In Her Own Right : The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (8 page)

Elizabeth Cady and Henry Stanton announced their engagement in October 1839, having known one another less than a month. To their surprise, the occasion was “not one of unmixed joy and satisfaction.” Family and friends raised immediate objections. Gerrit Smith solemnly warned them that her father would never consent. According to her recollection, Smith suggested that Elizabeth announce her plans to Judge Cady by letter, so that she “might draw the hottest fire while still in safe harbor.” Then he cautioned against marrying “without due consideration.”
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It was a measure of the reactions of their friends that even their chief ally had reservations about their decision.

To postpone the pending confrontation with her father, Elizabeth stayed on at Peterboro even after Henry had left to speak in Cleveland. When she did go home, she had to answer her father’s objections alone. Henry joined her three weeks later, but he was not warmly received. Judge Cady opposed the union on political and financial grounds. Like other social conservatives, he had “a strong aversion to abolitionists and the whole anti-slavery movement,” according to his daughter. He abhorred the idea of Elizabeth’s marrying an antislavery agent. He distrusted a man who had defied traditional political loyalties and espoused radical social change. Judge Cady was also concerned about Henry’s financial prospects. He lectured Elizabeth “on domestic relations from a financial viewpoint.” As someone who had married above his social and economic station, opposing his daughter’s engagement put Cady in an awkward position. He had also previously argued in favor of daughters being allowed to make their own marital choices.
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Judge Cady again relied on Edward Bayard to reinforce his position. Elizabeth’s brother-in-law buttressed his personal objections to Henry with legal arguments. He reminded her of the legal disadvantages any marriage would entail. New York statutes, like those of every other state, offered little protection to married women and took away what limited rights they had enjoyed while single. Married women lost their legal individuality and became wholly subordinate to their husbands. Wives had no rights to inherit property, keep earnings, sign contracts, initiate suits, establish credit, or claim more than one-third of their husbands’ estates. More devastating was their legal inability to have custody or control of their own children. Bayard did not need to remind Elizabeth of the deserted wives and disinherited widows who had appealed to her father for legal assistance in the past. She was already aware that marriage for some women resulted in hardship and heartache.
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There is no record of the reaction of Elizabeth’s mother or sisters. She recalled that friends who had previously “paint[ed] the marriage relation in the most dazzling colors” now pointed out that it was “beset with dangers and disappointments.” They warned that men were “depraved and unreliable.” As a result of these pressures, her engagement was “a season of doubt and conflict—doubt as to the wisdom of changing a girlhood of freedom and enjoyment for I knew not what, and conflict because the step I proposed was in opposition to the wishes of my family.”
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Heartened by tender missives from Henry, Elizabeth refused to change her mind. For four months of “anxiety and bewilderment,” she refuted the objections of people she cared for. Then in late February 1840, while visiting the Bayards in Seneca Falls, she succumbed and broke her engagement. Her father, her cousin, and her brother-in-law together “outweighed my conscience and turned the sweetest dream of my life into a tragedy.” In explaining her decision to Ann Smith, Elizabeth indicated that her action was not final. “We are still friends and correspond as before; perhaps when the storm blows over we may be dearer friends than ever.”
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She was not resigned to her decision and hoped to reverse it.

The engagement was an equally trying time for Henry, who had to juggle personal, political, and pecuniary concerns. He kept his betrothal secret from all but a few of his antislavery friends. Many would have agreed that it was time for him to get married. As one female abolitionist had observed, “If he were married to a woman of fine taste and some talent it would do him great good, for he needs constant polishing.” For whatever motives, Henry wanted to marry Miss Cady. He knew her family opposed him. As he had confided to Gerrit Smith, he “dreaded the influence of Mr. Bayard” upon his fiancée.
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When she broke their engagement, he agreed only to postpone their plans. He did not drop his suit.

Meanwhile Henry was caught up in the debate about overt political action that was splitting the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). By the spring of 1840 two factions had arisen. One group supported William Lloyd Garrison, the founder of the AASS and editor of the
Liberator
. The Garrisonians urged immediate emancipation but preferred “moral suasion” to political action as a tactic. Because they considered the Constitution a “slaveholders’ document,” some Garrisonians refused to vote. Henry Stanton, Gerrit Smith, Theodore Weld, and James G. Birney of Kentucky led the anti-Garrisonians. They preached practical political action and anticipated political solutions. They believed reformers had a moral and religious duty to vote, to establish alternative parties, and to nominate candidates. In April 1840 the political abolitionists called an assembly of antislavery men in Albany. Gerrit Smith casually named this rump group the Liberty party. Although it nominated Birney for president, it had little impact on the 1840 election.

In addition to political tactics, two questions of internal interest separated the factions—whether to criticize churches hostile to abolition and what the role of women members should be. Garrison and his followers took a radical position on each issue. They condemned proslavery churches and advocated women’s rights within the society. They agreed that women should be able to vote, hold office, and serve as delegates, in addition to the speaking, traveling, and canvassing they already did. Neither of those positions was acceptable to the political abolitionists. They worried that such stands would alienate middle-class male voters, who might agree only on abolition.

The actual schism came in May 1840 at a national meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The anti-Garrison minority was overwhelmingly defeated and walked out.
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The renegades withdrew to found the rival American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Henry Stanton was made executive secretary of the new group. Anticipating the split, the dissenters had already designated Henry to be a delegate to the upcoming World Anti-Slavery Convention. At the time of the walkout, he was en route to Europe.

When Elizabeth learned that Henry would be abroad for eight months, she insisted that they marry before the journey rather than after. As Henry explained in confidence to another abolitionist, “We thought of putting off the whole affair till my return—but, as the time draws near for my departure she will not consent to be left behind in the hands of her opposing friends and wishes to go with me that the storm may blow over while she is absent.” Elizabeth’s father threatened to disinherit her, according to Henry, but she had “wedded her soul to the cause at the call of duty.” They decided to elope shortly before he sailed for London, keeping the plan a secret
in fear that Judge Cady would whisk Elizabeth out of Henry’s reach. As Henry concluded, “I am in a delicate predicament . . . my honor is at stake.”
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The decision to marry put Henry under enormous financial pressure. He needed cash to purchase two ocean passages, at $120 each, and to pay their living expenses while abroad. In a letter to Elizabeth, clearly intended for her father, Stanton had laid out his financial position as of January 1840. He claimed to have supported himself since he was thirteen, paid for the education of two brothers, and saved three thousand dollars. Refuting the unspoken charge that he was marrying Elizabeth for her money, he wrote: “I have never received a dollar’s gratuitous aid from anyone, though it has been frequently pressed upon me. I always declined it, because I knew it would relax my perseverance and detract from my self-reliance, and because I was aware that if I would be a man, I must build my own foundation with my own hands.” Stanton dissembled. He had always worked but he had no career and no prospects. He had been a journalist, a county clerk, a theology student, and an agitator. After his break with Garrison, he had no job at all. He was owed two years’ back salary. The new American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society had no treasury to support him. In the remaining weeks of April 1840 Stanton badgered his friends to repay debts and subsidize his expenses. “I have had to screw and dodge and scamp to raise the wherewithal—and shall barely make out,” he reported to his friend John Greenleaf Whittier. “I have made close calculations and shall but just rub and go.”
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Having kept their plans secret for nearly a month, Henry and Elizabeth were married in Johnstown on May 1, 1840.
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There was a last minute delay when Henry’s packet from New York was stranded on a sand bar. Unable to make “the slightest preparation for a wedding or voyage,” for fear of arousing suspicion about her plans, the bride wore a “simple white evening dress.” Over the objections of the Presbyterian minister, they omitted the word “obey” from the vows. Although Elizabeth later claimed credit for this innovation (“I obstinately refused to obey one with whom I supposed I was entering an equal relation”), it may have been Henry’s suggestion; he had witnessed the Welds take similar vows the previous year. Such an omission indicated that a woman could refuse to have intercourse with her spouse. A few friends were invited, but there is no record of whether Elizabeth’s family attended.
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The bride was twenty-four years old and undeterred; the groom was thirty-five and unemployed.

Following the ceremony the couple left at once for Peterboro. In inviting himself to visit the Smiths, Stanton had written, “We may come
in chains
—and much as you abhor thralldom, we shall totally dissent from any proposition of emancipation, immediate or gradual, present or prophetic!”
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As Henry’s romantic metaphor unwittingly acknowledged, their affection would never be wholly separate from current events. After two nights at Peterboro, the newlyweds registered at the Waverly House in New York City. They made a short trip to Belleville, New Jersey, where Henry introduced Elizabeth to his best friend, Theodore Weld, his wife Angelina Grimké Weld, and her sister Sarah Grimké.
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All of them except Elizabeth were renowned reformers. Weld and Stanton had both been Finney converts, Lane rebels, and Garrison agents. Now they were anti-Garrisonians. The South Carolina sisters had been the first women to speak to mixed audiences on antislavery.
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But family cares and financial worries had forced the Grimké-Welds to withdraw from abolition activities.

The group also shared a commitment to the nutritional reforms of Sylvester Graham, an abolitionist and diet reformer.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson called him “the poet of bran bread and muffins.” In popular lectures Graham presented steps to improved health. He advocated eating vegetables and bran, avoiding caffeine and alcohol, sleeping on firm mattresses, bathing in cold water, wearing loose-fitting and lightweight clothing, exercising daily, keeping windows open, drinking water regularly, and being cheerful at meals. In his
Letters to Young Men
(1839), he advised limiting the frequency of intercourse to twelve times a year.
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Elizabeth Stanton adopted the Graham regimen when she married Henry and followed many of its guidelines, except those governing food and sex.

The company at Belleville shared a Graham meal of rice, molasses, bread, milk, hominy, vegetables, and pie made without shortening. Undismayed
by the menu, Elizabeth quickly became friends with the Grimké-Welds. Writing them from England she exclaimed, “Dear friends how much I love you!! What a trio! for me to love!” Her admiration was returned. As Angelina reported to the Smiths, “We are very much pleased with Elizabeth Stanton who spent several days with us, and I could not help wishing that Henry was better calculated to mold such a mind.” Henry had no such qualms. Addressing Smith as “Cousin Gerrit,” he wrote, “You know I need not say one word in praise of my newly acquired treasure . . . words cannot express to you my estimate of its value and excellence.”
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Aware of Henry’s delight in her company and pleased by her encounter with the Welds, the new Mrs. Stanton looked forward to an equally stimulating atmosphere among the abolitionists who gathered in London. The couple sailed for England on May 12, 1840, aboard the
Montreal
. They were joined by Henry’s Liberty party colleague and presidential candidate, James Birney, a former slaveholder and a Weld recruit. He had a Southerner’s conservative views about woman’s place and was offended by Elizabeth’s high spirits. He reprimanded her for addressing Henry by his first name in public and for being too friendly with the sailors. According to Mrs. Stanton, “Mr. Birney kept to himself like a clam in his shell all the time.” Describing her first ocean voyage to Mrs. Weld she added, “Henry wishes me to say that he attributes his freedom from seasickness
to his strict observance of the Graham system
.”
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The international antislavery meeting that the Stantons planned to attend had first been proposed by the editor of an American abolitionist periodical. The idea was taken up by the newly formed British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. It issued a call in October 1836 to “friends of the slave in every nation and of every clime.” Realizing that “friends” might be construed as female, the British society revised its call in February 1840, asking that names of “gentlemen” representatives be forwarded. The purpose of the meeting was threefold: to exchange information on the results of British emancipation in the West Indies, to discuss the nature and extent of slavery and the slave trade in the free world, and to determine the best measures of achieving abolition and the welfare of the free Negro population.
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