Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The Memoirs of Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Eighty Years and More
The Truly Intriguing and Empowering Life Story of the World Famous American Suffragist
Published by
Books
- Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting -
2017 OK Publishing
ISBN 978-80-272-2477-7
Table of Contents
Chapter IV. Life at Peterboro.
Chapter V. Our Wedding Journey.
Chapter VIII. Boston and Chelsea.
Chapter IX. The First Woman's Rights Convention.
Chapter XI. Susan B. Anthony—Continued.
Chapter XII. My First Speech Before a Legislature.
Chapter XIII. Reforms and Mobs.
Chapter XIV. Views on Marriage and Divorce.
Chapter XV. Women as Patriots.
Chapter XVI. Pioneer Life in Kansas—Our Newspaper, "The Revolution."
Chapter XVII. Lyceums and Lecturers.
Chapter XIX. The Spirit of '76.
Chapter XX. Writing "The History of Woman Suffrage."
Chapter XXI. In the South of France.
Chapter XXII. Reforms and Reformers in Great Britain.
Chapter XXIII. Woman and Theology.
Chapter XXIV. England and France Revisited.
Chapter XXV. The International Council of Women.
Chapter XXVI. My Last Visit to England.
Chapter XXVII. Sixtieth Anniversary of the Class of 1832—The Woman's Bible.
Chapter XXVIII. My Eightieth Birthday.
Chapter I.
Childhood.
The psychical growth of a child is not influenced by days and years, but by the impressions passing events make on its mind. What may prove a sudden awakening to one, giving an impulse in a certain direction that may last for years, may make no impression on another. People wonder why the children of the same family differ so widely, though they have had the same domestic discipline, the same school and church teaching, and have grown up under the same influences and with the same environments. As well wonder why lilies and lilacs in the same latitude are not all alike in color and equally fragrant. Children differ as widely as these in the primal elements of their physical and psychical life.
Who can estimate the power of antenatal influences, or the child's surroundings in its earliest years, the effect of some passing word or sight on one, that makes no impression on another? The unhappiness of one child under a certain home discipline is not inconsistent with the content of another under this same discipline. One, yearning for broader freedom, is in a chronic condition of rebellion; the other, more easily satisfied, quietly accepts the situation. Everything is seen from a different standpoint; everything takes its color from the mind of the beholder.
I am moved to recall what I can of my early days, what I thought and felt, that grown people may have a better understanding of children and do more for their happiness and development. I see so much tyranny exercised over children, even by well-disposed parents, and in so many varied forms,—a tyranny to which these parents are themselves insensible,—that I desire to paint my joys and sorrows in as vivid colors as possible, in the hope that I may do something to defend the weak from the strong. People never dream of all that is going on in the little heads of the young, for few adults are given to introspection, and those who are incapable of recalling their own feelings under restraint and disappointment can have no appreciation of the sufferings of children who can neither describe nor analyze what they feel. In defending themselves against injustice they are as helpless as dumb animals. What is insignificant to their elders is often to them a source of great joy or sorrow.
With several generations of vigorous, enterprising ancestors behind me, I commenced the struggle of life under favorable circumstances on the 12th day of November, 1815, the same year that my father, Daniel Cady, a distinguished lawyer and judge in the State of New York, was elected to Congress. Perhaps the excitement of a political campaign, in which my mother took the deepest interest, may have had an influence on my prenatal life and given me the strong desire that I have always felt to participate in the rights and duties of government.
My father was a man of firm character and unimpeachable integrity, and yet sensitive and modest