Susan B. Anthony Was Foundational

Susan B. Anthony was foundational member of the women's rights movement. Though the vote was the first of almost all essential changes in the way women were viewed socially and legally the vote was only the beginning. Susan B. Anthony possessed a much broader understanding of the needs of women and the changes that must take place for women to succeed in their own right in this new nation. She embodied the challenges faced by single women and also held great personal knowledge of the lives of her married contemporaries, as the sort of "aunt" to all the women of the movement, due to her remarkable openness she was the ear for many grievances against the reality of women's lives in her culture. English common law and the cannon laws of the church subjugated women almost completely to the will of the father, if unmarried and the will of the husband if married.

One of the first attempts by women to organize for what they themselves, termed the revolution was the Seneca Falls Convention of July 1848, in which Susan B. Anthony held a crucial role. Anthony not only coordinated most of the event she was crucial in its inception, convincing those who were more afraid than herself of the dire need for collective bargaining and collective work. "In regarding the Seneca Falls convention as the birth of the movement for women's rights, we are on solid ground only if we remember that birth is a stage in the whole process of growth. In this case the process had begun almost a half a century earlier."

Anthony was aware that the world would not change for the good of womankind unless womankind came together and voiced grievances and created a platform of demands for change. It was the Seneca Falls convention that was the cumulation of many years of such thoughts and independent works toward suffrage and greater personal and public control for women.

Susan B. Anthony has often been thought of by the modern world as a foundational voice, second only to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, yet her real role subverted by her appearance as a dowdy spinster, which was only a unintentional subterfuge as in many cases she was the backbone for organization and reality of some of the crowning moments of the women's rights movement. She was in many ways the mind behind the voice for change. Not to exclude the contributions of others, as they were great but Anthony was one of the most well thinking women of her era. She understood the full implications of the challenges before women and she acted intellectually and physically for the cause.

Miss Anthony loved other people and they returned her affection; many of them have left records of that fact. Above all, she was straightforward and honest, with an extraordinarily good memory and with high moral standards of truth; an auditor could accept every statement as true and every promise as binding. She had a well-developed sense of humor, which persisted in spite of a frequently unfavorable environment

Aunt Susan as she was called by many people and by nearly all the newcomers to the revolution was the person who made things come together so other voices could be heard in the sea of masculine. "Ever modest, Anthony once described her life long work as "subsoil plowing" insisting that she had merely prepared the field for her more accomplished coworkers."

Yet, history has born her mark well and this was clearly an oversimplification of her early role in women's rights.

Anthony was the driving force behind the federal movement to secure women's suffrage. After many years of attempting to sway individual states to declare universal suffrage, with some limited success, Anthony was among the first to realize that certain pockets of the country would continue unabated to vote against such a legal change and to begin to demand change on a federal level, first with lobbying and second with an actual constitutional amendment, that would not change in wording until it was passed more than forty years after its first trip to congress in 1878.

Anthony suffered her entire life with physical ailments that weakened her body but certainly not her spirit for the cause.

Challenges for women during this time were many but the activists bore them out to complete their task of removing the word "male" from the constitution. Anthony was at the source of the conflict and moved the struggle forward, despite its uphill battle. Anthony had her hand in works associated with women's labor organizations. She had her hand in the struggle associated with attempting to gain suffrage for women in the individual states and most importantly she was a fundamental speaker for the cause. Though she often spoke second fiddle to others she had much to say about the situation at hand, a situation she knew well, as she had chosen early on to remain unmarried, possibly at the urging of the examples she had seen within the other members of the movement. Stanton is infamous for her personal struggles as a wife and her position as chattel to a large and seemingly unthankful family.

Their different outlooks were framed in part by the difference in their marital status. In the 1850s, Cady Stanton was struggling in a marriage in which she sometimes felt like a 'caged lioness,' while Anthony was trying to find a way to live her singleness in a public, political life without being drawn into the dependency of the traditional 'old maid's role. Because of their different life situations, when these two women combined, they gave force to their convictions beyond what either could have exerted alone.

Collectively the struggles each women faced, on both sides of the possible positions for women combined to create a more holistic reality of the lives of women in their time. Stanton faced the challenges of a marriage that left her a legal subject of her husband while Anthony faced single hood in a society where such was not acceptable for a women of polite society.

Anthony was an ardent abolitionist as well and during ht early days of the Lincoln administration, despite the urgings of the nation to set aside such issues as, women's suffrage and stop speaking against slavery to protect the fragile the union of the Untied States she was among a prominent group of women who embarked on a speaking tour speaking out for women and abolition of slavery.

In Syracuse the hall was invaded by a crowd of men brandishing knives an pistols. All ladies were escorted out of the hall except Miss Anthony who stood her ground until the mob surged onto the platform around her, while the chief of police refused to lift a finger in her defense. In Albany Mayor Thatcher was of a different strife. He personally escorted the party of speakers to the hall and sat on the platform with a loaded pistol in his lap throughout the proceedings.