19th c. Woman's Rights Text Links

"History of Woman Suffrage, Volume 1." Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage. 1885.

Long considered the definitive text of feminism's first wave, Stanton compiled back material for years to source a concrete history of the movement to date. What got left out, however, was often as telling as what was included; battles for the soul of the woman's rights movement led to editing that created a specific narrative favoring the compilers of the History and/or painted a biased picture based on the editors' particular world view. For a telling example, Frances Dana Gage submitted her recollection of Sojourner Truth's speech at the 1851 Ohio Convention, and included full dialect in the "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, starting right off with "Wall, chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be somethin' out o' kilter." Earlier accounts of the speech recounted no such dialect, as seen in the "Anti-Slavery Bugle," which published an account the speech immediately after. In fact, Truth grew up in upstate New York and spoke Dutch as well as English; it was extremely unlikely she spoke with this textually rendered accent.

The History kept intact many important source accounts, flawed though the presentation may be. The editing of which to include and how much to say about particular incidents strongly depends on the writers and/or editors. For many years, the "History" served as the ultimate source for information concerning participants and events.

"The Woman's Bible," Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1895.

"Life and Writings of Amelia Bloomer," D.C. Bloomer. 1895

Amelia Bloomer's biography was written by her husband in the year following her death. It contains a fair record of her life and writings.

While Bloomer is chiefly associated with the eponymous pant-skirt outfit, she was not necessarily the bloomers' primary proponent; the name became associated with hers as she advocated strongly for its adoption in her woman's rights/temperance newsletter. The campaign proved successful for attracting subscribers; however, she stated ultimately that dress advocates "felt that the dress was drawing attention from what we thought of far greater importance - the question of woman's rights to a better education, to a wider field of employment, to better remuneration for their employment, and to the ballot for the protection of her rights." Bloomer dedicated herself to these issues, as well as temperance and other social reforms for her entire life. The break with Stanton and Anthony following Stanton's deposal from leadership of the New York State Woman's Temperance Society, and a subsequent move west where Bloomer continued her work, unfortunately sidelined her to a certain degree from the woman's movement she helped to begin and voiced so strongly.

Jane Grey Swisshelm, "Half a Century." 1880.

Jane Swisshelm was a big voice in the temperance, abolition, and woman's rights movement. She wrote extensively and was very well known in the activist community and beyond for her fiery, progressive, and unapologetic rhetoric. She wrote for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune and was one of the first woman journalists to cover the US House of Representatives. She divorced her husband in 1857 and moved to Minnesota, becoming engaged in editorial battles that led to the destruction of her printing press; she raised money to begin again. She owned a string of newspapers which she used to promote her views.

Swisshelm has largely been ignored in the modern period, possibly because her strong views concerning the native population in her Western home were prejudiced to the extreme; in the linked volume, a chapter entitled "The Indian Massacre of '62" is exemplary. She demonstrates a lack of imagination in equating the Indians with European land aristocracy, those who do not toil but live "idly" while the good, democratic laborers are forced to support them. Swisshelm lived an unconventional life and did not apologize for it; her recalcitrance may have proved her undoing not only in her lifetime, but in history's unwillingness to memorialize her.

"The Trial of Susan B. Anthony," 1874.

In November 1872, Susan B. Anthony defiantly cast her vote in the federal election. She was brought to trial the following year. The link here, and via her portrait to the left, opens the pamphlet, "An Account of the Proceedings of the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting, at the Presidential Election in Nov., 1872."

One of the most recognized woman's rights reformers and first wave feminist, Susan B. Anthony devoted her life to promoting progressive causes. In the historical record, she is inseparable from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, although Stanton's more radical approach and willingness to publicly commit to risky ideological positions won Anthony more accolades, and the more welcome embrace by a greater number of memorialists. Anthony's shared focus on woman's rights objectives paired with a strategic political mind and organizational strategizing that Stanton's brilliance with the pen perfectly rounded out; however, Anthony's more public face, political acumen, and less controversial reputation gained her greater recognition. For example, Anthony repudiated the scandalous Victoria Woodhull who was savaged along with her supporters, while Stanton risked throwing her support behind the woman who brought the movement a great deal of negative attention at a precipitous moment in suffrage history. Anthony's calculations proved more reliable; in the 1880s, she teamed with the conservative Frances Willard and her Woman's Christian Temperance Union to throw that organizations' far greater membership behind support for the woman's vote, despite the great difference in perspective on women's social standing (a domestic position that Willard endorsed but did not exemplify).

"We Are All Bound Up Together," 1866. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

A well-published poet and writer, Harper became the first black woman to publish a short story in America, in "The Anti-Slavery Bugle" in 1859 ("The Two Offers"). She worked for abolition, temperance, and woman's rights her entire life. A traveling lecturer prior to the Civil War, she moved South post-bellum to work in educating freed black people and subsequently worked for the Freedman Bureau. She joined Frances Willard's Woman's Christian Temperance Union and collaborated to promote temperate goals focused on inclusive agenda; despite Willard's attempt to appease white Southern interests and Harper's subsequent sidelining, she continued to work for temperance reform.

The linked text connects to Harper's address to the eleventh national Woman's Rights convention, in New York City in 1866. "You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. I, as a colored woman, have had in this country an education which has made me feel as if I were in the situation of Ishmael, my hand against every man, and every man’s hand against me. Let me go to-morrow morning and take my seat in one of your street cars—I do not know that they will do it in New York, but they will in Philadelphia—and the conductor will put up his hand and stop the car rather than let me ride."

"The Great Lawsuit"/"Woman in the Nineteenth Century." Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 1843.

"Woman in the Nineteenth Century" was originally published in the transcendentalist magazine "The Dial" in July of 1843 as "The Great Lawsuit." Fuller wrote extensively, establishing a woman's roundtable aimed at educating women (published as her "Conversation" series), writing for Greeley's New York Tribune where she became America's first female war correspondent, and she served as the first editor for Emerson's Dial. "The Great Lawsuit"/"Woman in the Nineteenth Century" is the first significant feminist text published in the United States; she had originally considered entitling the work "The Great Lawsuit: Man 'versus' Men, Woman 'versus' Women." After working in Europe as a foreign correspondent for the Tribune, she died on the trip back in a ship wreck off of Long Island, New York. Later, the "History of Woman Suffrage" would note that at the 1850 Worcester Woman's Rights convention, Paulina Wright Davis stated Fuller's presence and leadership was sorely missed: "One great disappointment fell upon us. Margaret Fuller, toward whom many eyes were turned as the future leader in this movement, was not with us. The 'hungry, ravening sea,' had swallowed her up, and we were left to mourn her guiding hand - her royal presence. To her, I, at least, had hoped to confide the leadership of this movement. It can never be known if she would have accepted it; the desire had been expressed to her by letter; but be that as it may, she was, and still is, a leader of thought; a position far more desirable than a leader of numbers" (p. 217).

"Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women," 1895. Elizabeth Blackwell

Kristin Boluch, A.B., M.A., Ph.D.

19th Century Activist Women: