Lucy Stone And The AWSA
& # 8217 ; s Affect On American Women & # 8217 ; s Rights Essay, Research Paper
On August 13, 1818, Lucy Stone was born. The girl of a meek, docile female parent and an oppressive, alcoholic male parent, few would hold expected that she would go so of import in the right to vote scene. Rock became the first Massachusetts adult female to acquire a college grade, the first adult female to maintain her ain family name after matrimony, and the first New England individual to be cremated. She converted great adult females such as Julia Ward Howe, Frances E. Willard and even Susan B Anthony to suffrage. She started the American Women & # 8217 ; s Suffrage Association upon the split of the American Equal Rights Association and edited the Association & # 8217 ; s popular and influential & # 8220 ; The Woman & # 8217 ; s Journal. & # 8221 ; Without her work in the adult females right to vote circles and the AWSA & # 8217 ; s influence in the state, American adult females might non keep the topographic point in society they do today.
Lucy & # 8217 ; s male parent, Gregory Stone, was a affluent, outstanding husbandman and sixpence in Massachusetts. He held strong to the belief that work forces were divinely ordained to govern over adult females. Lucy & # 8217 ; s female parent Francis, quiet and reserved, accepted this, but Lucy had some problem with it. When she found that the Bible seemed to hold with her male parent, she & # 8220 ; wanted to decease, & # 8221 ; until she began to surmise that the interlingual renditions of the Bible from Greek and Hebrew might non be wholly true. This divine in her a desire to analyze Greek and Hebrew to happen out whether the Bible was right. Lucy Stone wanted to travel to school.
Even though her brothers were sent to college, her male parent was shocked at her thought and refused to pay her tuition. She knew she would hold to educate herself, so she began to learn school to gain money. During this clip, her choler toward adult females & # 8217 ; s position of the twenty-four hours increased, particularly when she learned that, because of her gender, she had no ballot in the church she attended. She finally became Unitarian. After nine old ages of work, she finally had adequate money to travel to collge. She went and worked while at that place to guarantee she had adequate money, but during her 3rd twelvemonth her male parent eventually relented and decided to assist her. In 1847, she became the first Massachusetts adult female to graduate from college ( Malone 80 ) .
In 1848 Lucy lectured at a adult female & # 8217 ; s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. There was no formal adult female & # 8217 ; s rights society yet in being. But this changed in 1850, when Lucy Stone headed the first national Woman & # 8217 ; s Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts and helped set up later one-year conventions. She paid with her ain money to hold the proceedings published. The Woman & # 8217 ; s Rights Convention served to bring forth a Declaration of Sentiments, saying that adult females deserved certain rights and talking out against the 17 offenses they claimed work forces had done against adult females. After go toing this convention, she traveled throughout the US giving talks on right to vote and abolishment. She was gaining between $ 500 and $ 1000 per hebdomad from talking fees. This was an tremendous sum of money in a clip when the mean labourer & # 8217 ; s wage was around $ 600 a twelvemonth. Lucy Stone, nevertheless, earned between $ 25,000 and $ 50,000 a twelvemonth ( Kerr 653 ) .
Stone had many suers and rejected each of them. But she reviewed her attitudes toward matrimony after having the attendings of the untirable Henry Browne Blackwell, already a fellow suffragist and emancipationist. Blackwell wooed and finally won her with visions of an equal matrimony founded on adult female & # 8217 ; s rights rules although it went against her true feelings ( Lasser and Merrill 91 ) . She wrote the followers in a missive to a Antoinette Brown Blackwell, a beloved friend and the married woman of Henry Blackwell & # 8217 ; s brother:
& # 8220 ; If the ceremonial is in N.Y. we want you to indurate your bosom sufficiency to assist in so barbarous an operation, as seting Lucy Stone to decease. But it will be all harmonizing to jurisprudence, so you need experience no penalty. I expect nevertheless to travel to Cincinnati & A ; have the ruin completed there & # 8211 ; ( Lasser and Merrill 143 ) & # 8221 ;
But marry she did, and with the apprehension that she would retain her maiden name. She did this to protest restrictive matrimony Torahs. For illustration, in most provinces, a hubby had a legal right to crush his married woman. All of a adult female & # 8217 ; s net incomes belonged to the hubby, she couldn & # 8217 ; Ts make a contract, and she couldn & # 8217 ; Ts make a valid will without her hubby & # 8217 ; s consent, unless she left everything to him. He was the exclusive proprietor of any kids, could portion them from their female parent, could give them off for acceptance without her consent, and could will by will to whomever suited him. She besides felt that when a adult female gave up her ain name, she besides gave up her individualism in order to conform to her hubby. Stone & # 8217 ; s hubby respected this, and joined with her in her cause. He has frequently been referred to as the & # 8220 ; one adult male in America who devoted his life to procuring equal rights for women. & # 8221 ; They had two kids, a boy that died shortly after birth, and a girl, Alice Stone Blackwell. Alice subsequently became good known in the right to vote motion ( Filar ) .
The Stone-Blackwell household lived in New Jersey for a piece, and in 1858 she let her household goods be sold for revenue enhancements. She used the incident for a written protest against & # 8220 ; revenue enhancement without representation ( Malone 81 ) . & # 8221 ;
When the long-anticipated Civil War eventually began in 1861, Lucy Stone an
vitamin D Antoinette Brown Blackwell began to assist to procure the freedom of black Americans and the reunion of the state by giving addresss and prima meetings all over. When the war ended, Stone and her hubby devoted themselves to contending for full rights of citizenship, particularly the right to vote, for ex-slaves. They hoped that by broadening the voting populace they could possibly broaden it to besides include adult females ( Lasser and Merrill 164-165 ) . Lucy was at that place in 1866 when the American Equal Rights Association was formed to assist battle for cosmopolitan right to vote, and she was made a member of the executive commission ( Malone 81 ) . But because of the diction of it, even though the 14th Amendment was passed, it proved controversial among woman’s rights advocators and former emancipationists. The amendment allowed for black citizenship and right to vote, but it contained the first expressed gender mention in the Constitution. It read,
& # 8220 ; But when the right to vote at any election & # 8230 ; is denied to any of the male dwellers of such province, & # 8230 ; the footing of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the figure of such male citizens shall bear to the whole figure of male citizens twenty-one old ages of age in such province ( U.S. Constitution ) . & # 8221 ;
This amendment didn & # 8217 ; t incorporate merely one negative gender mention, but three. By deduction, so, adult females would stay second-class citizens in American.
In 1867 the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association was organized, largely through her attempts, and she was appointed president. In 1868 she and her hubby helped form the New England Woman Suffrage Association, and shortly moved to Boston to help the motion in Massachussetts. Then a split occurred in the American Equal Rignts Association, because of differences in methods. The group split into the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association, Lucy assisting to organize the latter. The AWSA was more concerned with deriving right to vote by provinces. As president of the organisation, Lucy felt that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, leaders of the NWSA, were excessively extremist in their attack. She began to assist to printing the group & # 8217 ; s magazine, & # 8220 ; The Woman & # 8217 ; s Journal of Boston, & # 8221 ; in 1870 and took over publication two old ages subsequently. The Journal & # 8217 ; s publication lasted for 47 old ages with aid from her hubby and girl. With the income from the magazine, she was able to raise money for her adult females & # 8217 ; s rights candidacy ( Malone 81 ) .
Under Lucy Stone & # 8217 ; s leading, the AWSA sent a Memorial & # 8220 ; to the Honorable Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States in Congress Assemblies. & # 8221 ; It was a missive bespeaking a jurisprudence authorising adult females citizens of the United States and of the District of Columbia and & # 8220 ; all other Territories & # 8221 ; to vote and keep office on the same footings and conditions as work forces. It besides asked that Congress use necessary stairss to amend the Fundamental law to do certain the right was unquestionable ( AWSA ) . This commemoration was drawn up in 1872. Women didn & # 8217 ; t acquire the ballot until 44 old ages subsequently.
As the old ages passed, Lucy became more and more aware of her aging. Concerned with the hereafter of the right to vote motion and afraid of burthening her girl excessively to a great extent, she began to believe earnestly about the reunion of the right to vote motion. In 1887, after many old ages of refusal to compromise, mere animation, and pointless obstinate Acts of the Apostless, she eventually agreed to negociate with the leaders of the rival NWSA. However, after 20 old ages of common ill will and misgiving, dialogues weren & # 8217 ; t easy. But she and her girl met with Susan B. Anthony and her protegee Rachel Foster to negociate conditions for the reunion. The amalgamation was completed in 1890, with the first meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association held in Washington D.C. ( Lasser and Merrill 234 ) .
Exhausted by her apparently bootless labours, Lucy Stone died after old ages of unwellness on October 18, 1893, at her place in Dorchester before she could eventually see the right to vote conflict eventually won ( DuBois 619 ) . The 19th Amendment was eventually passed in 1920, but it seemed to be passed merely to do the suffragists happy, to hush them after old ages of irritation. This is obvious in the diction of the Amendment which reads, in its entireness,
& # 8220 ; The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall non be denied or abridged by the United States or by any province on history of sex.
Congress shall hold power to implement this article by appropriate statute law ( US Constitution ) . & # 8221 ;
But Lucy didn & # 8217 ; t decease without hope. Harmonizing to her girl, some of her last hearable words were, & # 8220 ; Make the universe better, & # 8221 ; a bequest that she left to all of us. Plants Cited
American Woman Suffrage Association. Memorial. Feb 4. 1988. ( 26 Jan 1999 )
The Constitution. Amendments Fourteen and XIX.
DuBois, Ellen Carol. & # 8220 ; Book Reviews. & # 8221 ; Journal of American History Sep. 1988 ; 618-619.
Filar, Beth. Lucy Stone 1818-1893. Oct 31, 1996. ( 10 Jan 1999 )
Kerr, Andrea Moore. & # 8220 ; Reviews of Books & # 8221 ; American Historical Review Apr. 1994 ; 653.
& # 8220 ; Lucy Stone 1818-1893. & # 8221 ; Women in the Past ( 10 Jan 1999 )
Malone, Dumas. Dictionary of American Biography. Vol 9. New York ; Charles Scribner & # 8217 ; s Sons, 1964. 12 vols.