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Summary:

Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Autograph Letter Signed, to Senator Henry B. Anthony. Co-signed by Susan B. Anthony and Isabella Beecher Hooker. January 17, 188[2], Washington, D.C. On “Riggs House, Washington, D.C. C.W. Spofford, Proprietor”stationery.

Inventory# 21677 $12,500

Complete Transcript:
Jan 17th

Senator Anthony,

If your engagements will permit, the officers of the National Woman Suffrage Association would like to see your committee at the Riggs House, for an informal talk in the work we propose for you in the future, thinking you might prefer to see us here in your leisure hours rather that at the Capitol when the duties of the day are pending. We have invited each member of the committee [2] personally, & should hope to see them at eight o’clock this evening.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Pres.
Isabella Beecher Hooker, Ex. Comm
Susan B. Anthony – N.Y.

Historical Background:
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 because they were dissatisfied that other women’s rights advocates supported the 14th and 15th amendments (ratified in 1868 and 1870, respectively). While guaranteeing the right to vote for black freedmen, the 15th amendment was a great achievement for Radical Republicans, but it purposefully excluded women. Also, the fourteenth amendment, expanding the rights and parameters of citizenship, introduced the phrase “male citizens” into the constitution for the first time. The Reconstruction amendments divided the women’s movement, and Anthony and Stanton denounced their former abolitionist allies. The N.W.S.A. strategy was to pursue a “sixteenth amendment” for women’s suffrage, while its rival organization, the American Women Suffrage Association, pursued a more gradualist agenda through state-by-state campaigns.

Though the year is not written on the dateline, Stanton’s letter was very likely written in January 1882. That month, Stanton, Hooker, and Anthony were all in Washington for N.W.S.A.’s 14th Annual Convention. Jane Spofford, a fellow women’s rights leader, welcomed Anthony to Riggs House, owned by her husband C.W. Spofford. Anthony stayed with the Spoffords periodically throughout the 1880s. Henry B. Anthony served in the U.S. Senate until his death in 1884 (so the letter could not have been written anytime after that September of that year), and Stanton and Susan B. Anthony each went on European tours in 1883 and 1884.

The suffragettes’ proposed amendment was introduced (and tabled) for the first time in Congress in 1878. In January 1882, through the lobbying efforts of N.W.S.A., both houses of Congress named “special committees” on women’s suffrage. In June, Senator Anthony was critical in gaining passage in the Senate special committee of a report recommending the women’s suffrage amendment. By 1884, the year of Senator Anthony’s death, congressional supporters finally brought the report to a vote on the floor of Congress. They were unsuccessful, but the text of the proposed amendment – “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” – remained unchanged and was finally ratified in 1920 as the 19th amendment.

Though the attention gained in Washington, D.C. was critical in the long-term success of women’s suffrage, the A.W.S.A. achieved more concrete goals in the final decades of the 19th century. Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho all passed laws statewide suffrage laws. Women’s rights leaders became prominent in the Populist Party and the temperance movement as well. The two major women’s rights organizations merged in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

The women’s suffrage movement gained decisive momentum through women’s active involvement on the homefront in World War I, particularly through the Liberty Loans campaign and employment in the armaments industry. In January 1918, President Woodrow Wilson made a public appeal for the passage of a constitutional amendment. The next day the House of Representatives passed a bill for an amendment to the Constitution to guarantee women’s right to vote. The Senate would not pass the bill until May 1919. The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified when Tennessee became the 36th state to approve it. Incredibly, the last state to ratify the 19th Amendment was Mississippi in 1984.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) is often credited with initiating the first women’s rights and women’s suffrage movements in the United States. Unlike many of those involved in the women's rights movement, Stanton addressed a number of issues pertaining to women beyond voting rights. Her concerns included women's parental and custody rights, property rights, employment and income rights, divorce laws, the economic health of the family, and birth control.

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) was a major force in the women’s suffrage movement in the 19th century, giving 75 to 100 speeches on women’s rights each year for forty-five years. She was president of the National American Women Suffrage Association from 1892 to 1900.

Henry B. Anthony (1815–1884) was a Republican Senator from Rhode Island, known affectionately to his colleagues as the “Father of the Senate.” The longest-serving Senator, to that point, Anthony was a source of wisdom and stability during Reconstruction.

Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822–1907) was a famous author and a leader in the women’s suffrage movement. She was the daughter of Reverend Lyman Beecher, a noted abolitionist. Among her half brothers and sisters were Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Historical Resources:
Anthony, Susan B. and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, ed. Report on the 16th Annual Washington Convention. Rochester, NY: Charles Mann, 1884.
Harper, Ida Husted. The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (New York, 1908), 3 vols.
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Eighty Years and More (1815-1897): Reminiscences of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (New York, 1898).