History of Woman Suffrage

What it is

This is a multi-volume work begun by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage, and later completed by Ida Husted Harper, published between 1881 and 1922. It is a major source of documentation for the U.S. women's suffrage movement.

Why it matters

Written from the viewpoint of Stanton and Anthony's wing of the movement, the work reprinted accounts of Sojourner Truth's speeches, including at the Akron convention and the 1853 New York "mob convention," helping to fix her place in the official history of the suffrage movement during her own lifetime. It also shows how suffrage leaders chose which voices and events to preserve.

Look closer

• Why might a history written by one faction of a movement leave out other groups and individuals?
• What does it mean that Truth's words survive mainly through accounts written by others?
• How might Truth's speeches have been remembered differently if she had written her own account?