Stanton became well known as an
orator and writer, and used these skills as a journalist, attorney, and politician. In 1826, Stanton began writing for the Monroe
Telegraph in
Rochester, New York. It was owned by
Thurlow Weed and was then promoting the presidential candidacy of
Henry Clay. He began to make political speeches. Stanton was widely recognized as a premier American orator on social issues, and he was a primary spokesman for the abolitionist movement prior to the
American Civil War. He was known for his skill in extemporaneous speaking. His wife reported that he was occasionally asked to speak on a random topic for the amusement of the audience. After attending the first
World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, Stanton spent several months on an anti-slavery European speaking tour, touring most of the principal cities of England, Scotland, Ireland, and France. Throughout their lives, Henry Stanton and Elizabeth Cady Stanton traveled widely, both jointly and separately, speaking and organizing for social causes that included
temperance, abolition and
women's rights. When Henry died unexpectedly of
pneumonia in 1887, Elizabeth was in London speaking on behalf of voting rights for women. Abolitionist and former slave
Frederick Douglass provided Stanton's son,
Theodore, this memory of the first time he heard Henry B. Stanton speak in public: When I was escaping from bondage I was received under the humble but hospitable roof of Nathan Johnson, an old colored man. ...Nathan Johnson also told me all about Henry B. Stanton's wonderful oratorical powers, and took me one evening to hear him denounce the slave system. It was one of the first abolition lectures I ever heard, and this circumstance, combined with the eloquence of the speaker, left an ineffaceable impression on my mind. Your father was then unquestionably the best orator in the anti-slavery movement. I listened to him on many other occasions, but this first one, when I was fresh from slavery, naturally touched me the most deeply. Politically and socially active throughout his life, Stanton served as Deputy County Clerk of
Monroe County, New York, for three years. He was secretary of the
American Anti-Slavery Society from 1835 to 1840. Stanton was appointed Deputy
Collector of the Port of New York in 1861 and held the position until 1863. Stanton's publications included many pamphlets on social issues. He wrote the book-length
Sketches of Reforms and Reformers in Great Britain and Ireland (New York, 1849), an examination of British social conditions and activists. In addition, he was finishing the fourth edition of his autobiography
Random Recollections (1885) at the time of his death. ==Personal life==