Lucy Stone founded the longest-lived woman suffrage publication, Woman's Journal, in 1870 and, with her husband, edited it from 1872 until her death in 1893. She also traveled widely and spoke persuasively for the suffrage cause, earning the sobriquet "the morning star of the woman's rights movement."
Stone was born in West Brookfield, Massachusetts, on 13 August 1818 to Francis and Hannah Matthews Stone. Stone began teaching at sixteen, studying at nearby seminaries and saving money for college. In 1843 she enrolled at Oberlin College, one of the few institutions that accepted women and blacks. Oberlin was a stop on the Underground Railway and strongly abolitionist, but even in this progressive atmosphere Stone's radicalism proved troublesome. Chosen to write a speech for commencement, she was asked to compose it so that a man might read it for her. Stone angrily resigned, as did the other students who were to share the platform with her. Thirty-six years later she spoke at Oberlin's semicentennial.
After her graduation in 1847 Stone became a lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society, but friction soon developed between Stone and William Lloyd Garrison, her sponsor, because Stone mixed talk of woman's rights into her lectures on the abolition of slavery. A compromise was reached; Stone agreed to lecture on Saturday nights and Sundays for the Garrisonians and was free the rest of the week to lecture for woman's rights. Both occupations were arduous, not only because they demanded constant travel, but because speakers with unpopular ideas were often doused with cold water, pelted with rotten fruit, or smoked out of their lecture halls with burned pepper. Stone persevered, though. She participated in the First National Woman's Rights Convention (held two years after the better-known Seneca Falls Convention) at Worcester, Massachusetts, on 23 October 1850, and her speech there was reported in both the United States and Great Britain.
Although she had resolved not to marry because of the great disabilities current law placed upon married women, Stone did marry Henry Browne Blackwell on 1 May 1855 after a long courtship, much of it recorded in letters. Blackwell came from a forward-thinking family; two of his sisters were pioneer physicians, one a newspaper correspondent, and another a biographer. Blackwell's brother Samuel married Antoinette Brown, the first ordained woman minister and Stone's closest friend from her Oberlin days.
At their wedding Blackwell and Stone read a protest against the marriage laws of the time, which was published in the Worcester Spy and widely reported throughout the country. Stone was the first of many feminists who did not adopt her husband's last name; as the woman's movement grew, others who followed her example became known as "Lucy Stoners." Stone retired briefly from public life after the birth of her daughter Alice Stone Blackwell in 1857, returning to found, organize, and support numerous woman's rights organizations, among them the Women's Loyal National League, the American Equal Rights Association, the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association, and the New England Woman Suffrage Association.
In 1869 a major schism occurred in the woman's movement. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, formerly allies of Stone, expanded their reform interests to include such causes as socialism and free love and extended their circle of supporters to include George Francis Train, a wealthy dilettante, and the notorious Victoria Woodhull, a spiritualist, medium, and free-love advocate. Stone, along with Julia Ward Howe and other New England feminists, favored concentrating on a single issue, the franchise for women, and felt that other reforms would follow from the vote. Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association in May 1869; Stone and Howe formed the American Woman Suffrage Association in November 1869.
Stone then launched the Woman's Journal in 1870. Stone's publication was aimed at an audience of well-educated club women, professionals, and writers. Stone published editorials that discussed in rational tones and great detail the political issues of the day as they related to woman's rights, and Henry Blackwell contributed analyses of legal proceedings and political events. From its inception, the journal was supported by the written contributions of woman's rights advocates from all over the United States, as well as France and England. Stone also reprinted many articles from other magazines, such as Harper's Bazar, and newspapers, such as the New York World and the Chicago Times, choosing those that related to women's issues, but not exclusively those that were pro-woman's rights. A regular column, "Concerning Women," ran on the front page of each issue, highlighting professional activities and praiseworthy deeds by women.
Subscribers could not finance all the production costs of the journal, and advertising was not easy to sell. Stone wrote in 1874 to a friend, "I wish I could rest. I have been trying to get advertisements for the Woman's Journal to eke out its expenses. Yesterday I walked miles; to picture stores, to crockery stores, to special sales, going up flight after flight of stairs only to find the men out, or not ready to advertise. And for all my day's toil I did not get a cent...."
The schism in the woman's rights movement was healed in 1890, in part through Alice Blackwell's efforts, and Stone became the chairman of the executive board of the National American Woman Suffrage Association formed when the two groups merged. She continued to travel and speak for the cause to which she had devoted her life. Her last talks on woman suffrage were given at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. She died at Dorchester, Massachusetts, on 18 October 1893. The Woman's Journal was edited by Alice Blackwell until 1917.
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