Elizabeth Cady Stanton Is Known as the Woman Behind the Suffrage Movement. A New Book Reveals the Story Behind Her Tenacity

"Born in 1815after the death of a much-desired baby boy, Elizabeth Cady Stanton grew up with the painful knowledge that her father had longed for a son, and later recalled how, as a child of 11, she'd watched him grieve the death of another son, the only one of his five sons to survive infancy; young Elizabeth climbed onto his knee-only to hear him murmur, "Oh, my daughter, I wish you were a boy." Stanton later described the moment as decisive."

"Though Stanton is best remembered as a key organizer of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention-the first women's rights convention in United States history-and primary author of its resulting Declaration of Sentiments, DuBois shows that Stanton's intellectual contributions ranged far beyond the vote. Long flattened into a simple role as the "mother" of American suffrage, Stanton has more recently been pigeonholed in a different way: remembered frequently for her racist rhetoric during Reconstruction. "Neither version," DuBois tells Smithsonian, "clarifies the full breadth-and radicalism-of her ideas."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in 1815 after the death of a much-desired baby boy and grew up aware that her father had longed for a son. At eleven she witnessed her father's grief over an infant son's death and heard him murmur that he wished she were a boy, a moment she later described as decisive and that motivated her to excel and equal boys through learning and courage. Stanton helped organize the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and authored the Declaration of Sentiments. Her intellectual work extended beyond suffrage to advocate sexual and reproductive autonomy and to critique marriage, while her legacy also includes racist rhetoric during Reconstruction.

Read at Smithsonian Magazine