After our brief class discussion on Elizabeth Cady Stanton, I wanted to dive further into who she was and her work as a suffragette. Born in 1815, her parents raised her to be very educated, which was rare for a woman at that time. Elizabeth attended a local boys school when she was young, and moved on to graduate from Troy Female Seminary School in Troy, New York. She married a man named Henry Brewster Stanton and together they advocated for the abolition of slavery, pre-civil war. It was after women were excluded from an anti-slavery conference in London, that she attempted to attend with her husband, that she became more passionate on the issue of women's rights. Elizabeth was a strong writer, so alongside her close friend Susan B. Anthony, she wrote many speeches for campaigns in favor of women's suffrage. In 1848, Elizabeth and Lucretia Mott organized women's rights conventions in Seneca Falls and Rochester, New York. These conventions called for extensive legal re...
American Progress by John Gast During the period of the Frontier, when westward expansion was the forefront of the United States goals, a mentality grew very present across the nation. This mentality is one of entitlement, belief that the American colonists had a right to the land they were on. This ideology has existed in the world since the beginning of time, and was present in America the second the colonists first landed, but I believe once the country decided to grow its territory, the entitlement grew with it. When the government began to encourage people to move out west, they promoted the vast land that was out there and the opportunity for new jobs and homesteads. However, the government fails to acknowledge the existing Native American tribes already on said land, therefore diminishing the tribes right to that land and instead perpetuating the idea that the white Americans who were on their way deserved it instead. It is also important to make clear that while the United St...