Let's set the stage... It was 1892; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the greatest philosopher and activist for woman's rights in the history of the world is making her last appearance before Congress, this time before the Congressional Judiciary Committee.

She is one of the most honored women in the history of the world.

Intertwined with Susan B. Anthony, the two women were very different and had different spheres - although they worked together closely. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (B. 11-12-1815) was recognized during her lifetime as the senior leader and the heart of the woman's rights movement. The dreamer, the philosopher while Anthony was the practical, the whip - the one who carried the message forth.

Yet it was Cady Stanton, the dreamer, who spearheaded the Women's Rights Convention in 1848 - the first women's rights gathering in the history of the world. She wrote the Declaration of Sentiments that is the single most important statement for women's freedom ever written.

For the next 50 years Cady Stanton wrote of the dreams and aspirations of women. Her works became the heart and soul of the U.S. women's rights movement, and in many ways still unexplored by herstorians, the heart and soul of the world-wide awakening of women. There were other important women leaders in every nation, of course, but it was Cady Stanton first and her words supplied the framework of the worldwide movement. She was truly a legend in her own time. While Cady Stanton was the better writer and philosopher, Anthony was the critic and the more practical.

Cady Stanton wrote prose that still inspires, she gave speeches, wrote books, articles, and even magazines. She traveled as much as she could while raising children and staying a devoted married woman and mother. Then in the shadow of her years when so many would have retired quietly to her home in Seneca Falls, New York to bask in the glories of all she had done, she continued unabated . . . giving this address to the U.S. Congress at age 77.

She above all others was able to use her unquestioned prestige to spearhead the uniting of divergent women's rights organizations in the U.S. that would be the National American Woman Suffrage Association. No other woman in the U.S. could have taken the gavel of the splintered movement and had it suceed. That body would grow to 3.5 million women under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt and finally succeed in gaining the U.S. constitutional guarantee of women's voting rights in 1920.

Unfortunately, Cady Stanton did not live until that glorious day, dying in 1902 at age 87.

No better recognition of her inestimable value to the rights of all women is the fact that HIStorians have, in general, ignored her work and her writings.

While Susan B. Anthony is better known today because of her travels and more overt character, it was Cady Stanton who gave women's rights a voice. She even introduced Susan B. to the movement!

Cady Stanton was also instrumental in authoring - along with Susan B. and later Matilda Gage - the first volumes of the monumental History of Woman's Suffrage that grew into six fat volumes and exists today as the ONLY record of women's battles for equality during the 19th, and the first two decades of the 20th century.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton's birthdate should be a national holiday.

Certainly a number of nations granted women the vote before the United States, but the philosophical movement was given voice in the U.S. in 1848 by Cady Stanton.

She was more than a suffragist. She was the voice of women's human rights.

In this millenium 2000 when the battle for women's equal human rights becomes a reality for all women all over the world, we can easily say that it all dates back to Cady Stanton who voiced women's dreams into reality with that amazing concept that had never - NEVER - been said before . . . "that all men and women are created equal."

Address to the U.S. Congress Judiciary Committee, 1892
by Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul; our Protestant idea, the right of the individual conscience and judgement, our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginaiy Robinson Crusoe, with her woman, Friday, on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties fbr her own safety and happiness.

Secondly, if we consider her as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the same rights as all members, according to the fundamental principles of our government.

Thirdly, viewed as a woman, an equal factor in civilization, her rights and duties are still the same; individual happiness and development.

Fourthly, it is only the incidental relations of life, such as mother, wife, sister, daughter, that may involve some special duties and training. In the usual discussion in regard to women s sphere, such men as Herbert Spencer, Frederic Harrison and Grant Allen, uniformly subordinate her rights and duties as an individual, as a citizen, as a woman, to the necessities of those incidental relations, neither of which a large class of women may ever assume.

In discussing the sphere of man, we do not decide his rights as an individual, as a citizen, as a man, by his duties as a father, a husband, a brother or a son, relations he may never fill. Moreover, he would be better fitted for these very relations, and whatever special work he might choose to earn his bread, by the complete development of all his faculties as an individual.

Just so with woman. The education that will fit her to discharge the duties in the largest sphere of human usefulness will best fit her for whatever special work she may be compelled to do.

The isolation of every human soul, and the necessity of self-independence, must give each individual the right to choose his own surroundings.

The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities

The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and the professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birth-right to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself.

No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency, they must know something of the laws of navigation. To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to watch the winds and waves, and know when to take in the sail, and to read the signs in the firmament over all.

Cady Stanton with daughter Harriet Stanton Blatch on the right and granddaughter Nora Blatch - all leaders in the women's rights movement in the U.S.

It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman; nature, having endowed them equally, leaves them to their own skill and judgment in the hour of danger, and, if not equal to the occasion, alike they perish.

To appreciate the importance of fitting every human soul for independent action, think for a moment of the immeasurable solitude of self.

We come into the world alone, unlike all who have gone before us, we leave it alone, under circumstances peculiar to ourselves. No mortal ever has been, no mortal ever will be like the soul just launched on the sea of life.

      There can never again be just such a combination of prenatal influences; never again just such environments as make up the infancy, youth and manhood of this one. Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another. No one has ever found two blades of ribbon grass alike, and no one will ever find two human beings alike.
      Seeing, then, what must be the infinite diversity in human character, we can in a measure appreciate the loss to a nation when any large class of people is uneducated and unrepresented in the government.

Complete Development of Every Individual

We ask for the complete development of every individual, first, for his own benefit and happiness. In fitting out an army, we give each soldier his own knapsack, arms, powder, his blanket, cup, knife, fork and spoon. We provide alike for all their individual necessities; then each man bears his own burden.

Again, we ask complete individual development for the general good; for the consensus of the competent on the whole round of human interests, on all questions of national life; and worshipped as a hero or saint, we stand alone. In ignorance, poverty and vice, as a pauper or criminal, alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs of our fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded through dark courts and alleys, in byways and highways; alone we stand in the judgment seat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the awful solitude of individual life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities; hours in which the youngest and the most helpless are thrown on their own resources tor guidance and consoXalion. Seeing, then, that life must ever be a march and a battle, that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right.

To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of property, like cutting off the hands. To deny political equality is to rob the ostracized of all self-respect; of credit in the market place; of recompense in the world of work; of a voice in those who make and administer the law; a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment. Shakespeare s play of Titus Andronicus contains a terrible satire on woman s position in the 19th century.
      Rude men (the play tells us) seized the king s daughter, cut out her tongue, cut off her hands, and then bade her go call for water and wash her hands.
      What a picture of woman s position! Robbed of her natural rights, handicapped by law and custom at every turn, yet compelled to fight her own battles, and in the emergencies of life to fall back on herself for protection.

A girl of sixteen, thrown on the world to support herself, to make her own place in society, to resist the temptations that surround her and maintain a spotless integrity, must do all this by native force or superior education.
      She does not acquire this power by being trained to trust others and distrust herself. If she wearies of the struggle, finding it hard work to swim up stream, and allows herself to drift with the current, she will find plenty of company, but not one to share her misery in the hour of her deepest humiliation.
      If she tries to retrieve her position, to conceal the past, her life is hedged about with fears lest willing hands should tear the veil from what she fain would hide. Young and friendless, she knows the bitter solitude of self.
      How the little courtesies of life on the surface of society, deemed so important from man towards woman, fade into utter insignificance in view of the deeper tragedies in which she must play her part alone, where no human aid is possible!

She Must Have Rare Common Sense,
Wisdom, Diplomacy, and a Knowledge of Human Nature

The young wife and mother, at the head of some establishment, with a kind husband to shield her from the adverse winds of life, with wealth, fortune and position, has a certain harbor of safety, secure against the ordinary ills of life. But to manage a household, have a desirable influence in society, keep her friends and the affections of her husband, train her children and servants well, she must have rare common sense, wisdom, diplomacy, and a knowledge of human nature. To do all of this, she needs the cardinal virtues and the strong points of character that the most successful statesman possesses. An uneducated woman trained to dependence, with no resources in herself, must make a failure of any position in life.
      But society says women do not need a knowledge of the world, the liberal training that experience in public life must give, all the advantages of collegiate education; but when for the lack of all this, the woman s happiness is wrecked, alone she bears her humiliation; and the solitude of the weak and the ignorant is indeed pitiable. In the wild chase for the prizes of life, they are ground to powder.

In age, when the pleasures of youth are passed, children grown up, married and gone, the hurry and bustle of life in a measure over, when the hands are weary of active service, when the old arm chair and the fireside are the chosen resorts, then men and women alike must fall back on their own resources. If they can not find companionship in books, if they have no interest in the vital questions of the hour, no interest in watching the consummation of reforms with which they might have been identified, they soon pass into their dotage.
      The more fully the faculties of the mind are developed and kept in use, the longer the period of vigor and active interest in all around us continues. If, from a life-tong participation in public affairs, a woman feels responsible for the laws regulating our system of education, the discipline of our jails and prisons, the sanitary conditions of our private homes, public buildings and thoroughfares, an interest in commerce, finance, our foreign relations, in any or all of these questions, her solitude will at least be respectable, and she will not be driven to gossip or scandal for entertainment.

The chief reason for opening to every soul the doors to the whole round of human duties and pleasure is the individual development thus attained, the resources thus provided under all circumstances to mitigate the solitude that at times must come to everyone.
      I once asked Prince Kropotkin, a Russian Nihilist, how he endured his long years in prison, deprived of books, pen, ink and paper.
      "Ah!" said he, "I thought out many questions in which I had a deep interest. In the pursuit of an idea, I took no note of time. When tired of solving knotty problems, I recited all the beautiful passages in prose and verse I had ever learned. I became acquainted with myself, and my own resources. I had a world of my own, a vast empire, that no Russian jailer or Czar could invade."
      Such is the value of liberal thought and broad culture, when shut off from all human companionship, bringing comfort and sunshine within even the four walls of a prison cell.

With the Cry of "Fire! Fire!" Do Women Wait for Men to Point the Way to Safety?

As women offtimes share a similar fate, should they not have all the consolation that the most liberal education can give? Their sufferings in the prisons of St. Petersburg; in the long weary marches to Siberia, and in the mines, working side by side with men, surely call for all the self-support that the most exalted sentiments of heroism can give.
      When suddenly roused at midnight, with the startling cry of "Fire! Fire!" to find the house over their heads in flames, do women wait for men to point the way to safety? And are the men equally bewildered, and half suffocated with smoke, in a position to do more than try to save themselves? At such times the most timid women have shown courage and heroism, in saving their husbands and children, that has surprised everybody. Inasmuch, then, as woman shares equally the joys and sorrows of time and eternity, is it not the height of presumption in man to propose to represent her at the ballot box and the throne of grace, to do her voting in the state, her praying in the church, and to assume the position of high priest at the family altar?

Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility; nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded; a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family and position. Seeing, then, that the responsibilities of life rest equally on man and woman, that their destiny is the same, they need the same preparation for time and eternity. The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce storms of life is the sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every point of the compass,just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, and to conquer.
      Such are the facts in human experience, the responsibilities of individual sovereignty. Rich and poor, intelligent and ignorant, wise and foolish, virtuous and vicious, man and woman; it is ever the same, each soul must depend wholly on itself.

He Cannot Share Her Burdens

Whatever the theories may be of woman s dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life, he cannot bear her burdens. Alone she goes to the gates of death to give life to every man that is born into the world; no one can share her fears, no one can mitigate her pangs; and if her sorrow is greater than she can bear, alone she passes beyond the gates into the vast unknown.
      From the mountain-tops of Judea long ago, a heavenly voice bade his disciples, "Bear ye one another s burdens"; but humanity has not yet risen to that point of self-sacrifice; and if ever so willing, how few the burdens are that one soul can bear for another! In the highways of Palestine; in prayer and fasting on the solitary mountain-top; in the Garden of Gethsemane; before the judgment seat of Pilate; betrayed by one of his trusted disciples at his last supper; in his agonies on the cross, even Jesus of Nazareth, in those last sad days on earth, felt the awful solitude of self.
      Deserted by man, in agony he cries, "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?" And so it ever must be in the conflicting scenes of life, in the long, weary march, each one walks alone. We may have many friends, love, kindness, sympathy and charity, to smooth our pathway in everyday life, but in the tragedies and triumphs of human experience, each mortal stands alone.

With All the Resources in Themselves that Liberal Thought and Broad Culture Can Give

But when all artificial trammels are removed, and women are recognized as individuals, responsible for their own environments, thoroughly educated for all positions in life they may be called to fill; with all the resources in themselves that liberal thought and broad culture can give; guided by their own conscience and judgment, trained to self-protection, by a healthy development of the muscular system, and skill in the use of weapons and defence; and stimulated to self-support by a knowledge of the business world and the pleasure that pecuniary independence must ever give; when women are trained in this way, they will in a measure be fitted for those hours of solitude that come alike to all, whether prepared or otherwise.
      As in our extremity we must depend on ourselves, the dictates of wisdom point to complete individual development.

Women are already the equals of men in the whole realm of thought, in art, science, literature and government.

In talking of education, how shallow the argument that each class must be educated for the special work it proposes to do, and that all those faculties not needed in this special walk must lie dormant and utterly wither for want of use, when, perhaps, these will be the very faculties needed in life s greatest emergencies! Some say, "Where's the use of drilling girls in the languages, the sciences, in law, medicine, theology. As wives, mothers, housekeepers, cooks, they need a different curriculum from boys who are to fill all positions. The chief cooks in our great hotels and ocean steamers are men. In our large cities, men run the bakeries; they make our bread, cake and pies. They manage the laundries; they are now considered our best milliners and dressmakers.
      Because some men fill these departments of usefulness, shall we regulate the curriculum in Harvard and Yale to their present necessities? If not, why this talk in our best colleges of a curriculum for girls who are crowding into the trades and professions, teachers in all our public schools, rapidly filling many lucrative and honorable positions in life?

They are showing, too, their calmness and courage in the most trying hours of human experience. You have probably all read in the daily papers of the terrible storm in the Bay of Biscay, when a tidal wave made such a havoc on the shore, wrecking vessels, unroofing houses, and carrying destruction everywhere. Among other buildings, the woman's prison was demolished. Those who escaped saw men struggling to reach the shore. They promptly, by clasping hands, made a chain of themselves, and pushed out into the sea, again and again, at the risk of their lives, until they had brought six men to shore, carried them to a shelter, and done all in their power for their comfort and protection.

They Pilot Ships Across the Mighty Deep

What special school training could have prepared these women for this sublime moment in their lives? In times like this, humanity rises above all college curriculums, and recognizes nature as the greatest of all teachers in the hour of danger and death.
      Women are already the equals of men in the whole realm of thought, in art, science, literature and government. With telescopic vision they explore the starry firmament and bring back the history of the planetary spheres. With chart and compass they pilot ships across the mighty deep, and with skillful fingers send electric messages around the world. In galleries of art the beauties of nature and the virtues of humanity are immortalized by them on canvas, and by their inspired touch dull blocks of marble are transformed into angels of light. In music they speak again the language of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and are worthy interpreters of their great thoughts.
      The poetry and novels of the century are theirs, and they have touched the keynote of reform, in religion, politics and social life. They fill the editor's and professor's chair, and plead at the bar of justice; walk the wards of the hospital, and speak from the pulpit and the platform. Such is the type of womanhood that an enlightened public sentiment welcomes today, and such the triumph of the facts of life over the false theories of the past.

Is it, then, consistent to hold the developed woman of this day within the same narrow political limits as the dame with the spinning-wheel and knitting-needle occupied in the past? No! no! Machinery has taken the labors of woman, as well as man, on its tireless shoulders, the loom and the spinning-wheel are but dreams of the past; the pen, the brush, the easel, the chisel, have taken their places, while the hopes and ambitions of women are essentially changed.
      We see reason sufficient in the outer conditions of human beings for individual liberty and development, but when we consider the self-dependence of every human soul we see the need of courage, judgment and the exercise of every faculty of mind and body, strengthened and developed by use, in woman as well as man.

Each Soul Lives Alone Forever

Whatever may be said of man s protecting power in ordinary conditions, amid all the terrible disasters by land and sea, in the supreme moments of danger, alone woman must ever meet the horrors of the situation.
      The Angel of Death even makes no royal pathway for her. Man s love and sympathy enter only into the sunshine of our lives. In that solemn solitude of self, that links us with the immeasurable and the eternal, each soul lives alone forever.

A recent writer says: "I remember once, in crossing the Atlantic, to have gone upon the deck of the ship at midnight, when a dense black cloud enveloped the sky, and the great deep was roaring madly under the lashes of demoniac winds. My feeling was not of danger or fear (which is a base surrender of the immortal soul) but of utter desolation and loneliness; a little speck of life shut in by a tremendous darkness.
      Again I remembered to have climbed the slopes of the Swiss Alps, up beyond the point where vegetation ceases, and the stunted conifers no longer struggle against the unfeeling blasts. Around me lay a huge confusion of rocks, out of which the gigantic ice peaks shot into the measureless blue of the heavens; and again my only feeling was the awful solitude!"

There is a Solitude Which Each
and Every One of Us Has Always Carried With Him

And yet, there is a solitude which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of self. Our inner being which we call ourself, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced. It is more hidden than the caves of the gnome; the sacred adytum of the oracle; the hidden chamber of Eleusinian mystery, for to it only omniscience is permitted to enter.
      Such is individual life. Who, I ask you, can take, dare take on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilites of another human soul?