Great Speeches: Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Great Speeches: Elizabeth Cady Stanton."The Destructive Male"

Surrounded by books and only half read the most of them I was dipping into speeches that changed the world when I came across the above and brilliant it is though whether it's true or not I leave to my betters, few and all as they are. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) was a judge's daughter from Albany New York and was someone who campaigned tirelessly  for voting rights for women for over fifty years and helped launch the women's rights movement in the United States, or America as we call it. Her speech on the destructive male is a must read and if you haven't do (1868 at the Women's Suffrage Convention Washington) though if she were looking back from over one hundred and forty years later I wonder if she would hold to those same views. Certainly some of the women who have held high political office here or both here and abroad have left a lot to be desired.  "Through what slavery, slaughter and sacrifice, through what inquisitions and imprisonments, pains and persecutions, black codes and gloomy creeds, the soul of humanity has struggled for centuries, while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead alike to love and hope!". That, of government by men, and who can disagree. Another excerpt from further on: "Here that great conservator of woman's love, if permitted to assert itself, as it naturally would in freedom against oppression, violence and war, would hold these destructive forces in check, for woman knows the cost of life better than man does, and not with her consent would one drop of blood ever be shed, one life sacrificed in vain". Her reference to nature like " a loving mother" and the constant effort to maintain an equilibrium of forces and in comparison to the present disorganization of society, warns that in the dethronement of woman we have let loose the elements of violence and ruin that she only has the power to curb. And that was then! Things have not improved much in the intervening years except that maybe we have got more comfortable at killing each other. And those women in high office Elizabeth? Anyway it is a great speech and you should dig it out and give it a read