SENECA FALLS CONVENTION

SENECA FALLS CONVENTION was the first public gathering in the United States called explicitly for the purpose of debating the issue of women's rights. Meeting in Seneca Falls, New York, on 19–20 July 1848, a group of almost three hundred women and men passed a series of resolutions that protested against the moral, political, social, and legal status of women.

The American Revolution indirectly raised the question of women's rights by bringing the issues of equality and natural rights to the fore. In response, some Americans began to discuss the meaning of women's rights. However, their discussions occurred largely in private, and no organized, collective feminist movement emerged. Women remained largely invisible under the law, unable to vote, hold public office, or enjoy the same social or professional opportunities as men. In most states women were not even legally entitled to possess the wages they had earned.

Attitudes began to change in the early nineteenth century as women joined various social reform groups, such as temperance societies, anti-prostitution leagues, and antislavery organizations. The abolitionist movement, in particular, became a magnet for women committed to eradicating social evils. However, because women could not vote or hold office, they could advocate their position only through indirect means, such as petitioning, moral suasion, or by using their influence over male politicians. Over time women began to feel the limits of these constraints. They began to see analogies between the plight of slaves held in bondage and their own condition. Some of the more radical members of the antislavery organizations concluded that they must agitate for the rights of women along with the abolition of slavery.

The antislavery advocates Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were the prime movers behind the Seneca Falls Convention. During a casual visit by Mott at Stanton's home in Seneca Falls, the two shared their common frustration with the slow pace of progress for women. Deciding to act, they placed an advertisement in a local newspaper calling for a meeting on the subject of women's rights to be convened the very next week. In preparation, they met with other local women, including Mott's sister, Martha Wright, as well as Jane Hunt and Mary Ann McClintock, to draft the declarations, resolutions, and speeches that would be presented to the gathering.

On 19 July 1848 the convention convened in the Wesleyan Methodist Church to discuss women's rights. James Mott, Lucretia Mott's husband and a respected Quaker leader, chaired the session. The convention voted

on a variety of measures, including the Declaration of Sentiments. Modeled on the Declaration of Independence, this document asserted women's equality with men and protested against the "long train of abuses" that "reduce [women] under absolute despotism." The convention unanimously passed a series of resolutions that challenged women's current status. They opposed women's exclusion from the rights of citizenship; rejected their second-class legal position; objected to the moral double standard; and inveighed against their inability to obtain the same educational and professional opportunities as men.

Stanton, however, proposed one resolution that aroused a great deal of controversy. She insisted that women be permitted to exercise "their sacred right to the elective franchise." Many participants, including Lucretia Mott, feared that this demand would be too radical and might alienate potential supporters. Ultimately the proposal did pass by a narrow margin. Sixty-eight women and thirty-two men signed the convention's final statement.

Seneca Falls represented the beginning of the country's first feminist movement. Subsequently throughout the 1840s and 1850s, conventions met all over the country to discuss the issue of women's rights. Yet not until 1920, with passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, did women gain the right to vote.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Bonnie S. Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement, 1830–1860. Oxford, U.K., and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

DuBois, Ellen Carol. Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978; reprint, 1999.

Isenberg, Nancy. Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Susan B. Anthony, Ida Husted Harper, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds. History of Woman Suffrage. 6 vols. New York: Fowler and Wells, 1881. Reprint, Salem, N.H.: Ayer, 1985.

RosemarieZagarri

See alsoWomen's Rights Movement: The Nineteenth Century ; andvol. 9:Seneca Falls Declaration of Rights and Sentiments .