Essay Sample about Women's Rights: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Susan B. Anthony was very close friends with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were both leaders of the Women's Suffrage Movement. Stanton had been elected president in 1890 of the American National Woman Suffrage Association. This was created to make and plan new strategies for women to campaign and give new directions for national enfranchisement. Stanton wanted to make her contribution known for her ideas of the Bible that “woman was made after man”. At the Centennial Exposition of 1876, Anthony read a Declaration of Rights for the women in which she recognized accomplishments and furthering rights for the overcoming of corrupt customs and perverted applications. (Smyly 305-306)

Anthony was known for her gender double standards and associating herself with certain people where the people can't have it both ways. In her speech of Is It A Crime For A U.S. Citizen To Vote, she is fighting for equal rights for men and women and her argument was if women are taxed and everyone that is taxed is a citizen and women must  be citizens. Since women are considered citizens through taxation, the fourteenth amendment says that they are legally citizens, and citizens have the right to vote (Stillion Southard).

With the Fourteenth amendment, this recognized that the power of the state to deny negros rights to vote but the fifteenth amendment nullified that power by providing: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the U.S. or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude (O’neal 341). The purpose of the fourteenth amendment was to establish citizenship for freed negros. However this was declined by the Dred Scott decision which set all blacks born and naturalized in the United States, to secure them of their civil rights. (O’neal). 

Anthony believed that as a citizen's right, protected by the government, that if you paid taxes and paid your dues, you were a legally eligible voting citizen. In her Is It A Crime For A U.S. Citizen To Vote, she quotes Attorney General Bates regarding the thirteenth amendment. She mentioned that he quoted, “The Constitution uses the word ‘citizen’ only to express the political quality (not equality mark) of the individual in his relation to the nation-to declare that he is a member of the body politic, and bound to it by the reciprocal obligations of allegiance on the one side and protection on the other. The phrase, ‘a citizen of the United States,’ without addition or qualification, means neither more nor less than a member of the nation” (Anthony 50). Anthony called out the usage of male pronouns within the constitution and male is a stand in for all the genders (Stillion Southard).

Anthony stood proud of what she believed in and put every ounce of effort into every speech. She was one of the co-contributors of The Woman’s Bible, however the revising committee did its work in the midst of spiritual uncertainty within evangelical Protestantism. (Smylie 306). Here there were questions within this committee about the Protestant uniqueness, authority, and finality of their affirmations. Smylie states that, “because of the crisis, some of the women associated with this suffrage cause were uneasy about Stanton’s project. As a matter of fact, just after the first part of The Woman’s Bible in 1895, the National American Woman Suffrage Association adopted a resolution by a vote 53 to 41 officially disassociating the organization from The Woman’s Bible” (Smylie 306). 

Like mentioned before Anthony had a great friendship with Stanton, and these women were both very hard headed and didn't back down to a fight. The speech that Anthony gave, Is It A Crime For A U.S. Citizen To Vote, she mentions a New Departure theory. Anthony had gotten arrested or voted illegally in the election of 1872 (Kern & Levstik 127). Anthony and hundreds of women believed that, “In the early years of Reconstruction, “taking” their freedom meant exacting their rights at the point where citizenship was “produced”: the polling booth” (Kern & Levstik 127). The women's rights movement has been oversimplified to many due to the dominant trajectory that begins in Seneca Falls and ending with the Nineteenth Amendment. This strategy of the New Departure serves a larger purpose of complicating the history of women’s rights. Many women had taken the polls and made and coordinated a national strategy but one of the largest New Departure efforts was led by Fredrick Douglass who was very close with Anthony. (Kern and Levstik 129)

With that being said, Anthony was a hard headed activist that pushed for equality for women rights. After she was arrested for her voting scandal, they only arrested her because she was the ringleader of at least fourteen other women there. Anthony maximized her position as a defendant because they had to prove her voting was illegal, and in her case was not because she was a tax paying citizen. (Stillion Southard).

In conclusion, Anthony was known for her charge and leadership during the Women's Suffrage Movement. She battled many obstacles and dedicated her whole life to fight for what she believed in. Harper mentioned that, “ Anthony was endowed as a few others have been, with an unflinching courage, determination and a spirit of personal sacrifice, which were needed more In her especial work than in any other ever undertaken by women. But the strongest because she gave her whole life, every hour fighting for this cause” (Harper 605). With all of these actions Stanton, Anthony, and others provided during the movement was a staple piece of American History, and these women will never be forgotten.