Blatch, Harriet Eaton

Blatch, Harriet Eaton (b. Stanton) (1856–1940) women's rights activist; born in Seneca Falls, N.Y. (daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton). A graduate of Vassar College (1878), she began to help her mother and Susan B. Anthony compile their History of Woman Suffrage (eventually 6 vols. 1881–1922). Upon marrying an Englishman, she lived in England (1882–92) where she became involved in women's suffrage and other progressive causes and came to know many of the leading British socialists. When she and her husband moved to the U.S.A., she launched her own suffrage organization, the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women (1907); in 1908 it was renamed the Women's Political Union in America and in 1916 it merged with the Congressional Union. During World War I she directed her efforts to organizing women in support of America's role in the war; after the war she wrote A Woman's Point of View (1920), in which she called on women to work to prevent any future wars. She continued to support liberal causes including an Equal Rights Amendment for women and the League of Nations, and in the 1920s she ran unsuccessfully as a political candidate for the Socialist Party. Her bluntness, militancy, and insistence on her own goals often left her on the fringe of the mainstream movements.