The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848
The Beginning of the United States Women’s Rights Movement
The Catalyst
For Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fighting for the rights of others came naturally. They were members of an anti-slavery organization in America, trying to end the barbaric practice. When they traveled with their husbands and other members to the world anti-slavery convention in London in 1840 they were prepared to be full participants in the discussion, instead they faced a cold reception. They were allowed to remain and attend the meetings but were forced to sit behind a curtain so that their female presence would be obscured and were unable to speak. Incensed Mott and Stanton discussed the necessity to improve the prevailing attitudes toward women as well as their social position.
A Convention Called
When they returned to the United States they carried on with their lives and their work in the emancipation movement. Eight years passed when they again found themselves together at a social gathering held at the house of Mott’s sister Martha Wright. The meeting included two other women Jane Hunt and Mary Ann McClintock. The social call was transformed when Stanton began to unburden herself of concerns regarding women in the country. When they were done for the day they had drafted a circular calling for a women’s convention in Seneca Falls to occur on July 19 and 20, 1848.
At the time women had few rights. There were few professions open to women leaving many the only option of marriage in which case any of their personal property became her husbands. There were little educational opportunities with the prevailing belief that women should not and could not be educated. There were even “scientific” findings that claimed that women when educated faced a variety of aliments including possible infertility and in extreme cases, death. Women had no legal claim to their children, they were legally at a disadvantage in almost every respect, and they did not have the right to vote. They called the convention to address the various concerns keeping women in a position of inferiority.
Two Days of Discussion
On the first day of the convention the proceedings were only open to women. Various resolutions were proposed and discussions varied. The second day was open to all with the total attending somewhere near three hundred. For the first time in the nation’s history women gathered to air their own concerns rather than those of someone else. Their legal and social status was enough of a burden that women were willing to break with convention, gather, and speak out regarding their position.
At the convention Stanton presented her “Declaration of Sentiments” that called for equality. It was based on the Declaration of Independence with a focus on democratic rights that were basic elements of liberty and freedom as expressed during the revolutionary period. She claimed “that all men and women are created equal” and went on to state “such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.”
Concerns Over Suffrage
The second day of the convention there were signers to the resolutions that had been presented. Of the three hundred who attended sixty eight women and thirty two men, including Frederick Douglass, were willing to put their name down in support of the measures. The relatively slight support was due in large part to the most controversial issue broached during the two days, that of suffrage. Without access to the ballot box change would be exponentially more difficult. There were members of both sexes who believed this was erroneous thinking. The claim was that women had no need to express such concerns, if need be they could convey their thoughts to their fathers or husbands who would then take such information under advisement when he exercised his right to vote. Women were represented by their male counterparts, well intentioned or not it deprived women of a voice.
Lasting Legacy
The convention in Seneca Falls may have been the first of its kind but it was certainly not the last. Out of the convention came a sense of purpose and it inspired others to hold conventions of their own. Large organizations emerged such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association to carry out the goals set forth. The women’s rights movement had begun in earnest; slow to start but over the decades it would help to change the status of women in society and in the eyes of the law.
Sources:
Kerber, Linda K. and Jane Sherron De Hart. Women’s America: Refocusing the Past, Fifth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
McHenry, Robert, ed. Famous American Women: A Biographical Dictionary From Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Dover, 1980.
Wesleyan Chapel, Location of the Convention
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