Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Address to the New York Legislature

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Confusion exists about whether Stanton delivered this speech before the New York State legislature in person. It is agreed that the speech was first given on February 14, 1854, to the New York State Woman's Rights Convention, of which Stanton was president. According to several sources, a few days later Stanton gave the same speech in a packed Senate chamber of the New York State legislature, making it the first address by a woman to a legislative body. Some sources state that Stanton's father threatened to disown her if she spoke to the lawmakers; other sources state that Judge Cady helped in formulating her arguments.

Whatever the truth, the speech is a masterpiece of logical argument, focusing on the fact that since laws deprived women of the right to control their own property and income, women were, as such, unable to define their own needs, a type of self-fulfilling prophecy. In the speech she asks for the vote for women and for the rights for women to sit on juries and to exercise the other rights of citizens. She not only demands changes in the laws affecting relationships between men and women but also clarifies the actual positions of women in society as contrasted with the public's false perceptions. Susan B. Anthony was so impressed by the speech that she published fifty thousand copies of it and put a copy on the desk of each legislator. In the speech, Stanton focuses on four principal aspects of women as citizens without rights.

She first addresses the position of women in general who, despite being “free-born citizens,” are denied the right to vote. Although women support “the whole machinery of government,” they are not represented. Stanton notes that even though women are “moral, virtuous and intelligent,” they are thus “classed with idiots, lunatics and negroes.” Yet men in these categories, under certain conditions, do have the right to vote. Through the years Stanton saw the legal position of blacks slowly improved while that of women remained unchanged. Using examples of women who accomplished great things, Stanton asks why women are still given no rights. Such examples demonstrate both her style of writing and her background of knowledge. She then wonders why, since it has been declared that “all men were created equal,” the nation's government has become “an aristocracy that places the ignorant and vulgar above the educated and refined … an aristocracy that would raise sons above the mothers that bore them.” Her implied reference to the British Crown and the inferred reestablishment of aristocracy in this country drives home her point.

In addition to the vote, she demands “trial by a jury of our own peers.” She develops her argument by providing background on this basic right, stressing that no man has “ever been satisfied with being tried by jurors higher or lower in the civil or political scale than themselves.” She then asks why women should be “dragged before a bar of grim-visaged judges, lawyers and jurors,” all men, and questioned on subjects they “scarce breathe in secret to one another.” Stanton notes the hundreds of imprisoned women who did not have “that right which you would die to defend for yourselves—trial by a jury of one's peers.” Again, she points out the discrepancy between what the country fought for and the reality that not all citizens enjoy the rights gained.

The second part of the speech focuses on the position of married women. She differentiates between marriage under God's law and marriage as a civil contract. If people see marriage as a civil contract, she asks the audience, should marriage not be subject to the same laws that govern other contracts? Stanton asserts that the signing of the marriage contract “is instant civil death to one of the parties.” Here she reiterates her position concerning the right of married women to hold property: “The wife who inherits no property holds about the same legal position that does the slave on the southern plantation. She can own nothing, sell nothing.” This section also mentions how men have protection of the law from “unruly” wives, but a wife has no rights against a “worthless husband, a confirmed drunkard, a villain or a vagrant.” During her own marriage ceremony, Stanton refused to say the word “obey,” and as a married woman she preferred to be called Elizabeth Cady Stanton, not Mrs. Henry Stanton. She felt that using her husband's name denoted his ownership of her and that marriage should be between equals.

The third part speaks of the position of a widow, who could keep only one-third of her late husband's “landed estate” and one-half of his personal property. If a wife died first, the husband would keep everything. In some cases a widow became a pauper as a result of the laws. The fourth section focuses on the woman as mother. The law is, according to Stanton, “cruel and ruthless,” since the child is the “absolute property of the father,” who “may apprentice his son to a gamester or rum-seller… may bind his daughter to the owner of a brothel.” If the father were about to die, he could “will away the guardianship of all his children from the mother.” In case of separation, the law “gives the children to the father; no matter what his character or condition.”

Following her discussion of injustices to classes of women, Stanton addresses those who have wondered “what the wives and daughters could complain of in republican America.” Many could not understand what women wanted because, according to Stanton, they could not conceive of the idea that men and women are alike and, therefore, should be accorded the same rights. Stanton states that there should be no special laws for women and concisely answers the question of what women want: “We ask no better laws than those you have made for yourself.” Anticipating the argument against woman's rights, Stanton states, “You may say that the mass of the women of this state do not make the demand; it comes from a few sour, disappointed old maids and childless women.” She shows this as a mistake, detailing how women generally are not content with their lot in life.

This speech made a name for Stanton as a public speaker. Using logic and emotion, humor and flashes of rage, she attacked the subordinate status of women, pounding home her point that women must have the vote to be enabled to effect change.