The Seneca Falls Convention
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott's pledge to organize a convention for women's rights did not come true immediately. Both returned to their lives in America and did not revisit the issue until, by chance, they both ended up in the small town of Seneca Falls, New York at the same time in 1848. While there they met up with like-minded Quaker women and set about organizing the first American women's rights convention. The leaders of the convention drafted the program and decided to use the Declaration of Independence as their model stating "we hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal" and laying out a list of grievances of men toward women. They wrote, " The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her" (Stanton, 1848). They called their document the Declaration of Sentiments and in it called for, among many things, equal education, equal treatment under the law, and the right to vote (Mayo, 2007) The convention attracted over 300 men and women. One of the most notable attendees was Frederick Douglass, the well-known former slave turned lecturer. Douglass' presence helped to offset the considerable amount of derision aimed at the women holding the convention. One newspaper wrote that the women were "divorced wives, childless women, and some old maids" (Clift, 2003, p. 13). The widely held view at the time was that any woman who argued for equal rights were disgruntled outcasts of society. Women's sole responsibility of the time was to have and care for children. The idea that women who fought against this idea were failed women worked to deter many away from openly supporting more radical ideas. In fact the women of the Seneca Falls Convention disagreed over whether they could legitimately argue for the right to vote without being dismissed as completely fanatical (Clift, 2003). When drafting the Declaration of Sentiments, Stanton and Douglass voted for including the right to vote as a resolution, while Mott and many others were against it. Stanton and Douglass' side won by a small majority but this division of the convention delegates was a mirror of the larger division among society. Even among women's rights activists it would take years before the right to vote was seen as something necessary for women's liberation.
*the original advertisement for the Seneca Falls Convention (Seneca County Courier, 1848).