"The Solitude of Self": Stanton Appeals for Women's Rights

The struggle for woman suffrage lasted almost a century. The 1848 Woman’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, initiated public discussion of votes for women, and serious campaigning began with the founding in 1869 of two original (and competing) suffrage organizations—the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. The two groups joined forces in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). NAWSA campaigned diligently for the vote in a variety of ways but did not achieve success until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. Elizabeth Cady Stanton served for twenty years as the president of the National Woman Suffrage Association and as the first president of NAWSA. In 1892, she resigned at age 77. Her resignation speech, “The Solitude of Self,” eloquently articulated the arguments for the equality of women that she had spent her adult life promoting. The point I wish plainly t

The struggle for woman suffrage lasted almost a century. The 1848 Woman’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, initiated public discussion of votes for women, and serious campaigning began with the founding in 1869 of two original (and competing) suffrage organizations—the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. The two groups joined forces in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). NAWSA campaigned diligently for the vote in a variety of ways but did not achieve success until the ratification of the Nineteenth Ame