Converted to EAD3 : Encoded Archival Description (EAD), Version 3 : Release: 1.1.1 : Release Date: 2019-12-16. Validating against latest version of schema.
Contact information: https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss.contact
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm78041210
Collection material in English
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the LC Catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically.
The papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, reformer and leader in the woman's rights movement, were acquired by the Library of Congress chiefly as a gift from Susan B. Anthony in 1903 and from Stanton's daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, in 1927 and 1928. The Library acquired smaller accessions of material by gift and purchase from 1939 to 2020.
The papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton were arranged and described in 1979 by Audrey Walker. The register was revised in 1997 by Karen Linn Femia. An addition was processed and the finding aid revised by Pang H. Xiong in 2022.
Photographs have been transferred to the Prints and Photographs Division where they are identified as a part of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers. Patrons are encouraged to contact the Prints and Photographs Division in advance of a research visit.
The status of copyright in the unpublished writings of Elizabeth Cady Stanton is governed by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S.C.).
The papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton are open to research. Many collections are stored off-site and advance notice is needed to retrieve these items for research use. Researchers are advised to contact the Manuscript Reading Room prior to visiting.
A microfilm edition of part of these papers is available on five reels. Consult
reference staff in the Manuscript Division concerning availability for purchase or
interlibrary loan.
The papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton are available on the Library of Congress
website at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/collmss.ms000066.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container or reel number, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) cover the years 1814 to 1946, with most of the material concentrated between 1840 and 1902. The collection is composed of correspondence, speeches, articles, drafts of books, scrapbooks, and printed matter relating to Stanton and the woman's rights movement. This material reflects Stanton's role as a social reformer and a leading proponent of woman's rights for more than half a century. Stanton spoke and wrote widely about the political, economic, religious, and social wrongs perpetrated against women and provided leadership in organizations devoted to securing rights for women, particularly the right to vote.
Married to an abolitionist, Henry B. Stanton, Stanton was active in the antislavery movement in the decades preceding the Civil War and a proponent of African American rights during Reconstruction. Denied a university education because of her sex, she was an early proponent of higher education for women. A supporter of the temperance movement, though not particularly active in it, she insisted that drunkenness should be a cause for divorce. That drunkenness and cruelty, not divorce, were the real enemies of marriage, that the churches and canon law slowed women's progress, that laws must be changed to ensure property rights for married women, including the right to their own wages, that women must take their rightful place in business and the professions, that “self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice,” and that women and men should be equal before the law, in churches, and in society were among the basic themes which brought her widespread denunciation as well as many followers. Overall, however, she sought woman's right to vote as basic to all other rights and worked arduously for state laws and a constitutional amendment to that effect.
The collection elucidates the goals, tactics, and activities of many of the men and women associated with the woman's rights movement and depicts the external opposition as well as the internal division which the movement encountered. The correspondence provides glimpses into Stanton's family life illustrating how she balanced her family responsibilities with the demands placed on her as a leader in the movement. Her speeches and writings document in detail her stand on woman's rights and her concern for other contemporary social issues. Included in this series are drafts of Stanton's memoirs
Those papers donated by Harriot Stanton Blatch and originally arranged in scrapbooks have been dismantled and interfiled with the other papers that make up the collection. Blatch's notes on various items have been retained and are filed with the relevant manuscripts. The scrapbooks which were prepared by Susan B. Anthony (see Miscellany) have been kept as units except for the holograph material they contained. This material has been removed and interfiled in the papers with identifying notes.
The 2022 Addition consists of a letter from Stanton to Reverend Edward Payson Powell concerning the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.
Prominent correspondents represented in the collection include Susan B. Anthony, Daniel Cady, W. H. Channing, Lydia Maria Francis Child, Frances Power Cobbe, Paulina W. Davis, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Julia Ward Howe, Lucretia Mott, Emmeline Pankhurst, Wendell Phillips, Elizabeth E. Pike, Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt, John Osborne Sargent, Elizabeth Oakes Prince Smith, Gerrit Smith, Henry B. Stanton, Lucy Stone, John Swinton, Theodore Tilton, Thurlow Weed, and John Greenleaf Whittier.
This collection is arranged in five series:
Microfilm edition available. Shelf no. 17,781
Letters sent and received.
Arranged chronologically.
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Drafts of books, drafts and holograph and printed copies of articles and speeches, published letters, and miscellaneous writings.
Arranged by type of material and chronologically therein.
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Biographical data, certificates, printed matter, speeches by others, and scrapbooks.
Arranged alphabetically by type of material or subject name.
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Correspondence.
Handwritten draft of
Described according to the series, folder and box from which it was removed.