One day in 1851 Amelia Bloomer introduced Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Susan B. Anthony . It was a momentous meeting. Stanton and Anthony formed a team—like Lewis and Clark—and they left a big imprint on American history. Anthony was highly intelligent, a superb organizer, and the kind of person who never gives up. Stanton was brilliant, and had charm as well as dedication. Together they led the movement that eventually brought the vote to women—although that didn't happen until the twentieth century, after both of them were dead. In 1853 Anthony got permission to speak at a teacher's conference in Rochester, New York. No woman had done that before. She said: "Do you not see that so long as society says a woman has not brains enough to be a doctor, lawyer, or minister, but has plenty to be a teacher, every man of you who chooses to teach admits that he has no more brains than a woman ?"

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony understood that the American experiment in democracy is based on a promise found in the Declaration of Independence, that we are all created equal. It was something new for a government to make that kind of promise—something new and wonderful and special. But it created a paradox because the reality was different from the promise. In America there were people—ordinary people—who lived the lives of prisoners. If they tried to escape, they faced armed patrols and attack dogs. How could men and women who cared so much about liberty keep their brothers and sisters in chains? How could they allow slavery? And African-Americans weren't the only ones for whom the promise of the Declaration was not meant. Indians, Asians, and women did not have equal rights, either. "We didn't mean you," said some of the nation's leaders in the middle of the nineteenth century. "We were only talking about white men being equal." Fair-minded people began to question that answer.