Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 – 1902) was the chief intellectual and philosophical architect of the early women's rights movement in the United States. In July 1848, alongside Lucretia Mott, Stanton organized the Seneca Falls Convention in upstate New York, the first women's rights convention in history.

For the convention, Stanton penned the revolutionary *Declaration of Sentiments*, deliberately adapting the Declaration of Independence to proclaim: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal'. Unlike many contemporaries, Stanton was a radical who demanded not only the vote, but also women's property rights, liberal divorce laws, custody rights for mothers, reproductive autonomy, and equal pay. She co-authored the three-volume *History of Woman Suffrage* and published the controversial *Woman's Bible* (1895) critiquing religious sexism.