Impact and Legacy
It is difficult to overstate the impact of Susan B. Anthony and her ability,
through her writings, speeches, and correspondence, to galvanize Americans in
the pursuit of women's rights. She recognized, for example, that women could not
achieve equal rights until they achieved economic independence and the education
they needed for such independence. As long as women were under the economic
control of men, legislators had no reason to grant them the right to vote or any
other right, for they did not form a constituency. While numerous women in the
middle decades of the nineteenth century were proponents of women's rights—and
at the same time opposed to slavery—Anthony, along with such other towering
figures as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, was able to forge a
sustained political movement that led to a series of successes ranging from the
landmark 1860 Married Women's Property Act in New York to, eventually, the
Nineteenth Amendment