Chapter I
1. The National Woman's Suffrage Association is a story of the fight for Women's Rights beginning in 1848, not that the fight for Woman's Rights began in 1848 of course, nor the Association.
2. The First Book of Nwsa introduces us to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony, who were two of the biggest names in the issue of Women's Rights in the nineteenth century, and who formed the Association in 1869.
3. The Second Book of Nwsa mostly takes us through with the people who were involved in the Association during and after its merger with the American Woman Suffrage Association, after which it became the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
4. The genesis of Nwsa can be seen at the Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848, where a young Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted and read the Declaration of Sentiments.
5. Both the conference, which she co-organized with Lucretia Mott, and the Declaration, were significant in her life, and in the life of many others.
6. In America in the nineteenth century the issues of Women's Rights and Anti-slavery were often advocated by the same people, because of the common ground the issues shared.
7. Both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony were also active in the Anti-slavery movement.
8. The Revolution newspaper, which Susan B Anthony created, spoke out on both issues.
9. Also of significance in speaking of Women's Rights in the nineteenth century is the issue of abortion.
10. Many of the leading Women's Rights activists of the nineteenth century were anti-abortionists but this needs to be placed in context.
11. In the nineteenth century, abortions were more dangerous and women were often forced to have abortions contrary to their desire and at risk of life.
12. So we can see that just as the right to choose in the modern era is a fundamental plank in the issue of Women's Rights, so too was the anti-abortion stance of the Women's Rights movement in the nineteenth century.
13. It is so very important to qualify because this anti-abortion view of the nineteenth century Feminists, when analyzed even to this small degree, is a great deal closer to Pro-choice than it is to Pro-life.
14. In the spring of 1851, William Lloyd Garrison and George Thompson, an English abolitionist, conducted an anti-slavery meeting in Seneca Falls. Susan attended, staying at the home of Amelia Bloomer.
15. They met Elizabeth Cady Stanton in company with Garrison and Thompson on the street. Immediately, Anthony and Stanton began their historic friendship.
16. Anthony was described as the "Napoleon" of the suffragist movement. Hers was the organizational and tactical genius.
17. She displayed her skill by appearing before every Congress between 1869 and 1906 on behalf of women's suffrage.
18. Stanton's role was that of thinker and writer.
19. She worked unremittingly for women's movement in all its phases, including divorce reform, birth control, the challenge to religious assumptions which opposed legal rights for women.
20. At the same time, she managed a household of seven children.
21. Anthony often went to Stanton's home and helped take care of these children in order to free her fellow suffragist for the intellectual work of which the latter was so capable.
22. Together they went through all the women's battles of the late nineteenth century.