Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Stronghold of the Fortress | BRI’s Homework Help Series

0:04 In the spring of 1840, 24 year old Elizabeth Cady Stanton was preparing to go aboard the Montreal to sail to London with her new husband, Henry Stanton. They were among 40 Americans who were traveling across the Atlantic to attend the World Anti-slavery Convention in London. On Friday, June 12, the meeting of some 500 abolitionists convened in Freemasons Hall.

0:26 Elizabeth and dozens of other women bristled when they were seated behind the bar, blocking their participation in the convention. Some American men spoke up to protest the unequal treatment of women. But the English hosts were adamant. However high the regard they had for the ladies, they would not be seated. It was a turning point in Stanton’s life. She had suffered discrimination

0:46 at the hands of those who were at the vanguard of abolitionist reform. Over the next few years, Henry and Elizabeth had several children and moved to Boston, where Henry practiced law. In 1847, the family moved to the smaller Seneca Falls in upstate New York. The humble town would soon be the site of a historic meeting for women’s rights.

1:07 On July 21, 1848, a blistering hot summer day, more than 300 women and men squeezed into the crowded Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls to consider what they called the Declaration of Sentiments, along with a series of resolutions. Henry had warned his wife that if she planned to bring up women’s suffrage, he would stay away. Elizabeth was undeterred.

1:29 She would not be silenced. Henry would spend the day lecturing in another town. The assemblage then heard the Declaration read aloud we hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men and women are created equal. Although the Declaration of Sentiments was a document ahead of its time in proposing women’s equality, few of its proposals seemed as radical or

1:51 were as central to women’s civil and political equality as suffrage. All of the resolutions at the convention passed unanimously. However, the vote on women’s suffrage was highly contentious. In the end, Frederick Douglass was the only man to support the resolution, which barely passed. Of the 68 women and 32 men who signed the convention statement,

2:11 several were cowed by the public clamor and removed their names. Stanton never even considered withdrawing her signature. She stated that women’s suffrage was the stronghold of the fortress of women’s equality. The long struggle for women’s suffrage began with the unflagging fortitude of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her dedication to the cause of justice for women.