“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak,
the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton -
It was a summer day in New York City. Three sisters--the oldest in red, the middle in blue, and the youngest in yellow--were all making their way downtown. The two older sisters found themselves rather excited to be heading downtown, the oldest leading the way and the middle eagerly following. However, the youngest was a bit nervous about what their father would say about them sneaking around. Revolution was ringing in the air, and they indeed were in the greatest city in the world.
Suddenly, a young man looking for a bit more than just casual conversation approached the oldest. The oldest soon told him that she was disgusted at his presence to which the young man replied with a flattered tone, happy that she at least knew who he was, and hoping to urge her with the fact that his wealth made him a bit of a trust fund, a perfect match for a young woman in New York City.
This fact didn’t change anything for the oldest had been studying American politics of the time through Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”, giving her a sense of the world she was living in that many women weren’t able to be a part of entirely and leading her to offer some criticisms of the Declaration of Independence and its writer, at-the-time ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson. She scoffed at the document’s opening line, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal” by telling the young man that when she met Thomas Jefferson, she’d compel him to include women in the sequel. Work!
This situation, while it would be fantastic to read about in an American history book, unfortunately never happened in real life (A). But, it is an incredible moment in the song “The Schuyler Sisters”, one of the many showstoppers in Hamilton: An American Musical that demonstrates the feelings and attitudes towards America at this point in history and introduces us to three of the story’s main women--Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy Schuyler (B). Theirs was an America that for over 150 years had been inhabited by both men and women alike but was still an America that decided women should not be represented as equal but secondary.
But before that story can be told, five more must be told.
Wonder Women - 1815-1848
Born in Johnston, New York, in 1815 to Margaret Livingston and Daniel Cady, a well-known lawyer at the time, Elizabeth Cady Stanton went to school at both the Johnston Academy and Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary in New York, a school designed to provide young women with the kind of education that was usually only available to men at the time(TFS Brit). She became interested in civil rights growing up and married Henry Stanton, an abolitionist lecturer, leading her to get involved with the abolitionist movement.
On her honeymoon in the 1840s, she found herself attending the World Anti-Slavery Convention where she became acquainted with another strong young woman named Lucretia Mott(ECS - WHM). Like Stanton, Mott had a history of advocating for the abolitionist movement.
Growing up as a Quaker, a member of a religious movement that believed God lives in everyone, Mott found herself teaching school after her mother was handed a mountain of debt following her father’s death in 1815 (QH.com, LM-WHM).
In the 1830s, she became involved with William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anit-Slavery Society which eventually led her to organize the Philadelphia Female Anit-Slavery Society with another Quaker, abolitionist, and women’s rights activist, Mary M’Clintock (C).
Mott’s sister, Martha Coffin Wright, also became a teacher women’s rights supporter as well as a leader of a station on the Underground Railroad (SFC-H.com). During her time working with William Lloyd Garrison’s Anti-Slavery Society, Wright was heavily criticized for speaking for human rights while being a woman (LM-WHM). After meeting at the London Anti-Slavery Convention, Mott and Stanton quickly became good friends, united by their passion and desire for change.
The Waterloo Tea Party - 1848
Throughout Stanton, Mott, M’Clintock, and Wright’s fighting and advocating, another Quaker woman named Jane Hunt came up with an idea to unite them all. At her home in Waterloo, New York, Hunt held a tea party with all the women and where Elizabeth Cady Stanton took center stage. With decades of watching women like herself suffer through the inequity that was the 1800s land of opportunity, she let it all out--the frustration, the anger, and the hope for a better tomorrow. Soon, all the women around the table found themselves speaking up about additional issues: no voting, no property rights, hardly any job opportunities, and hardly any genuine respect from those around them.
What were these women to do? Just as they had their whole lives, they decided it was time to rise up and turn the world upside down. A notice was delivered to the Seneca County Courier in Seneca Falls reading:
WOMAN’S RIGHTS CONVENTION.
A convention to discuss the social, civic, and religious condition
and rights of Woman will be held in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel at Seneca Falls, N.Y.
on Wednesday and Thursday, the 19th and 20th of July…
...on July 11--only giving the women eight days to organize an entire convention.
(JH-HAW)
A Dream Come True
A little over 70 years earlier, in the Hamilton universe, the Schuyler sisters were approached by young political hopeful, Aaron Burr, in downtown New York City. While Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy all agreed and grooved about to the declaration Angelica had made about including women in the sequel (work!), the only Schuyler sister to be alive to see it happen was Eliza, who was 91 years old at the time and only six years away from her death, spending her later years in life admiring a marble bust of her long lost Alexander.
In the eight days that had passed between the first notice of the convention and the convention’s first day, Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted a document modeled after the Declaration of Independence called the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. The declaration opened with a paragraph denouncing society’s stereotypes of women in the household. The following section began with the declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal…”--a line that was read to a crowd of 300 people, both men and women4, and a line that made Angelica Schuyler’s dream come true (JH-HAW).
The Declaration continues, “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.” It then proceeds to list the injuries, usurpations, and tyranny seen in society, such as women not being able to hold elected office, submit or even vote on laws, vote in general, maintain civil rights once she is married, be able to own property, keep their children after a divorce, have adequate educational opportunities, have real power over anything, and even avoid charges for crimes she never committed.
While the first half of the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions listed all the problems, the second listed plausible solutions such as “all laws [that] prevent [women] from occupying [stations of power and influence]...are contrary to the general precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority” and “that woman is man’s equal - was intended so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such” (DSR-PDF).
While it may seem like everything listed in the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions would have been heavily agreed to, many debated against Stanton about women’s right to vote. This debate included Lucretia Mott of all people. During the suffrage movement, the campaign that granted women the right to vote, many men and women were actually against this notion, often arguing that women had no time for politics as they were supposed to be staying home and taking care of the house and children.
Such stereotypes that fuelled the debate are the same that are unfortunately seen today (NAOWS-WHM). To end the debate, Frederick Douglass, a well-known abolitionist at the time, spoke up for women’s right to vote, thus ensuring that the notion remained in the declaration. Frederick Douglass also made an appearance during the convention and aided in unifying both the abolition and women’s rights movements. That same day, 100 people--68 women and 32 men--signed their names onto the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions.
The Women’s Rights Movement Officially Begins
The signing of the Declaration marked the historical beginning of the women’s rights movement. Twelve years after the convention took place, Elizabeth Cady Stanton achieved another victory at the New York Legislature after six attempts to amend the Married Women’s Property Law. After her work, women were allowed the same business rights as men. She continued to advocate with another activist named Susan B. Anthony--the author of many of the speeches Elizabeth Cady Stanton gave at conventions and other similar events (ECS - WHM). She also assisted in the Civil War by advocating for the 13th Amendment and opposing both the 14th and 15th Amendments. After the war, Stanton and Anthony created the National Woman Suffrage Association. Stanton continued fighting for women’s rights, which led her to write The Woman’s Bible in which she “voiced her belief in a secular state and urged women to recognize how religious orthodoxy and masculine theology obstructed their chances to achieve self-sovereignty” (ECS - WHM).
Stanton was never alone in her advocacy. Lucretia Mott continued her own work advocating for women’s rights by speaking at more women’s rights conventions, gathering enough experience and notoriety that she was able to publish a 21-page pamphlet entitled “Discourse on Women”, the final line reading, “I would charge you to water the undying bud, and give it healthy culture, and open its beauty to the sun--and then you may hope, that when your life is bound up with another, you will go on equally, and in a fellowship that shall pervade every earthly interest” (DW-LOC).
This line undoubtedly inspired many women of the time to advocate and fight for women’s rights themselves. M’Clintock hosted the second Women’s Rights Convention in Rochester, New York; Martha Coffin Wright traveled around the country speaking on behalf of both the American Anti-Slavery Society and National Woman Suffrage Association, even serving as the president of the NWSA in 1974; and Jane Hunt, after losing her husband in 1956, found herself continuing to advocate for social reform and philanthropy even with six young children to take care of (MAM-HAW, MCW-NWFOF, JH-WH).
“The anti-slavery papers stood by us manfully,” Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote in her biography, “but so pronounced was the popular voice against us…that most of the ladies that had attended the convention and signed the declaration, one by one, withdrew their names and influence and joined our persecutors. Our friends gave us the cold shoulder and felt themselves disgraced by the whole proceeding” (WAS-R17).
This sudden betrayal of the cause these men and women had previously supported could have been the result of many things, such as fear, uncertainty, and loss of hope when thinking of just how unlikely it was that women would be treated as equal in America. The sad thing is that this convention was held 173 years ago. Another 73 years had to pass before women were actually granted the right to vote, and still today, women’s rights are being threatened day in and day out in terms of reproductive rights and equal pay.
Women are also still heavily barred by the symbolic phenomenon known as the glass ceiling--a barrier that has kept women from excelling in the workplace and federal positions (GCB).
However, there is still hope that one day, things will indeed be equal. Not a day goes by where a girl or woman in America cannot look up to remarkable trailblazers of yesterday and today.
Also, through the women’s marches and protests still happening as well as the increasing number of women making changes in their communities and running for office--the victory of winning offices elevating the chances of more inclusive and equal legislation being passed--America continues to be brought one step closer to women being included in the sequel.
Work!
Sources and Links
The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions | National Women’s History Museum
National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage | National Women’s History Museum
Frederick Douglass | The Vinny Demme Portfolio
Women and the American Story | Resource 17: Reactions to Seneca Falls
What is the Glass Ceiling, and How Do We Break it? | Bullitin
Footnotes
a. I mean, I’m going to guess it didn’t, but I actually love Hamilton so much that I tear up
when I hear this part of the song. As you probably know, it’s not particularly sad in any
way. It’s just badass.
b. And, according to Kya, Eleanor was with them too.
c. Her daughter’s name was actually Eliza!
d. One could say that they were all in the “Room Where It Happened”… Okay, I’ll see
myself out now.
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