Elizabeth Cady Staton
Friends and neighbors — I thank you for the chance to speak plainly tonight on the great question before this nation.
I have spent the better part of twenty years in the company of abolitionists. My own husband, Henry Stanton, gave his youth to this cause. On our wedding journey to England in 1840, we sat among the delegates of the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London — and there I watched the men of that convention vote to silence the women in attendance, myself and my dear friend Lucretia Mott among them, forcing us behind a curtain as though our sex made our convictions less real.
That day taught me something I have never forgotten: that the chains binding the slave and the chains binding the woman are forged of the same metal — the belief that some human beings may rightly govern others without their consent.
Do not mistake me. I do not say the slave's condition and the condition of a free white woman are identical — they are not. The slave's suffering is a deeper wound, sanctioned by whip and by auction block, by the tearing of mother from child.
I have written of the trembling girl sold on a New Orleans block, of masters who violate the plainest laws of God while calling themselves Christian men. There is no crime in the whole of history more brazen than this — the selling of human souls for gain, upheld by the very Constitution that calls itself a charter of liberty.
I say to this meeting what I have said before the Judiciary Committee of our own state legislature: there are rights that belong to a person simply because they are a person — not because government grants them. No law, however old, however wrapped in the language of property, can make right what nature declares wrong. If the law says a man may own his brother, then the law itself stands guilty before a higher bench than ours.
Some of you will say: this is not women's business; leave the slave question to the men. I answer: I have signed my name to petitions, gathered by the tens of thousands through our Women's Loyal National League, asking Congress for a constitutional amendment to strike slavery from this land entirely. Women without the vote have still found a voice — through the petition, through the pen, through the pulpit and the platform. We will not be silent while human beings are bought and sold a few hundred miles from where we sit comfortably tonight.
And to those who invoke Scripture in slavery's defense, I say: go back to Sinai. "Thou shalt not steal" was not written with an exception for a man's labor or a woman's body. "Thou shalt not covet" did not carve out human beings as property. If we mean to call ourselves a Christian nation, let us apply the Commandments in their fullest, highest sense — to every soul, not merely to those of one color or one sex.
I do not ask this meeting for charity toward the slave. I ask for justice — the plain, unadorned justice that any of us would demand were the chains upon our own wrists. History will not judge kindly those who, having the power to speak, chose silence instead.
I thank you for your attention, and I ask you to carry this question home with you tonight: what will you do, while it is still in your power to do something?
"A Slave's Appeal" (1860), address to the NY Judiciary Committee — BlackPast.org transcription: https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/1860-elizabeth-cady-stanton-slaves-appeal/
Wycliffe College blog on Stanton's 1860 "The Slave's Appeal" pamphlet and her use of the Ten Commandments (includes her Sinai/biblical rhetoric): https://www.wycliffecollege.ca/blog/elizabeth-cady-stanton-taking-stand-against-slavery-and-against-racial-equality
Wikipedia biography (World Anti-Slavery Convention 1840, "A Slave's Appeal" pamphlet, Women's Loyal National League petition drive of ~400,000 signatures): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cady_Stanton
Library of Congress — Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, collection overview: https://www.loc.gov/collections/elizabeth-cady-stanton-papers/about-this-collection/
National Women's History Museum biography: https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/elizabeth-cady-stanton
American Battlefield Trust biography (Women's Loyal National League, 1861 abolitionist lecture tour): https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/elizabeth-cady-stanton
Schlager Group summary of her May 1860 "Speech for the Anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society": https://library.schlagergroup.com/chapter/9781961844087-book-part-079
Alan Singer teaching document packet with primary-source excerpts (1860–1865): https://alansinger.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/a33.-elizabet.-cady-stanton.pdf
Ai Disclosure: For this assignment I used Claude ai to generate me a script of Elizabeth Cody Staton. I asked Claude to give me factual and academic information, and things she has said I asked Claude to give short but professional paragraphs. To the blog post I added link sources.
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