page_title: Lucy Stone
section_title: Reconciliation
hierarchical_section_title: Lucy Stone / Reconciliation
caption_attribution_description: English: A scan of a photographic portrait of Lucy Stone in middle age, no date recorded on caption card
context_page_description: Lucy Stone was a prominent U.S. orator, abolitionist, and suffragist, and a vocal advocate and organizer promoting rights for women. In 1847, Stone became the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She spoke out for women's rights and against slavery at a time when women were discouraged and prevented from public speaking. Stone was known for using her birth name after marriage, the custom being for women to take their husband's surname.
  Stone's organizational activities for the cause of women's rights yielded tangible gains in the difficult political environment of the 19th century. Stone helped initiate the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts and she supported and sustained it annually, along with a number of other local, state and regional activist conventions. Stone spoke in front of a number of legislative bodies to promote laws giving more rights to women.
context_section_description: In 1887, eighteen years after the rift formed in the American women's rights movement, Stone proposed a merger of the two groups. Plans were drawn up, and, at their annual meetings, propositions were heard and voted on, then passed to the other group for evaluation. By 1890, the organizations resolved their differences and merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Stone was too weak with heart problems and respiratory illness to attend its first convention but was elected chair of the executive committee. Stanton was president of the new organization, but Anthony, who had the title of vice president, was its leader in practice.
  Starting early in January 1891, Carrie Chapman Catt visited Stone repeatedly at Pope's Hill, for the purpose of learning from Stone about the ways of political organizing. Stone had previously met Catt at an Iowa state woman's suffrage convention in October, 1889, and had been impressed at her ambition and sense of presence, saying "Mrs. Chapman will be heard from yet in this movement." Stone mentored Catt the rest of that winter, giving her a wealth of information about lobbying techniques and fund-raising. Catt later used the teaching to good effect in leading the final drive to gain women the vote in 1920.
  Catt, Stone and Blackwell went together to the January, 1892 NAWSA convention in Washington, DC. Along with Isabella Beecher Hooker, Stone, Stanton and Anthony, the "triumvirate" of women's suffrage, were called away from the convention's opening hours by an unexpected woman suffrage hearing before the United States House Committee on the Judiciary. Stone told the assembled congressmen "I come before this committee with the sense which I always feel, that we are handicapped as women in what we try to do for ourselves by the single fact that we have no vote. This cheapens us. You do not care so much for us as if we had votes..." Stone argued that men should work to pass laws for equality in property rights between the sexes. Stone demanded an eradication of coverture, the folding of a wife's property into that of her husband. Stone's impromptu speech paled in comparison to Stanton's brilliant outpouring which preceded hers. Stone later published Stanton's speech in its entirety in the Woman's Journal as "Solitude of Self". Back at the NAWSA convention, Anthony was elected president, with Stanton and Stone becoming honorary presidents.
caption: Lucy Stone in old age
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