The nineteenth century gave us three great woman suffragists: Lucy Stone,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Today, few are aware of
Stone's importance. In the course of research into nineteenth-century
American women, I read Morning Star, Elinor Rice Hays's fine biogra-
phy of abolitionist and suffragist Lucy Stone. Afterward, I asked myself
how it was that this great woman had lost her proper place in history.
Hays's view of history as territory furnishes a partial answer. Stanton and
Anthony, the two great nineteenth-century workers for women's rights
whose conduct precipitated the first great schism in the suffrage ranks,
were also the authors of the History of Woman Suffrage. Their insistence
upon "whittling down" Stone's share in that history is part of the story
told in this book. Stone's role in that history is part of the story told in this
book. Stone's political activity is another part; and the story of her mar-
riage--a remarkable and doomed effort at an equitable union--forms
still another part.

Lucy Stone was a difficult subject for a biography. I am all too aware
that hagiography is poor history, and I respect biography as a historian's
tool. Stone posed a challenge to credibility: she was a noble woman,
selfless to a fault; she hewed to the high ground, leaving her biographer to
grasp at flaws. Rather than risk the "hagiography" label, I was tempted to
turn the lens of popular psychology on Stone's behavior, seeing her hero-
ism as dysfunction, her noble silence as repression, her altruism as bor-
dering on pathology, and her self-abnegation as a form of co-dependency.
Instead, I have tried simply to present the facts, leaving judgments to the
reader.

Lucy Stone was in every sense a pioneer. In 1847, she launched her
public speaking career on behalf of abolition and woman's rights. A natu-
ral and charismatic orator, she held crowds of two and three thou-
sand spellbound. Stone's fame was so widespread that in 1854, P. T.
Barnum tried to hire her for a series of lectures. ¹ An adroit politician,

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