Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
May we now safely prophesy justice, liberty, equality for our
daughters ere another centennial birthday shall dawn upon us!
Sincerely yours, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
DETROIT, July 17, 1876.
_To Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Ann McClintock
and daughters, Amy Post, and all associated with them and myself
in the first Woman's Rights Convention, held in Seneca Falls, N.
Y., July 19, 1848, as well as to our later and present
associates, Greeting:_
Not able to be with you in your celebration of the nineteenth, I
will yet give evidence that I prize your remembrance of our first
assemblage and of our earliest work. That is, and will ever be as
the present is a memorable year; and may this be memorable too
for the same reason, a brave step in advance for human freedom. I
would that it could be a conclusive step in legislation for the
political freedom of the women of the nation. For it is only in
harmony with reason and experience to predict that the men as
well as the women of the near future will rejoice if this
centennial year is thus marked and glorified by so grand a deed.
We may well congratulate each other and have satisfaction in
knowing that we have changed the public sentiment and the laws of
many States by our advocacy and labors. We also know that while
helping the growth of our own souls, we have set many women
thinking and reading on this vital question, who in turn have
discussed it in private and public, and thus inspired others. So
that at this present time few who have examined can deny our
claim. But we are grateful to remember many women who needed no
arguments, whose clear insight and reason, pronounced in the
outset that a woman's soul was as well worth saving as a man's;
that her independence and free choice are as necessary and as
valuable to the public virtue and welfare; who saw and still see
in both, equal children of a Father who loves and protects all.
Men do not need to be convinced of the righteousness of entire
freedom for us; they have long been convinced of its justice;
they confess that it is only expediency which makes them withhold
that which they profess is precious to them. We await only an
awakened conscience and an enlarged statesmanship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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