Susan B. Anthony: Her Life and Contributions to History

Susan B. Anthony is one of the most remarkable persons one will ever find in American history. She not only helped in the creation of the first womens rights movement in the United States, she led it tirelessly and brilliantly until her death. She was determined and dedicated, letting no one and nothing stand in her way. She faced opposition and even derision from people who had never met her, and worse, from those closest to her. But she never once faltered in her resolve. Although she did not live to see her greatest goal attained, it is an unarguable fact that her work for The Cause did more to gain women the right to vote than that of any other person.

Susan Brownell Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, the second of eleven children (Susan B. Anthony: A Biography, by Kathleen Barry, page 10). Her parents were Daniel Anthony and Lucy Read. Daniel was a Quaker, while Lucy was raised a Baptist. Their unique union was formed against the wishes of the Quaker community in which Susan was raised. Her parents defiance of the social norm set by the sedate Quaker community perhaps served as Susans earliest inkling that sometimes what society said was normal was not always right (Barry, 6).

Susan had a very commonplace childhood, with no indication of her future. If anything, she was rather a homebody. But this childhood is precisely why she was an effective womens leader: She understood the situation of the common woman (Barry, 12). In the world in which Susan was raised, women had a very limited role. They were expected to stay at home and work like slaves, but if they went out into the world for a paying job, they were compensated at a fraction of the wages a man would receive for an equal position.

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A married woman could not own property. Her husband took custody of the property when they married. She also could not draw a paycheck; The money was handed directly to her husband, irregardless of the fact that she had worked for it. Women could not attend college. There were no women doctors, ministers, lawyers, or senators. They could work outside the home in only a few professions, at a fraction of what a man would make in the same profession. Most!

of all, women could not vote. At this time in U.S. history, the common man was fighting for his rights: His right to vote, his right to own land. But it was unthinkable for a woman to even mention having the own rights. Susan B. Anthony was born into this world. But she would spend the majority of her life trying to change it (Failure is Impossible, by Lynn Sherr, page xix).

Susan was educated by her father, in a home school that he started for his daughters. As a wealthy industrialist, he was able to hire a tutor to live at their home and teach his daughters (his sons attended regular school). However, he also attended to much of their education himself (Barry, 19). Although Quakers agreed with the rest of the male nation on the status of women in daily life, one thing they valued was education. Every Quaker child, whether male or female, was allowed to get as much education as they wished.

So when Daniel saw how much Susan enjoyed learning, he arranged to have her sent to a boarding school. It was at this school that Susan first heard Lucretia Mott, the famous womens rights pioneer, speak (Barry, 29). However, Susan had to return home when her father went bankrupt during the Depression. Susan and all her sisters who were old enough had to start teaching to help support the family (Barry, 31).

In 1845, Daniel moved his family to Rochester, NY, center of the anti-slavery movement. Every Sunday, a group of abolitionists, including the famous Frederick Douglass, would meet at the familys farm to discuss the latest news and ideas about how to end slavery. Susan participated actively in these discussions, and eventually became an engineer in the Underground Railroad that ran near their farm (Sherr, xxx).

In a time when most abolitionists thought the solution was to send the slaves back to Africa, Susan wrote privately in her diary of her dream of an egalitarian world, when all people, black, white, male, and female, would be equal (Barry, 42). On one occasion, however, she discovered that just because people claim to believe in abolition does not mean that they are ready to confront its results. A freedman attended a Quaker meeting one day, and some of the members left in protest. Susan was quite indignant, writing a letter to a friend stated:

The Friends raised quite a fuss... about a colored man sitting in the meeting house and some left the meeting on the account. The man was... very polite, but still the pretended meek followers of Christ could not worship their God and have this sable companion with them what a lack of Christianity is this.

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