Stanton's Solitude Of Self Elizabeth Cady Stanton's speech before the United States Senate in 1892 was the first major awakening of women receiving the right to vote, thus validating the equal rights for all people as written in the United States Constitution. The actual seed for the first Women's Rights Convention was actually planted when Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a well-known anti-slave and equal rights activist, met Lucretia Mott at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London; the conference that refused to allow Mott and other women delegates from the United States because of their gender. This refusal only infuriated the cause, many finding extreme commonality in anti-slavery and Women's Suffrage Movement (DuBois). In 1851, Stanton met temperance advocate Susan B. Anthony around 1851, found that they had a great deal in common and joined together in a three pronged approach to repeal or limit the sale of alcohol, emancipate the slaves, and allow women equal voting rights. Together they also encouraged women to form their own working unions, and spent the rest of their lives advocating for women's right to vote, which did not come until June 1919 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment, prohibiting state of federal sex-based restrictions on voting (The Passage of the 19th Amendement).

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) was one of the most famous American social activists, abolitionist, and leader of the early women's movement. For many scholars, her 1848 speech entitled Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, is thought to be the best example of articulating the views and sentiments of women's suffrage in the United States. Stanton was the daughter of a Supreme Court Judge and was afforded every educational opportunity possible for her age and station in life. She appeared before the New York Legislature and addressed the rights of married women, took the political stance that drunkenness was a viable cause for divorce, and rose to become the President of the National Women's Suffrage...

As she aged, she narrowed her focus from abolitionism and temperance to singularly women's suffrage, but her views and tireless work also focused on other women's rights: custody, property, employment, income, divorce, and birth control (Baker).
While an advocate for equality, Stanton's commitment to, and views about, the women's movement came to a focal point when she and Susan B. Anthony declined to support the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments because while they gave legal protection to Black males, denied those same rights for women of all ethnicities. Her position on this issue, her thoughts on organized Christianity and women's issues beyond the scope of voting rights actually led to a schism within the women's movement and two separate organizations that remained at odds until two decades later, when they merged and Stanton became president of both (Banner). Her general views can be summed up in an early letter she wrote after her experiences in London:

The general discontent I felt with woman's portion as wife, housekeeper, physician, and spiritual guide, the chaotic conditions into which everything fell without her constant supervision, and the wearied, anxious look of the majority of women, impressed me with a strong feeling that some active measures should be taken to remedy the wrongs of society in general, and of women in particular. My experience at the World Anti-slavery Convention, all I had read of the legal status of women, and the oppression I saw everywhere, together swept across my soul, intensified now by many personal experiences. It seemed as if all the elements had conspired to impel me to some onward step. I could not see what to do or where to begin -- my only thought was a public meeting for protest and discussion (Stanton, p. 148).

Stanton died of heart failure in New York City on October 26, 1902, 18 years prior to women receiving the official right to vote in the United States. Although her publication of The Woman's Bible, and rather liberal and controversial views on…