Wisdom, goodness and power: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the history of woman suffrage

In the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her co-authors crafted a rhetorical history that not only celebrated Stanton's role in the suffrage movement, but also promoted her broader, more radical vision of complete gender equality. In the context of a movement divided over strategy, Stanton and her editors made the case not just for the vote, but for expanding the role of women in all realms of American social and political life. Documenting the contributions of women since the Revolution, the History advocated the full political and legal “sovereignty” of women by showing how their wisdom, goodness, and power had contributed to the nation's progress. [W]e hope to rouse new thoughts in minds prepared to receive them.—History of Woman Suffrage (1881) She has written several articles on the rhetoric of the nineteenth-century women's rights movement.