We are the only class in history that has been left to fight its

The words of Elizabeth Cady Stanton — “We are the only class in history that has been left to fight its battles alone, unaided by the ruling powers. White labor and the freed black men had their champions, but where are ours?” — rise from the heart of struggle like a cry from the depths of injustice. They are the voice of a woman, and of a generation of women, who refused silence in an age that demanded it. In these words, Stanton, one of the great architects of the women’s rights movement, exposes the cruel solitude of her cause — the reality that women, though the mothers of nations and the bearers of civilization itself, were left without defenders in their fight for equality. Her words burn with both anger and resolve, for she knew that when no one comes to fight for your freedom, you must learn to fight for it yourself.

The origin of this quote lies in the fierce mid-nineteenth century struggle for women’s suffrage and equality in America. After the abolition of slavery, a great debate arose among reformers about who should next receive the protection of the law. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments freed and enfranchised black men — a triumph of justice that Stanton and her ally Susan B. Anthony had long supported. Yet, when these victories came, they came without women. The very men who once stood beside them in the cause of liberty now turned away, arguing that the hour belonged to others, not to women. In this betrayal, Stanton saw the bitter truth: that women had no powerful class or ruling ally to champion them. Their emancipation would not come from the benevolence of men, nor from governments or kings, but from their own unyielding struggle.

In her words — “We are the only class in history that has been left to fight its battles alone” — Stanton defines both the tragedy and the glory of her movement. Alone, because no power wished to share its authority with women; glorious, because in their solitude they found unity, and in their exclusion they forged strength. History is filled with classes and causes that have risen with the help of rulers, armies, or prophets — but women, she declared, had none. Theirs was a revolution without soldiers, fought not with swords but with words, endurance, and moral power. They could not storm fortresses, so they stormed the conscience of nations. They could not seize thrones, so they seized the hearts and minds of generations. In their loneliness, they discovered an invincible force — the conviction that right, once awakened, cannot be extinguished.

Consider the life of Sojourner Truth, a freed slave and abolitionist who stood alongside Stanton in spirit, if not always in creed. In 1851, at a women’s convention in Akron, Ohio, she delivered her immortal words: “Ain’t I a woman?” Her question shattered the walls of hypocrisy, for it reminded the world that womanhood itself — whether white or black, rich or poor — bore the weight of all human suffering without the shield of privilege. Truth, like Stanton, fought alone in many ways — unarmed, uneducated, but filled with a divine fire. Her courage, like Stanton’s, proved that when a cause is just, solitude is not weakness, but consecration.

Stanton’s lament also reveals the moral blindness of her era. Men who fought for freedom often failed to see the chains within their own homes. Politicians who thundered for justice denied it to their wives, their sisters, their daughters. Even among reformers, women’s equality was dismissed as “impractical” or “unnatural.” In pointing out that white labor and freed black men had “champions,” Stanton did not seek division, but recognition: that justice cannot be divided, that one class cannot truly be free while another remains enslaved. Her cry — “Where are ours?” — is not only an accusation; it is a call to conscience, to solidarity, and to the moral unity of all who claim to love liberty.

But beneath her grief runs a deeper current of defiance and faith. To be “left alone” in the battle is to stand without comfort, yet it is also to stand uncompromised. The women’s rights movement, abandoned by the powerful, learned to build its own power. It held conventions, wrote petitions, printed newspapers, and crossed the country in ceaseless campaign. From Seneca Falls in 1848 to the long march toward suffrage in 1920, these women transformed solitude into self-reliance. They proved that justice delayed is not justice denied, and that those who fight alone for truth may yet awaken the conscience of the world.

The lesson, then, is one of courage in isolation. There will come times, in every era and every life, when the righteous stand alone — when no ally answers, no authority intervenes, and no champion appears. In those moments, remember Stanton’s voice: that to fight alone for what is right is to be part of a sacred lineage of strength. Whether in the struggle for justice, equality, or personal truth, solitude is not abandonment; it is initiation. The soul that stands alone in truth stands with all who have ever dared to rise against the tide.

So, O seeker of justice, remember the wisdom of Elizabeth Cady Stanton: when no one comes to fight beside you, fight still. When the powerful turn away, lift your own voice higher. For those who fight alone for what is just never truly stand alone — the strength of truth, the spirit of all who came before, marches beside them. And though their cause may seem forsaken in its hour, history, in time, bends toward their courage. For the lonely battle of the just is never lost — it is the seed of every freedom yet to come.