SOURCE: "Rereading Eve: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and The Woman's Bible, 1885-1896," in Women's Studies, Vol. 19, Nos. 3 & 4, 1991, pp. 371-83.

In the following essay, Kern discusses controversy in the women's suffrage movement surrounding The Woman's Bible.

On an overcast Thursday morning, January 23, 1896, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) gathered, appropriately, in the Church of Our Father, Washington, D.C., for the opening session of its twenty-eighth annual convention. The press reported that notwithstanding the weather, several hundred "bright-faced women" filled the "cozy little church." Delegates, this reporter continued, who were "all animated by the same motive, the desire to secure equal rights before the law for women."

As the proceedings got under way, tension and conflict among the delegates overshadowed shared motives. Rachel Foster Avery, NAWSA's Corresponding Secretary, submitted her annual report which concluded:

During the latter part of this year, the work of our Association has been … much...