Probably the best known of the 19th century American feminists, the basic facts about Stanton's life are widely available on the web. What is probably little known about Stanton is her rich contribution to international feminism and the enrichment of American feminism by her international contacts.

      In Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism, Margaret McFadden develops the concept of "the existence of a pre-organizational matrix or network of international experiences and relationships, which then served as the basis upon which an autonomous movement and explicit feminist consciousness could later develop in the Atlantic community" (p. 4) This international network of women, whom she calls "the Mothers of the Matrix," were active in several areas: (1) travelers, especially those who wrote travelogues, (2) lay ministers who preached their own, usually conservative, interpretation of the gospel, (3) reformers, including those active in the abolition, temperance, peace, and anti-prostitution movements, (4) leaders in utopian communities, (5) support networks for political revolutionaries, refugees, and expatriates, and (6) female literary celebrities. Some of these women, including Lucretia Mott, Anna Doyle Wheeler, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Fredrika Bremer, and Frances Power Cobbe, consciously set out to create both national and international communications networks among women working for women qua women.

      Stanton made a couple of trips to Europe during her life, each time meeting men and women active in various reform movements, especially women's rights movements. Her first sojourn to Europe, her honeymoon trip of 1840 to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London, awakened her feminist consciousness and lead directly to the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention as well as introduced her to some of the most important reformers of the day. Many of these contacts she visited later in her trip and remained in communication with after her return to America. Although the woman's rights convention which Mott and Stanton had promised one another to hold as soon as they returned to America did not come about until 1848, women's rights movements did take a larger role in Stanton's life in the interval. Stimulated by the French revolutionaries of 1848, Stanton and Mott finally held the promised convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Several women's rights conventions quickly followed the Seneca Falls convention: Rochester, N. Y. (1848); Salem, Ohio (1850); Akron, Ohio (1851); Worcester, Mass. (1580 and 1851); West Chester, Pa. (1852); Syracuse, N. Y. (1852), and Philadelphia, Pa. (1854). These conventions in turn stimulated demands by such European women as Harriet Taylor Mill, Harriet Martineau, Pauline Roland, and Jeanne Deroin for the rights of women.

      Under the Republic, French feminism had undergone a revival, exhibiting such vitality that it hosted the International Congres du Droit des Femmes in 1878, a full ten years before the much better known 1888 International Congress of Women. Eleven foreign countries, sixteen organizations, and two hundred and nineteen people signed up as official participants, including Americans Julia Ward Howe, Albert Brisband, and Theodore Stanton, son of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. An additional 400 "unofficial" visitors heard the speeches and read the papers presented at the conference. The contacts Theordore made at this convention would later be used by Elizabeth to strengthen her connections to the international women's movements.

      Elizabeth Stanton returned to Europe in 1882. Her daughter Harriot was studying in France and her son, Theodore, was in Germany. Both children eventually married Europeans: Harriot married Englishman William H. Blatch and Theodore married Frenchwoman Maguerite Berry. Stanton's circle of international connections widened through her children's families, friends, and contacts and grew even further when she served as the editor of Theodore's book, The Woman Question in Europe. Contributors to The Woman Question in Europe included: Frances Power Cobbe (England), Millicent Garrett Fawcett (England), Maria G. Grey (England), Frances Elizabeth Hoggan (England), Jessie Boucherett (England), Henrietta O. Barnett (England), Anna Schepler-Lette (Germany), Jenny Hirsch (Germany), Marie Calm (Germany), Elsie Van Calcar (Holland), Johanna Leitenberger (Austria), Camilla Collett (Norway), Rosalie Ulrica Olivercrona (Sweden), Kirstine Frederiksen (Denmark), Aurelia Cimino Folliero de Luna (Italy), Dora D'istria (Italy), Concepion Arenal (Spain), Rodrigues de Freitas (Portugal), Isala van Diest (Belgium), Marie Goegg (Switzerland), Marie Zebrikoff (Russia), Elsie Oresko (Poland), Eliska Krásnohorská (Bohemia, today the Czech Republic), and Kalliope A. Kehava (The Orient, today Greece, the Balkan Peninsula, and Turkey). Additional women are acknowledged in the introduction as contributing to the production of the book and many more women are discussed in the articles themselves. Traveling throughout Europe to the homes of her children and their relatives, Stanton meet some of the most influential people in the women's rights movements. In England Stanton met Frances Power Cobbe, Lydia Becker, Josephine Butler, Octavia Hill, Emily Faithful, Elizabeth Pease Nichol, and Anna Dickinson. In London, she visited her old friend Ernestine Rose. In Paris, she met Maria Deraismes, Leon Richer, Isabelle Bogelot, and the Norwegians Bjornstjerne Bjornson and Henrik Ibsen. On her trip back to the US, Stanton met the Baroness Aleksandra Gripenberg of Finland.

      With each of these individuals, Stanton discussed various aspects of the woman question, pushing and prodding each other's feminist ideals, traded information on successful tactics for organization building, recruiting activists, and influencing public opinion, and strengthened their mutual convictions that the various women's right movements were causes worth fight for. Both influenced by and influential upon these international contacts, Stanton's speeches and writings enriched both American and international feminist movements.

      For being a "Mother of the Matrix" as part of the nineteenth century women's rights movement, as well as an leader in the American women's rights struggle, Elizabeth Cady Stanton is one of Sunny's picks for the title "One of the Most Influential Women of the Millennium."

References:

      Margaret H. McFadden, Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism, [Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky, 1999]

      Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the 19th Century, [Albany, N. Y.: State University Press of New York, 1984]

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