By Louise Bernikow Wednesday, March 1, 2006 The history of
women's history. March is women's history month. What we now so
blithely celebrate, praising individual females for
accomplishment and movie stars for being movie stars, actually
began in the midst of a revolution. By 1876, the United States
was patting itself on the back by holding a huge anniversary
celebration of the country's birth. Believing that the promises
of the Declaration of Independence were still unfulfilled for
women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn
Gage, Lucretia Mott and their sister activists went to
Philadelphia to protest. Afterward, the first three began to set
down their history. "Men have been faithful in noting every
heroic act," they wrote, so their task was "to make for
generations a record of the heroic deeds of the other half."
Collecting memories and documents from across the country,
sifting through their own collections and arguing, they set to
work. Ten years later, "The History of Woman Suffrage