DOCSLIB.ORG

The Meaning of Seneca Falls: 1848-1998

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Meaning of Seneca Falls: 1848-1998 L'issent The Meaning of Seneca Falls: 1848-1998 Gerda Lerner to the resurgence of modern feminism and the advances of the field of Women's History that the convention has entered the nation's con- sciousness. The establishment of Women's N 1848, acccording to Karl Marx and History Month as a national event during the Frederick Engels, "a specter [was] haunt- Carter administration and its continuance ing Europe—the specter of communism." through every administration since then has In1 that same year, the upstate New York vil- helped to educate the nation to the signifi- lage of Seneca Falls hosted a gathering of fewer cance of women's role in history. Still, it took than three hundred people, earnestly debat- decades of struggle by women's organizations, ing a Declaration of Sentiments to be spread feminist historians and preservationists to res- by newsprint and oratory. The Seneca Falls cue the building at Seneca Falls and finally to Woman's Rights Convention marked the be- persuade the National Park Service to turn it ginning of the woman's rights movement. into a historic site. Today it is a major tourist The specter that haunted Europe devel- attraction and has been enhanced by the es- oped into a mighty movement, embracing the tablishment of a National Women's Hall of globe, causing revolutions, wars, tyrannies and Fame on the site. This history of "long forget- counterrevolutions. Having gained state power ting and short remembering" has been an im- in Russia, China and Eastern Europe, twenti- portant aspect of women's historic past, the eth-century communism, in 1948, seemed significance of which we only understood as more threatening a specter than ever before. we began to study women's history in depth. Yet, after a bitter period of "cold war," which pitted nuclear nations against one another in , LIZABETH CADY STANTON, the great Com- a futile stalemate, it fell of its own weight in municator and propagandist of nine- almost all its major centers. F teenth-century feminism, has left a de- The small spark figuratively ignited at Sen- tailed account of the origins of the Seneca Falls eca Falls never produced revolutions, usurpa- convention both in her autobiography and in tion of power or wars. Yet it led to a transfor- the monumental History of Woman Suffrage. mation of consciousness and a movement of The idea for such a meeting originated with empowerment on behalf of half the human her and with Lucretia Mott, when they both race, which hardly has its equal in human his- attended the 1840 World Antislavery Conven- tory. tion in London, at which representatives of Until very recently, the Seneca Falls con- female antislavery societies were denied seat- vention of 1848 was not recognized as signifi- ing and voting rights. Outraged by this humili- cant by historians, was not included in history ating experience, Stanton and Mott decided textbooks, not celebrated as an important in London that they would convene a meet- event in public schools, never mentioned in ing of women in the United States to discuss the media or the press. In the 1950s, the build- their grievances as soon as possible. But her ing where it was held, formerly the Wesleyan responsibilities as mother of a growing family chapel, was used as a filling station. In the intervened, and Stanton could not implement 1960s, it housed a laundromat. It was only due her plan until 1848, when Lucretia Mott vis- ited her sister Martha Wright in Waterloo, a Copyright © Gerda Lerner , 1998. All rights reserved. town near Seneca Falls. There, Stanton met DISSENT / Fall 1998 n 35 SENECA FALLS with her, her hostess Jane Hunt and their tition with western agriculture, which brought friend Mary Ann McClintock. Stanton wrote: many farmers to bankruptcy. Economic uncer- "I poured out that day the torrent of my long tainty led many to embrace utopian schemes accumulating discontent with such vehe- for salvation. The region was known as the mence and indignation that I stirred myself, "burned-over" district, because so many as well as the rest of the party, to do or dare schemes for reforms had swept over it in rapid anything." The five drafted an announcement succession, from the evangelical revivalism of for a "Woman's Rights Convention" to be held Charles Grandison Finney, to temperance, at Seneca Falls on the nineteenth and twenti- abolition, church reform, Mormonism and the eth of July, and placed the notice in the local chiliastic movement of William Miller, who paper and the abolitionist press. predicted the second coming of Christ with precision for October 12, 1843 at three A.M. HE FIVE women who issued the call to The nearly one million followers of Miller had the Seneca Falls convention were hardly survived the uneventful passing of that night T as naive and inexperienced as later, and the similarly uneventful revised dates of somewhat mythical versions of the events March or October 1844, but their zeal for re- would lead one to believe. Lucretia Mott was form had not lessened. an experienced and highly acclaimed public The men and women who gathered in the speaker, a Quaker minister and longtime abo- Seneca Falls Wesleyan chapel were not a na- litionist. She had attended the founding meet- tional audience; they all came from upstate ing of the American Antislavery Society in New York and represented a relatively narrow 1833, which admitted women only as observ- spectrum of reform activists. Their local back- ers. She was a founder of the Philadelphia Fe- ground predisposed them to accept radical male Anti-Slavery Society and its long-term pronouncements and challenging proposals. president. The fact that she was announced Most of them were abolitionists, the women as the principal speaker at the Seneca Falls having been active for nearly ten years in chari- convention was a distinct drawing card. table, reform, and antislavery societies. They Elizabeth Cady Stanton's "long accumu- were experienced in running petition cam- lating discontent" had to do with her struggle paigns and many had organized antislavery to raise her three children (she would later fund-raising fairs. Historian Nancy Isenberg, have four more) and run a large household in who has analyzed the origins and affiliations the frequent absences of her husband Henry, of those attending the convention, showed that a budding lawyer and Free Soil politican. Still, many were religious dissidents, Quakers, who she found time to be involved in the campaign just two months prior had separated from their for reform of women's property rights in New more traditional church and would shortly York state, where a reform bill was passed just form their own group, New York Congregation- prior to the convention, and she had spoken alist Friends. Another dissident group were before the state legislature. Wesleyan Methodists who had been involved Martha Wright, Jane Hunt and Mary Ann in a struggle within their church about the role McClintock were all separatist Quakers, long of women and of the laity in church gover- active in working to improve the position of nance. Yet another group came from the ranks women within their church. All of them were of the temperance movement. Among the men veterans of reform and women's organizations in attendance several were local lawyers with and had worked on antislavery fairs. Liberty Party or Free Soil affiliations. Also The place where they held their conven- present and taking a prominent part in the tion was particularly suited for attracting an deliberations was Frederick Douglass, the audience of radical thinkers. The region had former slave and celebrated abolitionist for more than two decades been the center of speaker, now editor of the North Star. reform and utopian movements, largely due to Far from representing a group of inexperi- the economic upheavals brought by the open- enced housewives running their first public ing of the Erie Canal and the ensuing compe- meeting, the majority of the convention par- 3 6 n DISSENT / Fall 1 998 SENECA FALLS ticipants were reformers with considerable or- ganizational experience. For example, Amy Post and six other women from Rochester who came to Seneca Falls were able to organize a similar woman's rights convention in Roches- ter just two weeks later. One of the significant aspects of the Seneca Falls convention is that it was grounded in several organizational net- works that had already existed for some time and could mobilize the energies of seasoned reform activists. Most of the reformers attending had fam- ily, church and political affiliations in other areas of the North and Midwest. It was through them that the message of Seneca Falls spread quickly and led to the formation of a national movement. The first truly national convention on Woman's Rights was held in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1850. By 1860 ten national and many local woman's rights conventions had been organized. The Declaration of Sentiments The first day of the Seneca Falls meeting was reserved to women, who occupied them- selves with debating, paragraph by para- graph, the Declaration of Sentiments pre- pared by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Resolu- Elizabeth Cady Stanton addresses the Convention. tions were offered, debated and adopted. At the end of the second day, sixty-eight women and thirty-two men signed their names to a They also put the weight and symbolism of this Declaration of Sentiments, which embodied revered text behind what was in their time a the program of the nascent movement and radical assertion: "We hold these truths to be provided a model for future woman's rights self-evident: that all men and women are cre- conventions.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 19Th Amendment Conference | CLE Materials
    The 19th Amendment at 100: From the Vote to Gender Equality Center for Constitutional Law at The University of Akron School of Law Friday, Sept. 20, 2019 CONTINUING EDUCATION MATERIALS More information about the Center for Con Law at Akron available on the Center website, https://www.uakron.edu/law/ccl/ and on Twitter @conlawcenter 001 Table of Contents Page Conference Program Schedule 3 Awakening and Advocacy for Women’s Suffrage Tracy Thomas, More Than the Vote: The 19th Amendment as Proxy for Gender Equality 5 Richard H. Chused, The Temperance Movement’s Impact on Adoption of Women’s Suffrage 28 Nicole B. Godfrey, Suffragist Prisoners and the Importance of Protecting Prisoner Protests 53 Amending the Constitution Ann D. Gordon, Many Pathways to Suffrage, Other Than the 19th Amendment 74 Paula A. Monopoli, The Legal and Constitutional Development of the Nineteenth Amendment in the Decade Following Ratification 87 Keynote: Ellen Carol DuBois, The Afterstory of the Nineteth Amendment, Outline 96 Extensions and Applications of the Nineteenth Amendment Cornelia Weiss The 19th Amendment and the U.S. “Women’s Emancipation” Policy in Post-World War II Occupied Japan: Going Beyond Suffrage 97 Constitutional Meaning of the Nineteenth Amendment Jill Elaine Hasday, Fights for Rights: How Forgetting and Denying Women’s Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality 131 Michael Gentithes, Felony Disenfranchisement & the Nineteenth Amendment 196 Mae C. Quinn, Caridad Dominguez, Chelsea Omega, Abrafi Osei-Kofi & Carlye Owens, Youth Suffrage in the United States: Modern Movement Intersections, Connections, and the Constitution 205 002 THE CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL LAW AT AKRON th The 19 Amendment at 100: From the Vote to Gender Equality Friday, September 20, 2019 (8am to 5pm) The University of Akron School of Law (Brennan Courtroom 180) The focus of the 2019 conference is the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment.
    [Show full text]
  • Wesleyan Chapel
    National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Women’s Rights Women’s Rights National Historical Park The Wesleyan Chapel 72 years after ‘The Declaration of Independence’ was signed, 300 people met at the Wesleyan Chapel to protest the laws and customs that discriminated against women. Here they signed a new document, ‘The Declaration of Sentiments’. Both of these documents challenged the status quo and both of them were just the beginning of a years-long struggle for freedom. It would take another 72 years after the convention before women were given the right to vote. Like the movement, the chapel underwent many changes, but its significance as a cradle of liberty was not forgotten. Origins In 1843 a small group of reform-minded Seneca Falls residents declared they were forming a Wesleyan Methodist church. This followed a national trend that had begun several years earlier when antislavery members of the Meth- odist Episcopal Church decided to break away and organize a new church that condemned slavery. The Seneca Falls Wesleyan Methodists set to work building their new church, and by October 1843 the building was completed. An article about the church published in the True Wesleyan described its appearance: “[The Cha- pel is] of brick, 44 x 64, with a gallery on three sides, and is well finished, though, as it should be, it is plain.” The spirit of reform that inspired the Seneca Falls First Woman’s Rights Convention was already present in the early use of the chapel. Antoinette Brown, the first ordained female minister in America, spoke about the violence in Kansas Territory at the chapel in May 1855.
    [Show full text]
  • The Journey to Seneca Falls: Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Legal Emancipation of Women
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of St. Thomas, Minnesota University of St. Thomas Law Journal Volume 10 Article 9 Issue 4 Spring 2013 2013 The ourJ ney to Seneca Falls: Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Legal Emancipation of Women Charles J. Reid Jr. [email protected] Bluebook Citation Charles J. Reid, Jr., The Journey to Seneca Falls: Mary Wollstonecraft, lE izabeth Cady Stanton and the Legal Emancipation of Women, 10 U. St. Thomas L.J. 1123 (2013). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UST Research Online and the University of St. Thomas Law Journal. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ARTICLE THE JOURNEY TO SENECA FALLS: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON AND THE LEGAL EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN DR. CHARLES J. REID, JR.* ABSTRACT “[T]he star that guides us all,” President Barack Obama declared in his Second Inaugural, is our commitment to “human dignity and justice.”1 This commitment has led us “through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stone- wall”2 towards the equality that we enjoy today. This Article concerns the pre-history to the Seneca Falls Convention of Women’s Rights, alluded to by President Obama. It is a journey that began during the infancy of the common law in medieval England. It leads through the construction, by generations of English lawyers and religious figures, of a strong and im- posing monolith of patriarchal rule. By marriage women lost their indepen- dent legal personality and were, for purposes of law, incorporated into their husband in accord with the legal doctrine known as coverture.
    [Show full text]
  • The Seneca Falls Convention
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Archivo Digital para la Docencia y la Investigación END OF DEGREE PROJECT THE ORIGINS OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES: THE SENECA FALLS CONVENTION Anne Ruiz Ulloa Translation & Interpreting 2018-2019 Supervisor: Jose Mª Portillo Valdés Department of Contemporary History Abstract: In the 19th century, women had very limited or almost inexistent rights. They lived in a male dominated world where they had restricted access to many fields and they were considered to be an ornament of their husband in public life, and as a domestic agent to the interior of the family, as the Spanish contemporary expression ángel del hogar denotes. In the eyes of the law, they were civilly dead. They were considered fragile and delicate, because they were dependent on a man from birth to death. Tired of being considered less than their male companions, a women’s rights movement emerged in the small town of Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Women gathered for the first time in history at the Wesleyan Chapel to discuss women’s rights and to find a solution to the denigration they had suffered by men and society during the years. Around 300 people gathered in Seneca Falls, both men and women. As an attempt to amend the wrongs of men, these women created the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, a document based on the Declaration of Independence, expressing their discontent with how the society had treated them and asking for a change and equal rights, among which there was the right for suffrage.
    [Show full text]
  • Seneca Falls Convention
    Seneca Falls Convention http://www.npg.si.edu/col/seneca/senfalls1.htm The seed for the first Woman's Rights Convention was planted in 1840, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton met Lucretia Mott at the World Anti- Slavery Convention in London. The conference had refused to seat Mott and other women delegates from America because of their sex. Stanton, the young bride of an antislavery agent, and Mott, a Quaker preacher and veteran of reform, talked then of calling a convention to address the condition of women. Eight years later, it came after a spontaneous social event. In July 1848, Mott was visiting her sister, Martha C. Wright, in Waterloo, New York. Stanton, now the restless mother of three small sons, was living in nearby Seneca Falls. A social visit brought together Mott, Stanton, Wright, Mary Ann McClintock, and Jane Hunt. All except Stanton were Quakers. Quakers (or Friends) were strong supporters of abolition and also afforded women some measure of equality. All five women were well acquainted with antislavery and temperance meetings. Fresh in their minds was the April passage of the long-deliberated New York Married Woman's Property Rights Act, a significant but far from comprehensive piece of legislation. The time had come, Stanton argued, for women's wrongs to be laid before the public, and women themselves must shoulder the responsibility. Before the afternoon was out, the women decided on a call for a convention "to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman." To Stanton fell the task of drawing up the Declaration of Sentiments that would define the meeting.
    [Show full text]
  • Iroquois Native American Cultural Influences in Promoting Women's
    Iroquois Native American Cultural Influences in Promoting Women’s Rights Ideologies Leading Up to the First Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls on the 19th and 20th of July, 1848 Willow Michele Hagan To what extent did Iroquois Native American culture and policies influence the establishment of the first ever women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls on the 19th and 20th of July, 1848? Abstract In Iroquois culture women have always shared equal treatment with men. They regard women with respect and authority; women can participate in equal labor and can own their own property. With these ideals so close in proximity to Seneca Falls, to what extent did Iroquois Native American culture and policies influence the establishment of the Seneca Falls Convention and the arguments for women’s rights it proposed? To answer this question, Iroquois relationships between women’s rights activists and other leaders in American society will be examined; including the spread of matrilineal thought into the minds of those who had ties to the Iroquois, predominantly with the leaders of the Seneca Falls Convention. The proposals put forth by the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments will also be addressed to look at the parallels between the thoughts promoted for women’s rights and those ideologies of Iroquois culture. Newspaper articles, as well as other primary and secondary sources, will be consulted in order to interpret this relationship. Through the exploration of the association between Iroquois culture and the Seneca Falls Convention, it can be determined that the culture of the Iroquois did have influence over the Seneca Falls Convention.
    [Show full text]
  • Women's Suffrage Bingo
    Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino Women’s Suffrage Bingo Welcome to the Women’s Suffrage Bingo! Below you will find five playing cards and a calling list. To play the game, you will need at least two players and one person to call the terms. The goal of the game is to cover five squares in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row. The person calling the terms on the list can call them in any order or use the term cards. To use the cards, print out all 25 term cards and cut them to make 25 individual cards. Once all cards have been cut, shuffle them and call out each card one by one. If a player has the card that was called, they will mark their BINGO card accordingly. Be creative and use something fun to mark your cards! Also, if you would like to learn more about the terms listed below, information and resources will be provided. You can find this information after the BINGO playing cards. Calling List: 1. Susan B. Anthony 2. Suffrage 3. Elizabeth Cady Stanton 4. Lucretia Mott th 5. 19 Amendment 6. Lucy Stone 7. National Woman Suffrage Association 8. National Women’s Party 9. Alice Paul 10. August 18, 1920 11. Women’s Suffrage 12. Seneca Falls Convention 13. 1910 14. 1848 15. Carrie Chapman Catt 16. The Declaration of Sentiments 17. Frederick Douglass 18. Paulina Wright Davis 19. Abby Kelley Foster 20. William Lloyd Garrison 21. Sojourner Truth 22. Suffragist 23. National American Woman Suffrage Association 24.
    [Show full text]
  • Anniversary of the Seneca Falls Declaration Seneca Falls 11-12 October 2008
    First Biennual Seneca Falls Dialogues On the occasion of the 160th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Declaration Seneca Falls 11-12 October 2008 Keynote Presentation on the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights by Ms Carolyn Hannan, Director of the Division for the Advancement of Women United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs It is a great honour for me to speak at today’s commemoration of 160 years of work on the human rights of women in the United States. This event marks not only the Seneca Falls Convention of July 1848, but also celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948. I want to thank the Mayor of Seneca Falls, Diana Smith, for her inspiring words at the opening of the conference. I also express my appreciation to the organizers of the Seneca Falls Dialogue, the Co-Chairwomen - Joan Bozer, Adriene Emmo and Marilyn Tedeschi - as well as all other Committee Members and Volunteers, for the opportunity to participate. It is inspirational to be here in Seneca Falls – a place steeped in history of critical importance for the promotion of gender equality and the equal rights of women and men. We all pay tribute to the driving forces behind the Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Called to discuss “the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman”, the Convention marked the beginning of the movement in the United States to claim women’s rights. It was an important achievement in 1848 and its meaning and significance has not diminished with time.
    [Show full text]
  • Women's Rights, Seneca Falls, Stanton, and Mott
    CK_4_TH_HG_P087_242.QXD 10/6/05 9:03 AM Page 232 IV. Reformers two-year investigation and won support to have the state-run mental hospital expanded. Dix then took her crusade to other states and found similar conditions. For 40 years, Dix worked to help the mentally ill. She persuaded legislators in 15 U.S. states and in Canada to build or upgrade state-operated hospitals for the mental- ly ill. 46 Teaching Idea Horace Mann and Public Schools While studying Horace Mann you may wish to try to give students a sense of Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first colony to establish public-supported how schools in the 19th century dif- education. In 1642, the General Court of Massachusetts passed an education law fered from schools today. Share pic- to ensure that everyone was able to read the Bible. According to the law, parents tures, and possibly also selections from had to teach their children to read. Five years later, the General Court passed a old school books, such as McGuffey’s law ordering every town of 50 families or more to support a school. Eclectic Readers (see More Resources). Horace Mann built on this foundation when he served as the first secretary of the Massachusetts state board of education from 1837 to 1848. During that time, he did much to promote public education by establishing state-supported colleges to train teachers and by setting up school districts under a statewide sys- Teaching Idea tem of public education. Mann also lobbied for better pay for teachers. He want- As a writing exercise, tell students to ed to standardize the age for compulsory school attendance, place students in respond in 5-paragraph essay form to graded classrooms, and use the same grade-level textbooks across the state.
    [Show full text]
  • Women's Rights NHP: Special History Study
    Women's Rights NHP: Special History Study Women's Rights Special History Study Special History Study Women's Rights National Historical Park Seneca Falls, New York Sandra S. Weber September 1985 U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service TABLE OF CONTENTS wori/shs/index.htm Last Updated: 10-Dec-2005 http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/wori/index.htm[7/30/2013 1:08:36 PM] Women's Rights NHP: Special History Study (Table of Contents) Women's Rights Special History Study TABLE OF CONTENTS Cover List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter One: Historic Setting -- Seneca Falls in 1848 A. Transportation Systems B. Industry, Commerce, and Labor C. Community Development and Neighborhoods D. Stanton House Neighborhood Chapter Two: The Convention in Wesleyan Chapel Chapter Three: Elizabeth Cady Stanton Chapter Four: Amelia Bloomer Chapter Five: The Hunts Chapter Six: The McClintocks Selected Bibliography Appendixes A. Factory Development in Seneca Falls, c. 1840 B. Owners of Possible Rental Properties in Wesleyan Chapel Area, c. 1851 C. Property Owners on Seneca Street, c. 1851 D. "Report of the Women's Rights Convention - 1848" E. List of Pastors of the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel - 1843-1872 F. Editorial Page of the First Issue of The Lily (omitted from the online edition) G. "Basis of Religious Association" - Thomas McClintock (omitted from the online edition) H. Village Plat of Seneca Falls, 1852 I. Plan of Waterloo, 1852 J. Location of Farmsteads of Waterloo Signers of the Declaration of Sentiments K. Historic Site Map of Waterloo L. Historic Site Map of Seneca Falls http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/wori/shst.htm[7/30/2013 1:09:48 PM] Women's Rights NHP: Special History Study (Table of Contents) LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Seneca Falls and Suffrage: Teaching Women's History with Comics
    Seneca Falls and Suffrage: Teaching Women’s History with Comics suf·fra·gist: A person who supports and protests for the right to vote Lesson Prepared by: Christine Brooks, Librarian, Occoquan Elementary School, Woodbridge, Virginia Description Chester Comix has created comic strip panels especially for the National Women’s History Museum exploring the importance of the Seneca Falls Convention and four people—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth—who were 19th century leaders in the struggle for equality and equal rights. In this lesson, students will explore the Convention and imagine living at a time in the United States when women did not have important legal rights; including the right to vote. Students will learn how the Convention marked the beginning of the Suffrage Movement; a model of peaceful activism that eventually led to the passage of the 19th Amendment almost 72 years after the Seneca Falls convention. Through using the history and ideas shared in the comic panels as well as the techniques demonstrating how to teach through comics, the students will work collaboratively to research, gain a richer understanding of women’s suffrage, and create their own comic panels exploring the outcomes of the Suffrage movement by illustrating the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession or the ratification of the 19th Amendment in August 1920. Time: 4 One-hour periods Grade Level: 5th-8th Objectives: • Students will understand that the goal of the Suffrage Movement was to enfranchise American women by giving them the right to vote. • Using the information and ideas gathered from the Seneca Falls comic strip, students will identify the purpose of the meeting at Seneca Falls and discuss the contributions of Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth to the suffrage movement.
    [Show full text]
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Address on Woman's Rights
    Editorial Note: The manuscript of an address Elizabeth Cady Stanton delivered after the conventions of 1848 was handed down to her daughters, who gave it to SBA, who in turn deposited it in the Library of Congress. Writing to her daughters, Stanton called it her "first speech," one "delivered several times immediately after the first Woman's Rights Convention." She spoke on two occasions, at least: in September at Waterloo and on 6 October to the Congregational Friends at Farmington. Between 1848 and 1850, Elizabeth Cady Stanton turned to this address as a source for short articles, and then she lost track of the manuscript. Emma Robinson Coe borrowed it, according to Susan B. Anthony's notations on a cover sheet, probably when she visited Stanton in the fall of 1851. It was back in Stanton's possession by 1866, when Theodore Tilton saw the "old and tattered" manuscript while he interviewed Stanton for a biography. He understood this to be "the first 'set speech' which Mrs. Stanton ever delivered," one that she "repeated at several places in the interior of the State of New York, during the first months that followed the first convention." However, since 1870, on the basis of a title page printed by Robert J. Johnston, the same speech with modifications has been identified as the address Elizabeth Cady Stanton delivered to the conventions in Seneca Falls and Rochester. There are obstacles to accepting that identification. First, there is no evidence that Stanton made any speech at the Rochester convention, let alone one of this length.
    [Show full text]