Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a leading figure in the earliest stages of the women’s rights movement, strongly believed that until women gained the right to vote, very little else in the way of women’s rights could be achieved. In this address, delivered to the National Woman’s Suffrage Convention in Washington, D.C., in 1869, Stanton forcefully argues that full political equality for women is so crucial that the Constitution must be changed to ensure that all women in America are given the right to vote. She links her demands for a woman’s right to vote to the recently ratified Fifteenth Amendment, which granted former male slaves the right to vote. She suggests it is unfair that, while many ignorant men are given the right to vote, intelligent women are not given this same...