page_title: The Revolution (newspaper)
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: The Revolution (newspaper) / History / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Cropped and retouched version of "Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony" by Napoleon Sarony. Original is in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC., accession number S.NPG.77.48.
context_page_description: The Revolution was a newspaper established by women's rights activists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in New York City. It was published weekly between January 8, 1868 and February 17, 1872. With a combative style that matched its name, it primarily focused on women's rights, especially prohibiting discrimination against women voting, women's suffrage. It also covered other topics, however, such as politics, the labor movement and finance. Anthony managed the business aspects of the paper while Stanton was co-editor along with Parker Pillsbury, an abolitionist and a supporter of women's rights.
  Initial funding was provided by George Francis Train, a controversial businessman who supported women's rights but alienated many activists with his views on politics and race. The funding that he arranged was enough to start the newspaper but not enough to sustain it. After twenty-nine months, mounting debts forced Anthony to transfer the paper to Laura Curtis Bullard, a wealthy women's rights activist who gave it a less radical tone. The paper published its last issue less than two years later.
  Its significance was greater than its short lifespan would indicate.
context_section_description: The creators of The Revolution, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were leading women's rights activists. Stanton was an organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, the first women's rights convention, and the primary author of its Declaration of Sentiments.
  At the request of Lucy Stone, another leading activist who had organized several of the National Women's Rights Conventions during the 1850s, Anthony performed much of the organizational work for the 1859 national convention and Stanton did the same in 1860.
  Together Anthony and Stanton established the Women's Loyal National League in 1863, which gathered a massive number of petitions calling for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery in the U.S.
  The two activists remained close friends and co-workers for the remainder of their lives.
  They established The Revolution during a period when a split was developing within the women's rights movement.  A major point of disagreement was the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would prohibit the denial of suffrage because of race.  Most radical social reformers supported it, but Stanton and Anthony opposed it unless it was accompanied by another amendment that would prohibit the denial of suffrage because of sex. Otherwise, they said, the Fifteenth Amendment, which would in effect enfranchise all men while excluding all women, would create an "aristocracy of sex" by giving constitutional authority to the belief that men were superior to women.
  Women's rights activists also differed over the Republican Party and the abolitionist movement, which together had provided leadership for ending slavery in the U.S. in 1865.  The leading figures in the women's rights movement strongly opposed slavery (Anthony herself had been on the staff of the American Anti-Slavery Society),
  and many activists felt a sense of loyalty toward the Republican and abolitionist leadership.  Stanton and Anthony were sharply critical of both, however, for failing to support women's suffrage.
  A pivotal event was the 1867 campaign conducted in Kansas by the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) in support of two state referenda, one that would enfranchise African American men and one that would enfranchise women.  The AERA had been established the previous year, with Anthony and Stanton among its founders, to support the rights of both women and blacks.  Leaders of the abolitionist movement, however, refused to support the AERA's Kansas campaign, even though suffrage for black men was an abolitionist priority, because they did not want the two suffrage campaigns to be combined.
  The AERA had encountered similar obstacles during an earlier campaign in New York State.  Campaigning in Kansas with the AERA in support of both referenda, Anthony and Stanton were angered not only because national abolitionist leaders were withholding support but also because local Republicans had organized a committee to oppose the women's suffrage referendum.  Feeling betrayed, Stanton and Anthony stirred up a storm of protest by accepting help during the last days of the campaign from George Francis Train, a wealthy supporter of women's rights who was a Democrat and an outspoken racist.  Train harshly criticized the Republican Party, making no secret of his intention to tarnish its progressive image and create splits within it. When the Kansas campaign ended in November 1867 with the defeat of both referenda, the divisions within the women's movement began to deepen.
  The women's rights movement had greatly reduced its activity during the Civil War (1861−1865) because its leaders wanted to apply their energy to the fight against slavery.
  After the war, leaders of the abolitionist movement pressured them to continue to delay their campaign for women's suffrage until suffrage for black males had been achieved.
  Stanton and Anthony felt their movement was being marginalized.  Later they said, "Our liberal men counseled us to silence during the war, and we were silent on our own wrongs; they counseled us again to silence in Kansas and New
caption: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony about 1870
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