her words;” she was, in other words, eloquent.62 But she remained feminine; an “attractive woman” with “fine dark eyes,” and her skin was as “delicate as the lily-of-the valley.”63

The History’s biographical sketch of Stanton’s friend and mentor, Lucretia Coffin Mott, likewise celebrated both her “eloquence” and femininity. As a speaker, the History noted, Mott was “calm” and “clear,” and she exhibited the “good com- mon sense” of the most eloquent speakers of the day.64 Yet she also remained a woman of “refined” and “great personal beauty,” and she exhibited “sweetness and charity” in everything she did.65 According to the History, Mott’s “manners were gentle and self-possessed,” and she exhibited all of the “virtues of the true woman.”66

The “name Lucretia Mott,” the History concluded, “represents more fully than any other in the nineteenth-century, the sum of all womanly virtues.”67

The portrait of women’s rights activist Ernestine Rose, contributed by suffrag-

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ist L.E. Barnard, provided one last example of how the History celebrated both tra- ditional eloquence and feminine virtues and beauty. Quoting an account of one of Rose’s speeches from the Boston Investigator, the History described Rose as “an excellent lecturer, liberal, eloquent, witty, and we must add, decidedly handsome,” and her speeches were both “pointed” and “logical.” Possessing both “intellect” and “beauty,”68 Rose was able to “charm” her audiences with her oratory. In a later chap- ter, the editors of the History reinforced Barnard’s portrait of Rose with an account from the Cleveland Plain Dealer that described her role in the Akron suffrage con- vention of 1851. Rose was a “lady of great beauty” and “animation,” the paper re- ported, and she had an “effective” delivery. As such, the Plain Dealer concluded, her speaking style was “favorable to both the speaker and the cause.”69

As Karlyn Kohrs Campbell has reminded us, “the ability to persuade others” has long been “a part of Western man’s standard of excellence in many areas, even of citizenship itself.”70 In the History of Woman Suffrage, Stanton and her co-editors made the case for female citizenship, in part, by emphasizing the eloquence of women throughout history. At the same time, Stanton and her collaborators challenged the prevailing view that speaking in public robbed women of their moral virtue and feminine charms. Holding up portraits of women who excelled on the public plat- form but retained their femininity, the History recalled an honorable tradition of women speaking in public, even as it suggested that some women exploited their beauty and femininity to win over audiences. By assuring readers that women could both speak in the public sphere and remain “womanly,” the History feminized the ideal speaker of the classical rhetorical tradition and demonstrated how women had met Blackstone’s second test of political “sovereignty.”

The Power of Women in History

Stanton and her co-editors understood the politics involved in writing a suf- frage history. Using the History of Woman Suffrage to “rouse new thoughts in minds prepared to hear them,”71 they aimed not only to document women’s courage and determination in the past, but also to create a “precious heritage for coming genera- tions” of women.72 Hoping to inspire and empower later generations, Stanton glossed over the divisions within the movement and called upon the next generation of women to pick up where Stanton and her colleagues left off. That meant more than bringing the campaign for woman suffrage to a successful conclusion; it meant continuing the fight for equal rights and against sex discrimination in all realms of private and public life. “All thoughtful readers must close these volumes with a deeper sense of self-reliance and independence that belong by nature to women,” Stanton wrote in the third volume of the History, “enabling her to rise above such multifarious perse-

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cutions as she has encountered, and with persistent self-assertion to maintain her rights.”73

As historian Linda Kerber has noted, the late nineteenth century was the “high- water mark of women’s public influence: through voluntary organizations, lobby- ing, trade unions, professional education, and professional activity.”74 For Stanton and her co-editors, women’s achievements in these areas were no less significant than the political victories of suffrage activists, and Stanton herself emphasized how each woman’s triumphs—no matter how small—contributed to the larger cause and was worthy of celebration. “[W]e would suggest,” she wrote, “that as each brick in a magnificent structure might have no special value alone on the road-side, yet, in combination with many others, its size position, quality, becomes of vital conse- quence.” In “any great reform,” she concluded, there were people and events that, while seemingly “of little value themselves,” contribute to the greater cause and were therefore “worthy of mention—even important to the completion of the his- torical record.”75 For Stanton and her editors, women working on school boards, entering male-dominated professions, or graduating from major universities were no less important to the “historical record” than women speaking at suffrage con- ventions. For the editors of the History, any public achievement by women was wor- thy of inclusion. The History of Woman Suffrage was, at bottom, a history of women exercising power together.

Glossing over the disputes that had divided the suffragists themselves, the edi- tors of the History said little about the AWSA or the split that divided the movement in 1869. Out of the nearly 3000 pages in the first three volumes of the History, only 106 pages—a single chapter—were devoted to the AWSA.76 The split might not have been mentioned at all had not Stanton’s own daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, insisted that the AWSA be recognized and volunteered to prepare the chapter her- self.77 Acknowledging the AWSA only in passing, Stanton herself downplayed the significance of the split in the larger scheme of things: “Viewing the enfranchise- ment of woman as the most important demand of the century, we have felt no temp- tation to linger over individual differences.”78 In a letter to fellow suffragist Eliza- beth Buffum Chase in 1879, Stanton even admitted that she had deliberately downplayed the divisions in order to create a more positive historical legacy: “We do not desire to give the world unimportant bickerings, and thus mar our grand move- ment in the eyes of future generations, but make a fair history of all that has been well done, and throw the veil of charity over the remainder.”79

In a variety of more subtle ways, however, the History of Woman Suffrage did, in fact, promote a feminist agenda that reached well beyond the vote. As the suffrage movement became dominated by a new generation of younger, more conservative activists in the 1880s, the History reminded them of the sacrifices of pioneers like

14 Gender Issues / Spring 2006

Stanton herself. It also situated the suffrage struggle within a longer historical tradi- tion of women fighting for equal rights. In the second volume, for example, the History praised Union women who disguised themselves as men in order to fight in the Civil War. Lamenting that “no national recognition has been accorded the grand women who did faithful service in the late war,” the History recorded the “noble deeds” of a few such women, noting that their “patriotism…shone forth as fervently and spontaneously as did that of man.” Presumably correcting the historical record of the war, the History concluded that many women “fought in the ranks during the war, impelled by the same patriotic motives which led their fathers, husbands, and brothers.”80 In the same volume, the History also celebrated the legendary Civil War nurse, Clara Barton, both as a caregiver to wounded soldiers and as a “national advocate and leader” who demonstrated “remarkable executive ability” and “firm integrity.” In dramatic, vivid language, the History praised Barton for her physical stamina and remarkable courage, even as it acknowledged that she came out of the war unscathed: “[T]hrough summer without shade, and winter without shelter, often weak, but never so far disabled as to retire from the field; always under fire in severe battles; her clothing pierced with bullets and torn by shot, exposed at all times, but never wounded.”81

Beyond such obvious heroes, the History of Woman Suffrage celebrated the lives of a number of highly controversial women, typically disavowed by suffragists. Anne Hutchinson, the radical Puritan woman who was banished from the Massa- chusetts Bay Colony for challenging the religious beliefs of the male clergy in 1637, for example, drew Stanton’s praise for her “courage, moral heroism, and conscien- tious devotion to great principles.”82 Noting that mainstream historical accounts written by men had described Hutchinson as a woman of “haughty and fierce car- riage” with a “very voluble tongue,”83 Stanton instead celebrated Hutchinson’s “com- manding intellect” and her political and social “influence” on the role of women in the church.84 Similarly, Stanton and her collaborators revised the biographical por- trait of Mary Wollstonecraft, who in her own day had been branded a “hyena in petticoats” for her unconventional views on gender and marriage. In standing up to the “violent abuse” she received during her own lifetime, Wollstonecraft had dem- onstrated the conviction and courage of a great leader, according to the History, and throughout her life she had always exhibited “the highest morality and purest wis- dom.”85

Two other women seem even more surprising choices for inclusion in the His- tory of Woman Suffrage: Frances Wright and Victoria Woodhull. Wright, identified most often with atheism and the free love movement of the 1830s,86 was condemned in her own day as a sacrilegious heretic. In the History, however, she was praised for her “extraordinary powers of mind” and for courageously standing up to her “bitter

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opponents” with grace and dignity. 87 Even more controversial was the spiritualist and suffragist Victoria Woodhull who, in 1872, became the first women to run for president in the United States. Twice divorced and an advocate of free love, Woodhull challenged the sexual mores of her time and advocated controversial reforms in the newspaper she published with her sister, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly. Woodhull’s views on sexual freedom were so controversial that Lucy Stone’s daughter observed that “no woman is regarded with so much abhorrence by almost all decent people.”88

Although the History did not include a biography of Woodhull’s scandalous life, it did include the complete text of Woodhull’s suffrage address before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives in 1871, thus preserving her place in the history of the movement. 89

In sum, Stanton and her editors crafted a history of women exercising power, not just in the suffrage crusade, but in all walks of life, including the male domains of politics and war. In the process, they did not sanitize the history by ignoring controversial women. To the contrary, they celebrated women who had advocated controversial and unpopular ideas. In effect, the History endorsed a broader women’s rights agenda that was willing to address issues beyond the elective franchise. Throughout her career Stanton seemed proud that she was on the leading edge of reform and the History of Woman Suffrage was no doubt part of that agenda. As she reflected in her autobiography at the end of her life, “[T]he trouble was not what I said, but that I said it too soon, and before the people were ready to hear it. It may be, however, that I helped them get ready; who knows?”90

Conclusion

As the suffrage movement evolved toward the turn of the century, many suf- fragists advocated female enfranchisement as a means of preserving the status quo. These suffragists argued that women needed the right to vote in order to protect their homes and the traditional family.91 Arguments from expediency—the pragmatic belief that woman suffrage would benefit society as a whole—dominated the discourse of the era.92 In some measure, this accounts for the fact that, by 1890, suffrage was no longer viewed as a radical idea. Suffrage had become “respectable and dull,” as historian Olivia Coolidge has noted. “It preached largely to the converted.…Suffrage had reached a dead stop.”93 Historian Eleanor Flexner has referred to this period as the “doldrums” of the movement.94

As she began work on the History of Woman Suffrage, Stanton voiced concern that the suffrage movement’s narrow platform was actually holding back women. In a diary entry on 18 November 1880, she wrote, “I think indeed that we have sat quite long enough on a limb of the Republican tree singing ‘suffrage, if you please,’ like

16 Gender Issues / Spring 2006

so many insignificant humming birds, and that I am ready for any change of method that will undermine a solid male dynasty.”95 In 1889 Stanton even complained about the growing conservatism of her long-time collaborator, Susan B. Anthony. In a diary entry on 9 January 1889, she wrote, “I tell her [Susan B. Anthony] that I get more radical as I grow older, while she seems to get more conservative.”96

By celebrating women’s “wisdom, goodness and power,” the History of Woman Suffrage implicitly argued for a broader, more radical feminist vision. Going beyond the story of the suffrage campaign, it documented how women had contributed to the nation’s progress since the Revolution and made the case for complete equality in all realms of social, legal, and political life. By broadening both the historical and ideological scope of the fight for women’s rights, the History showed how women had earned the right to full “sovereignty” and citizenship. As the editors themselves put it in the very first volume, the History was not the story of the suffrage struggle alone. Rather, it chronicled the history of the “most momentous reform that has yet been launched on the world—the first organized protest against the injustice which has brooded over the character and destiny of one-half the human race.”97

Notes

1. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Our Foremothers,” in The Woman’s Tribune (Washington, D.C.), 31 December 1892, 261.

2. Stanton, “Our Foremothers,” 261. 3. Susan B. Anthony to Matilda Joslyn Gage, 3 November 1875, The Selected Papers of Eliza-

beth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, vol. 3, National Protection for National Citizens, ed. Ann Gordon (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 208–209. Stanton began requesting documents in the summer of 1875.

4. For a history of lyceum speaking see Angela G. Ray, The Lyceum and Public Culture in the Nineteenth-Century United States (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2005); Lisa S. Strange, “Dress Reform and the Feminine Ideal: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the ‘Coming Girl,’” Southern Communication Journal 68 (2002): 1–13; and Lisa S. Hogan and J. Michael Hogan, “Femi- nine Virtue and Practical Wisdom: Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s ‘Our Boys,’” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 6 (2003): 415–436.

5. Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4 (India- napolis: Hollenbeck Press, 1902; reprint edition, New York: Arno and the New York Times, 1969); Ida Husted Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 5 (New York: J. J. Little and Ives, 1922; reprint edition, New York: Arno and the New York Times, 1969); Ida Husted Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6 (New York: J. J. Little and Ives, 1922; reprint edition, New York: Arno and the New York Times, 1969).

6. Lois Banner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Women’s Rights (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1980), 146; Mari Jo Buhl and Paul Buhl, ed., The Concise History of Woman Suffrage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), xvii-xix; Alma Lutz, Created Equal (New York: John Day Publish- ing, 1940), 245.

7. See, for example, Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, 29 September 1876, The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, vol. 3, National Protec- tion for National Citizens, ed. Ann Gordon (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 264–265. Since most historians maintain that Stanton authored most of the lengthy descriptions and

Lisa Shawn Hogan 17

biographical sketches herself, I refer to her name when I am quoting material from the volumes, unless the text is attributed to another author.

8. Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920 (New York: Norton, 1981), xiii. Most historical accounts of the Suffrage Movement use the History of Woman Suffrage as the definitive account of the women’s rights struggle. See Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1995); Elisabeth Griffith, In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); Joan Hoff, Law, Gender and Injustice: A Legal History of U.S. Women (New York: New York University Press, 1991); Carol Hymowitz and Michaele Weissman, A History of Women In America (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1978); Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Con- sciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Lois Banner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Women’s Rights (New York: John Day Pub- lishing, 1940).

9. Nancy Isenberg, Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum American (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 2.

10. See, for example, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Stanton’s ‘The Solitude of Self’: A Rationale for Feminism,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 66 (1980): 304–312; Hogan and Hogan, “Feminine Vir- tue and Practical Wisdom”; Sally J. Perkins, “The Myth of the Matriarchy: Annulling Patriarchy through the Regeneration of Time,” Communication Studies 42 (1991): 371–382; Angela Ray, “Representing Working Class in Early U.S. Feminist Media: The Case of Hester Vaughn,” Women’s Studies in Com- munication 26 (2003): 1–26; Martha Solomon, “Autobiographies as Rhetorical Narratives: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anna Howard Shaw as ‘New Woman,’” Communication Studies 42 (1991): 83–92; Strange, “Dress Reform and the Feminine Ideal”; Lisa S. Strange and Robert S. Brown, “The Bicycle, Women’s Rights, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton,” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 31 (2002): 609–626; and Lisa S. Strange, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Woman’s Bible and the Roots of Feminist Theology,” Gender Issues 17 (1999): 15–36.

11. Kathi Kern, Mrs. Stanton’s Bible (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 19. 12. Isenberg, Sex and Citizenship, 3. 13. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 20. 14. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 20. 15. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, ed., History of Woman

Suffrage, vol. 1 (New York: Fowler and Wells Publishers, 1881; reprint edition, New York: Arno and the New York Times, 1969), 7.

16. Susan Jaratt, “Speaking to the Past: Feminist Historiography in Rhetoric,” Pre/Text 11 (1990): 190.

17. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “‘You Must Remember This’: Autobiography as Social Critique,” Journal of American History 85 (1998): 441, 453.

18. Joan Scott, “History in Crisis? The Other Side of the Story,” American Historical Review 94 (1989): 680–692.

19. Joan Scott, “Women’s History.” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 43.

20. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, diary entry, 27 December 1880, Elizabeth Cady Stanton as Re- vealed in her Letters, Diary, and Reminiscences, vol. 2, ed. Theodore Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1922), 181.

21. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 24. 22. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years and More, 1898; reprint, (Boston: Northeastern Uni-

versity Press, 1993), 326. 23. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, diary entry, 30 September 1885, Elizabeth Cady Stanton as Re-

vealed in her Letters, Diary and Reminiscences, vol. 2, ed. Theodore Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1922), 226.

24. Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981), 3–4.

25. Leila R. Brammer, Excluded from Suffrage History: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Nineteenth- Century American Feminist (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), xii.

18 Gender Issues / Spring 2006

26. Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church and State, (1893; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1972).

27. Leila Brammer argues that Gage wrote some of the chapters in the History herself, includ- ing “Preceding Causes,” “Women and Newspapers,” and “Woman, Church and State” in volume 1. Brammer, 14.

28. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Our History,” The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, vol. 3, National Protection for National Citizens, ed. Ann Gordon (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 424.

29. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 7. 30. Ellen Carol Dubois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s

Movement in America, 1848–1869 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 197. 31. Ellen Carol DuBois, “On Labor and Free Love: Two Unpublished Speeches of Elizabeth

Cady Stanton,” Signs: The Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1 (1975): 264. 32. Lucy Stone to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 3 August 1876, The Selected Papers of Elizabeth

Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, vol. 3, 249. 33. Lutz, Created Equal, 245. 34. Susan B. Anthony to Harriet Hanson Robinson, 12 August 1879, The Selected Papers of

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, vol. 3, 469. 35. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 8. 36. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1995), 53. 37. Jamieson, Beyond the Double Bind, 17. 38. Nan Johnson, Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life, 1866–1910 (Carbondale:

Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), 116. 39. Johnson, Gender and Rhetorical Space, 113. 40. Johnson, Gender and Rhetorical Space, 118. 41. See, for example, Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 41. 42. See, for example, Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 33. 43. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 68. 44. Stanton et al., ibid. 45. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 102, 68. 46. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 113–114. 47. The History’s account of women of in the revolutionary era shaped the writing of women’s

history for over a century. See, James H. Hutson, “Women in the Era of the American Revolution: The Historian as Suffragist,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 32 (1975): 290–303.

48. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 31. 49. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 33. 50. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 34. 51. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 34. 52. Beth Waggenspack, The Search for Self-Sovereignty: The Oratory of Elizabeth Cady Stanton

(New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 41. 53. Linda K. Kerber, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of

Women’s History,” Journal of American History 75 (1988): 28. 54. Elaine J. Lawless, “Piety and Motherhood: Reproductive Images and Maternal Strategies

for the Woman Preacher,” The Journal of American Folklore 100 (1987): 469–478. 55. Barbara Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth-Century (Ath-

ens: Ohio University Press, 1976), 129. 56. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 52. 57. Stanton, “Angelina Grimké,” in Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 399. 58. Stanton, “Angelina Grimké,” in Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 399. 59. Stanton, “Angelina Grimké,” in Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 394–395. 60. Stanton, “Angelina Grimké,” in Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 395. 61. Stanton, “Angelina Grimké,” in Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 396. 62. Stanton, “Angelina Grimké,” in Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 402.

Lisa Shawn Hogan 19

63. Stanton, “Angelina Grimké,” in Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 394, 392, 398.

64. Stanton, “Lucretia Coffin Mott,” in Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 426. 65. Stanton, “Lucretia Coffin Mott,” in Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 410,

428. 66. Stanton, “Lucretia Coffin Mott,” in Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 428,

430. 67. Stanton, “Lucretia Coffin Mott,” in Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 430. 68. L. E. Barnard, “Ernestine Rose,” in Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 98. 69. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 145. 70. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her: A Critical Study of Early Feminist

Rhetoric, vol. 1 (New York: Praeger Press, 1989), 1. 71. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 24. 72. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 3, iv. 73. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 3, v. 74. Linda K. Kerber, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of

Women’s History,” The Journal of American History 75 (1988): 27. 75. Stanton et. al., “Preface,” History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 8. 76. See, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, ed., History of

Woman Suffrage, vol. 2 (New York: Fowler and Wells Publishers, 1882; reprint edition, New York: Arno and the New York Times, 1969), 756–862.

77. Lutz, Created Equal 249. 78. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 7. 79. Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Elizabeth Buffum Chase, 12 November 1879, The Selected

Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, vol. 3, 482. 80. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2, 1, 18. 81. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2, 24. 82. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2, 24. 83. Flexner, Century of Struggle, 10. 84. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 206. 85. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 34. 86. Flexner, Century of Struggle, 27. 87. Stanton et al, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 42. 88. Barbara Goldsmith, Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous

Victoria Woodhull. (New York: HarperPerennial, 1999), 285. 89. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2, 444. 90. Stanton, Eighty Years and More, 216. 91. Steven Buechler, The Transformation of the Woman Suffrage Movement: The Case of Illi-

nois, 1850–1920. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 13. 92. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement. 93. Olivia Coolidge, Women’s Rights: The Suffrage Movement in America, 1848–1920 (New

York: E.P. Dutton, 1966), 96. It should be noted that historians disagree on the exact date that the suffrage movement began to stagnate. Flexner defined 1890 to 1910 as the “doldrums,” while Coolidge marked 1884 to 1910 as the slow period in the movement. See Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle.

94. Flexner, 248. 95. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, diary entry of 18 November 1880, in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as

Revealed in her Letters, Diary and Reminiscences, vol. 2, 179. 96. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, diary entry of 9 January 1889, in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as

Revealed in her Letters, Diary and Reminiscences, vol. 2, 254. 97. Stanton et al., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 8.