Lucy Stone

Quick Facts

• Role: Pioneering suffragist and exemplar of coalition-building strategy in Adam Grant’s Originals
• First appearance: Profiled in Chapter 5-6 Summary
• Key relationships: Early ally-turned-rival to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; strategic partner to Frances Willard and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union; persuasive influence on Julia Ward Howe
• Notable stance: A “tempered radical” who advanced audacious goals through measured, audience-savvy framing

Who They Are

Lucy Stone embodies the paradox of successful radicalism: unflinching in principle, flexible in presentation. Rather than diluting her aims, she refines the packaging—translating justice claims into frames conservatives could embrace. Grant uses Stone to show how movements win by resisting purity tests, avoiding “horizontal hostility,” and building durable alliances, even when that means declining reconciliation with volatile “frenemies.” Stone’s leadership shifts attention from charisma and outrage to discipline, message control, and the stability required to sustain progress.

Personality & Traits

Stone’s moral clarity never wavers, but her tactics evolve. She rejects expedient partnerships that violate core values while seeking surprising common ground where values overlap. Her temperament, honed by hard lessons, balances courage with caution.

• Principled integrity: She condemns Anthony and Stanton’s alliance with George Francis Train, a known racist, and opposes their stance against the Fifteenth Amendment—choosing justice over short-term leverage.
• Trailblazing courage: First Massachusetts woman to earn a bachelor’s degree; first married woman to keep her own surname; among the earliest full-time public lecturers for women’s rights—defying 19th-century norms at personal cost.
• Strategic pragmatism: Reframes suffrage as “home protection” to partner with the conservative WCTU—keeping the goal intact while shifting the message to meet audiences where they are.
• Discerning caution: After ambivalent treatment by former allies, she refuses to reunite, recognizing the emotional toll and strategic volatility of “frenemies.”
• Persuasive oratory: Her speeches light the movement’s fuse—she inspires Susan B. Anthony to join and persuades skeptics like Julia Ward Howe to become allies.

Character Journey

Stone’s arc runs from intimate collaboration to principled separation to broad coalition-building. Early in the movement, she works alongside Anthony and Stanton, united by a shared cause. The 1869 rupture—triggered by their alliance with Train and their opposition to Black male suffrage—forces Stone to confront the cost of intra-movement betrayal. She pivots: rather than compete for the same radical flank, she courts adjacent constituencies, translating suffrage into a protective, family-centered argument that conservative groups can endorse. Over time, she embraces the “tempered radical” stance: firm on ends, adaptive on means. Her refusal to reconcile with unreliable partners is not bitterness but strategy—proof that predictable opposition is less corrosive than unstable alliance.

Key Relationships

• Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Stone’s most consequential relationship begins in solidarity and ends in rupture. Their alliance fractures over Anthony and Stanton’s partnership with George Francis Train and their opposition to the Fifteenth Amendment—choices Stone reads as moral compromise and strategic shortsightedness. When they later seek reunification, Stone declines, concluding that trust and predictability matter more than surface unity.

• Frances Willard (WCTU): With Willard, Stone finds a durable partner by reframing suffrage as a “home protection ballot.” This coalition fuses moral reform and women’s political power, expanding the movement’s base without sacrificing core goals and illustrating how tempered rhetoric can unlock conservative support.

• Julia Ward Howe: Initially a critic, Howe is moved by Stone’s oratory to become a supporter. The conversion underscores Stone’s strength as a persuader who can transform hostility into commitment through argument and moral appeal.

Defining Moments

Stone’s career pivots on speeches and choices that define both her values and her method.

• The 1851 convention speech: She “sets the women’s rights movement on fire,” directly inspiring Susan B. Anthony to commit her life to the cause.

  • Why it matters: Marks Stone as a catalytic voice whose rhetoric recruits leaders, not just followers.

• The 1869 split with Anthony and Stanton: She rejects their alliance with Train and their opposition to the Fifteenth Amendment.

  • Why it matters: Establishes her refusal to win by sacrificing principles; inaugurates a schism that reshapes movement strategy.

• Turning a heckle into a manifesto (1855): Confronted with “a few disappointed women,” she reclaims “disappointed” to name women’s systemic disenfranchisement.

  • Why it matters: Demonstrates rhetorical jiu-jitsu—owning an insult to broaden identification and deepen resolve.

• Refusal to reconcile: When former allies seek reunification, Stone says no, preferring stable coalitions over volatile “frenemies.”

  • Why it matters: Highlights the hidden cost of ambivalent partnerships and the strategic value of emotional predictability.

Essential Quotes

We want to be something more than the appendages of society. This statement compresses Stone’s vision into a single contrast: from “appendages” to agents. It reframes suffrage not as a special favor but as a correction—restoring women from ornamental status to civic authorship.

The last speaker alluded to this movement as being that of a few disappointed women. From the first years to which my memory stretches, I have been a disappointed woman... In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of women. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman’s heart until she bows down to it no longer. Stone converts an insult into a radical pedagogy: disappointment becomes diagnostic, then catalytic. By inviting women to “deepen” their awareness, she turns private grievance into public consciousness and, ultimately, collective action.

In 1871, she wrote that it was best “not to strike hands with those people... They were our late enemies. We don’t know that they are our friends.” Here Stone articulates the logic behind refusing reconciliation: ambiguity is a strategic hazard. Her boundary-setting shows that trust is not a luxury in movement work—it is infrastructure.

In her dying breath in 1893, Lucy Stone whispered four words to her daughter: “Make the world better.” The simplicity distills a lifetime of strategy into an ethical imperative. Even in death, Stone insists that method serves mission: the point of tempered radicalism is not moderation for its own sake, but durable change.