Elizabeth Cady-Stanton was driven by her moral purpose. She spent her entire life trying to right the injustices she saw in the world. Not only through her fight for women’s rights but also as an abolitionist. She believed that all people were created equal. She wrote in the Declaration of the Sentiments in July of 1848, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal…”(Ward & Burns, 1999, p. 1). She never wavered from this vision. However, she would not have been able to implement change without her ability to develop relationships.

It was Cady-Stanton’s intimate relationships that enabled her to share her ideas with the world. The two most significant relationships she had were with Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott. Cady-Stanton was empowered by her relationships. She held rallies with her companions. She traveled with them to conferences. When she wasn’t with them she wrote them letters about her convictions and ideas. While living in Boston she wrote, “I attend all sorts & sizes of meetings & lectures. I consider myself in a kind of moral museum” (Ward & Burns, 1999, p. 32). Together these women developed additional relationships encouraging and inspiring women everywhere as they spoke. These relationships helped them to understand the hurdles they had to overcome.

Cady-Stanton knew change would be a life-long challenge. In a letter to her mother she wrote “all sorts of new ideas are seething, but I haven’t either the time or place to enumerate them and if I did you and my good father would probably balk at most of them”(Ward & Burns, 1999, p. 32). Even within her own, somewhat liberal, family her ideas were viewed as controversial. To the greater public she was seen as a troublemaker. Cady-Stanton said “ It is our duty to assert and reassert this right to vote, to agitate, discuss and petition, until out political equality by fully recognized”(Ward & Burns, 1999, p. 44).

Knowing the battle for equal rights would not be easy Cady-Stanton empowered herself first with knowledge. She started as a young girl sneaking into her father’s law library. She begged for college and attended as much schooling as a wealthy family could properly allow a girl of her age. She traveled hearing other people speak and was enlightened by the ideas she heard. She knew learning about others ideas only strengthened her own.

Elizabeth Cady-Stanton understood collaboration of many different women’s ideas would be the key to achieving her goals. She stimulated conversations that would have never taken place otherwise. Conversations that would someday change society. She held conventions and discussion forums all over the world. The most famous of these was the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention,on July 19th and 20th 1848, which was the first of its kind.