An international gathering of woman suffrage advocates in Washington, District of Columbia, 1888. Seated (left to right) are Alice Scotchard (England), Susan Anthony (United States), Isabella Bogelot (France), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (United States), Matilda Joslyn Gage (United States), and Baroness Alexandra Gripenberg (Finland).
An international gathering of woman suffrage advocates in Washington, District of Columbia, 1888. Seated (left to right) are Alice Scotchard (England), Susan Anthony (United States), Isabella Bogelot (France), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (United States), Matilda Joslyn Gage (United States), and Baroness Alexandra Gripenberg (Finland).
Susan Brownell Anthony was an American writer, lecturer, and abolitionist who was a leading figure in the women's voting rights movement. She partnered with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and led the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Background
Susan Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts. She grew up in a Quaker family and developed a strong moral compass early on, spending much of her life working on social causes. In 1826, the Anthony family moved to Battenville, New York.
Education
Susan Anthony studied at a Quaker school near Philadelphia.
Career
After Susan Anthony's father's business failed in the late 1830s, she returned home to help her family make ends meet. She found work as a teacher. The Anthonys moved to a farm in the Rochester, New York area, in the middle of the 1840s.
In the 1840s, Susan Anthony's family became involved in the fight to end slavery, also known as the abolitionist movement. The Anthonys' Rochester farm served as a meeting place for such famed abolitionists like Frederick Douglass. Around this time, Susan became the head of the girls' department at Canajoharie Academy - a post she held for two years.
In 1846 Susan Anthony begins teaching at Canajoharie Academy for a yearly salary of $110. Leaving the Canajoharie Academy in 1849, Anthony soon devoted more of her time to social issues. She was also involved in the temperance movement, aimed at limiting or completely stopping the production and sale of alcohol.
Anthony was inspired to fight for women's rights while campaigning against alcohol. She was denied a chance to speak at a temperance convention because she was a woman and later realized that no one would take women in politics seriously unless they had the right to vote.
In 1851, Susan Anthony attended an anti-slavery conference, where she met Elizabeth Stanton. The pair established the Women's New York State Temperance Society in 1852. Before long, they were fighting for women's rights, forming the New York State Woman's Rights Committee.
In 1852 Anthony attends state convention of Sons of Temperance and is told to "listen and learn," which goes against her Quaker upbringing. She attends her first women’s rights convention.
In 1856 Susan Anthony becomes an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
On May 14, 1863, Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton formed Women’s National Loyal League, which sought to end the American Civil War through an amendment to the United States. To this end they organized a Mammoth Petition that urged Congress to emancipate all slaves. In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, was enacted. With the amendment’s passage, the league disbanded, and women, armed with valuable experience in organizational planning and public speaking, returned to the battle for suffrage.
In 1868 Susan Anthony begins publication of The Revolution and forms Working Women’s Associations for women in the publishing and garment trades.
In 1869 Anthony calls the first Woman Suffrage Convention in Washington District of Columbia.
In 1888, Susan Anthony helped to merge the two largest suffrage associations into one, the National American Women’s Suffrage Association. She led the group until 1900. Susan traveled around the country giving speeches, gathering thousands of signatures on petitions, and lobbying Congress every year for women.
In 1900, at age 80, Susan Anthony retired as President of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association. In 1904, she presided over the International Council of Women in Berlin and became honorary president of Carrie Chapman Catt's International Woman Suffrage Alliance.
Susan Anthony was raised a Quaker, but her religious heritage was mixed. On her mother's side, her grandmother was a Baptist and her grandfather was a Universalist. Her father was a radical Quaker who chafed under the restrictions of his more conservative congregation. When the Quakers split in the late 1820s into Orthodox and Hicksites, her family sided with the Hicksites, which Anthony described as "the radical side, the Unitarian."
Politics
In the decade preceding the outbreak of the Civil War Susan Anthony took a prominent part in the anti-slavery and temperance movements in New York, organizing in 1852 the first woman's state temperance society in America, and in 1856 becoming the agent for New York state of the American Anti-slavery Society. An ardent abolitionist, she served as the agent from 1856 to the Civil War, often facing hostile, violent mobs at her meetings. She was trying to fight an unjust law and reform outdated policies.
Views
From an early age, Susan Anthony was inspired by the Quaker belief that everyone was equal under God. That idea guided her throughout her life.
Susan had never been married. She was convinced that marriage is a social institution, the main purpose of which is deprivation of rights. She also believed that girls, who enter into marriage, didn't want to use their freedom.
There had been much discussion about Susan's attitude to abortion. However, Susan Anthony had never stated her views on the subject of abortions.
Quotations:
"Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself."
"Failure is impossible."
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their desires."
"No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent."
"The only chance women have for justice in this country is to violate the law, as I have done, and as I shall continue to do."
"When a woman has a newspaper which fear and favor cannot touch, then it will be that she can freely write her thoughts."
"I do not consider divorce evil by any means. It is just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters."
"Many Abolitionists have yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights."
"The prolonged slavery of woman is the darkest page in human history."
"We need a daily paper edited and composed according to a woman's thoughts, and not as a woman thinks a man wants her to think and write."
"Every generation of converts threshes over the same old straw."
Personality
Susan Anthony was compassionate because she sympathized with other women and used those feelings in her causes for women's rights.
She became one of the few activists whose activities left a mark on the history of the United States. However, Susan had never considered herself an important historical figure, she was just guided by morality and common sense. She was fair to all citizens and believed everyone should have equal rights.