ement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. She was
co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth
Cady Stanton as President. She also co-founded the women's rights
journal, The Revolution. She traveled the United States and Europe,
and averaged 75 to 100 speeches per year. She was one of the
important advocates in leading the way for women's rights to be
acknowledged and instituted in the American government.
Early life
Susan B. Anthony was born to Daniel Anthony (1794–1862) and Lucy
Read (1793–1880) and raised in West Grove, Adams, Massachusetts.
She was the second oldest of seven children—Guelma Penn
(1818–1873), Hannah Lapham (1821–1877), Daniel Read (1824–1904),
Mary Stafford (1827–1907), Eliza Tefft (1832–1834), and Jacob
Merritt (1834–1900). One brother, publisher Daniel Read Anthony,
would become active in the anti-slavery movement in Kansas, while a
sister, Mary Stafford Anthony, became a teacher and a woman's
rights activist. Anthony remained close to her sisters throughout
her life.
Anthony's father Daniel was a cotton manufacturer and abolitionist,
a stern but open-minded man who was born into the Quakerreligion.
He did not allow toys or amusements into the household, claiming
that they would distract the soul from the 'inner light.' Her
mother, Lucy, was a student in Daniel's school; the two fell in
love and agreed to marry in 1817, but Lucy was less sure about
marrying into the Society of Friends (Quakers). Lucy attended the
Rochester women’s rights convention held in August 1848, two weeks
after the historic Seneca Falls Convention, and signed the
Rochester convention’s Declaration of Sentiments. Lucy and Daniel
Anthony enforced self-discipline, principled convictions, and
belief in one's own self-worth.
Susan was a precocious child, having learned to read and write at
age three. In 1826, when she was six years old, the Anthony family
moved from Massachusetts to Battenville, New York. Susan was sent
to attend a local district school, where a teacher refused to teach
her long division because of her gender. Upon learning of the weak
education she was receiving, her father promptly had her placed in
a group home school, where he taught Susan himself. Mary Perkins,
another teacher there, conveyed a progressive image of womanhood to
Anthony, further fostering her growing belief in women's
equality.
In 1837, Anthony was sent to Deborah Moulson's Female Seminary, a
Quaker boarding school in Philadelphia. She was not happy at
Moulson's, but she did not have to stay there long. She was forced
to end her formal studies because her family, like many others, was
financially ruined during the Panic of 1837. Their losses were so
great that they attempted to sell everything in an auction, even
their most personal belongings, which were saved at the last minute
when Susan's uncle, Joshua Read, stepped up and bid for them in
order to restore them to the family.
In 1839, the family moved to Hardscrabble, New York, in the wake
of the panic and economic depression that followed. That same year,
Anthony left home to teach and pay off her father's debts. She
taught first at Eunice Kenyon's Friends' Seminary, and then at the
Canajoharie Academy in 1846, where she rose to become headmistress
of the Female Department. Anthony's first occupation inspired her
to fight for wages equivalent to those of male teachers, since men
earned roughly four times more than women for the same
duties.
In 1849, at age 29, Anthony quit teaching and moved to the family
farm in Rochester, New York. She began to take part in conventions
and gatherings related to the temperance movement. In Rochester,
she attended the local Unitarian Church and began to distance
herself from the Quakers, in part because she had frequently
witnessed instances of hypocritical behavior such as the use of
alcohol amongst Quaker preachers. As she got older, Anthony
continued to move further away from organized religion in general,
and she was later chastised by various Christian religious groups
for displaying irreligious tendencies. By the 1880s, Anthony had
become agnostic.
In her youth, Anthony was very self-conscious of her appearance
and speaking abilities. She long resisted public speaking for fear
she would not be sufficientlyeloquent. Despite these insecurities,
she became a renowned public presence, eventually helping to lead
the women's movement.
Early social activism
Susan B. Anthony at age 36In the era before the American Civil War,
Anthony took a prominent role in the New York anti-slavery and
temperance movements. In 1836, at age 16, Susan collected two boxes
of petitions opposing slavery, in response to the gag
ruleprohibiting such petitions in the House of Representatives. In
1849, at age 29, she became secretary for the Daughters of
Temperance, which gave her a forum to speak out against alcohol
abuse, and served as the beginning of Anthony's movement towards
the public limelight.
In late 1850, Anthony read a detailed account in the New York
Tribune of the first National Women's Rights Convention
inWorcester, Massachusetts. In the article, Horace Greeley wrote an
especially admiring description of the final speech, one given by
Lucy Stone. Stone's words catalyzed Anthony to devote her life to
women's rights. In the summer of 1852, Anthony met both Greeley and
Stone in Seneca Falls.
In 1851, on a street in Seneca Falls, Anthony was introduced to
Elizabeth Cady Stanton by a mutual acquaintance, as well as fellow
feminist Amelia Bloomer. Anthony joined with Stanton in organizing
the first women's state temperance society in America after being
refused admission to a previous convention on account of her sex,
in 1851. Stanton remained a close friend and colleague of Anthony's
for the remainder of their lives, but Stanton longed for a broader,
more radical women's rights platform. Together, the two women
traversed the United States giving speeches and attempting to
persuade the government that society should treat men and women
equally.
Anthony was invited to speak at the third annual National Women's
Rights Convention held in Syracuse, New York in September 1852. She
and Matilda Joslyn Gage both made their first public speeches for
women's rights at the convention. Anthony began to gain notice as a
powerful public advocate of women's rights and as a new and
stirring voice for change. Anthony participated in every subsequent
annual National Women's Rights Convention, and served as convention
president in 1858.
In 1856, Anthony further attempted to unify the African-American
and women's rights movements when, recruited by abolitionist Abby
Kelley Foster, she became an agent for William Lloyd Garrison's
American Anti-Slavery Society of New York. Speaking at the Ninth
National Women’s Rights Convention on May 12, 1859, Anthony asked
'Where, under our Declaration of Independence, does the Saxon man
get his power to deprive all women and Negroes of their inalienable
rights?'
The Revolution
Susan B. Anthony c. 1855On January 8, 1868, Anthony first
published the women's rights weekly journal The Revolution. Printed
in New York City, its motto was: 'The true republic—men, their
rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.'
Anthony worked as the publisher and business manager, while
Elizabeth Cady Stanton acted as editor. The main thrust of The
Revolution was to promote women’s and African-Americans’ right to
suffrage, but it also discussed issues of equal pay for equal work,
more liberal divorce laws and the church’s position on women’s
issues. The journal was backed by independently wealthy George
Francis Train, who provided $600 in starting funds. His financial
support ceased by May 1869, and the paper began to operate in debt.
Anthony insisted on expensive, high-quality printing equipment, and
she paid women workers the high wages she thought they deserved.
She banned any advertisements for alcohol- and morphine-laden
patent medicines; all such medicines were abhorrent to her.
However, revenue from non-patent-medicine advertisements was too
low to cover costs. In addition, Anthony got President Johnson to
subscribe to the weekly journal before the first publication.
In June 1870, Laura Curtis Bullard, a Brooklyn-based writer whose
parents became wealthy from selling a popular morphine-containing
patent medicine called 'Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup', bought the
rights to The Revolution for one dollar, with Anthony assuming its
$10,000 debt, an amount equal to $184,000 in current value. Anthony
used her lecture fees to repay the debt, completing the task in six
years. Under Bullard, the journal adopted a literary orientation
and accepted patent medicine ads, but it folded in February
1872.
