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Kara Knauss
Dr. Cara Anzilotti
Reform Movements 351
May 1, 2015
The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848
Women’s rights has always been one of the main topics of discussion in mainstream soci–
ety. It all started back in the early 1800’s when people started to look into equality for all. Only a
small number of women began to push for women’s rights and wanted equality in society before
1848. In 1831 Reverend Charles Grandison Finney started to let woman actually pray out loud
during gatherings with both men and women. In 1832 there were lots of anti- slavery organiza-
tions and most of the help was from women and some men who were leading these associations.
A few years later, in 1839, Margaret Fuller who was an American journalist and a women’s rights
advocate started talking to other woman who were also interested in women’s rights and sex
equality. Fuller set up “conversations” which were discussions among women who could benefit
and teach each other things that they weren’t taught because of their gender. Women did not have
access to high education as they wanted and Fuller wanted access to better schooling so she cre-
ated these conversations between women.
This lead to women in America trying to gain control of their own lives and not having
men be the leader of everything. Females were not allowed to have say in anything and their
lives were controlled by a man whether it was their husband, dad, brother, or a male figure who
was in charge. In the 1840s women were prohibited from owning property, voting, could not
serve on juries, etc. Women were expected to work as hard as men but paid less than half of what
men were paid for the same work.
In 1840 Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott met at the World Anti- Slavery Convention
where they were not allowed to be seated based on their sex along with other women who were
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there to support. This is where the two women talked and addressed the woman rights problem
and later decided to have the Seneca Falls Convention. In 1841 Stanton gave her first speech
publicly discussing the issues of the Temperance movement to other women which lead both her–
self and the audience in tears.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American suffragist and a leading figure of the early
women’s rights movement. She helped write the Declaration of Sentiments which is also known
as the Declarations of Rights and Sentiments which was presented at the Seneca Falls Conven-
tion. She based it on the form of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Declara-
tion of Sentiments is often credited with starting the first organization of women rights and
women’s suffrage in the United States. Before she narrowed her political focus to only women’s
rights, she was an active abolitionist with her husband and later after the American Civil war,
Stanton worked with Susan B. Anthony and together turned down the 14th and 15th amendments
because it gave legal protection and voting rights to African American men. She noticed that this
was not helping women because white and black women were still denied the opportunity to vote
and this is when she started focusing on creating groups for woman suffrage and rights.
Lucretia Coffin Mott was another woman who helped bring the Seneca Falls Convention
to New York. She was an American Quaker, social reformer, abolitionist, and lastly a women’s
rights activist and also helped write the Declaration of Sentiments during the convention. Her
study was influenced by fellow Quakers. A group of Quakers organized the convention as well.
Her interest in becoming a women rights activists is when she found out that the female teachers
at her high school were being paid three times less than the male professors. Mott worked a lot
with anti- slavery efforts and focused on that with her husband. She worked with Stanton at the
World’s Anti- Slavery convention and that is when they discussed having another convention for
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women and their rights in London. Mott had a sister named Martha Wright who also worked
with Stanton and Mott on the Seneca Falls Convention. Mott and Stanton also focused on a range
of issues when it came to women’s rights and wanted equality in marriage, women’s property
rights, and keeping their name if they want. In this time period women could not get custody of
their kids if they were going through a divorce and men would get all the rights.
During the 19th century we hear about women distressed about women’s rights. Cosmos
Crumbling written by Robert Abzug wrote about his engaging study of nineteenth-century re-
form-movements. These include those who agitated for temperance, abolitionism, and women’s
rights, argues that their aims can only be understood in the context of their religious thinking. Af-
ter a brief look through that examines the “moral physiology” of the body-reform movements of
Sylvester Graham, William Andrus Alcott, and Orson Squire Fowler, Abzug alights upon the
question of women’s equality and profiles Lyman Beecher’s eldest daughter, Catherine, Lydia
Marie Child, and Sarah and Angelina Grimké. From roughly the late 1820s to the late 1840s,
these figures and their compatriots would push “the concept of power and status resident in
‘womanhood’ well beyond the already striking notions of Christian Republicanism,” (190) which
put them at odds with one another. For Beecher, women were to render society moral through
their model acts of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Lydia Marie Child, who became a very popular
novelist and the founder of a girls’ school. The Grimké sisters focused and looked into Lydia’s
notion even farther, arguing for instant recognition of equality the sanctioning of women’s action
in the typically male public sphere. They led by example, and Abzug’s views of their struggles
with both conservative religious forces and less-radical reformers are presented in his work.
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In July of 1848, Lucretia Mott was in New York visiting her sister while Stanton lived in
Seneca Falls with her sons. During Mott’s visit to New York, she met with Stanton and other fel–
low women who had the same goal of getting equal rights. Mary Ann McClintock and Jane Hunt
were at the social gathering with these woman to discuss the convention. All of these women
were focused on temperance and anti-slavery for the time being and wanted to move forward
with a convention held just for women’s rights. The same day they met, the convention was
placed.
Seneca Falls convention was the first women’s rights convention and first public social
event that discussed equality for all and women’s rights. Stanton and Mott wanted to get a group
of people together to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman. The
convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York for the duration of two days. It was on July 19th
and stretched until the 20th in 1848 at the Wesleyan Methodist Church in the Seneca County
Courier.
Stanton wanted to make it easier for women who were going through a divorce and for
women to have access to their own rights and kids. Mott and Stanton knew that the convention
would not automatically make society give women equal rights but they knew that this could
jump start this movement and be the beginning of equality for woman in all spheres of society.
There was an estimate of about three hundred people from around the area in New York who
showed up at the convention. There were around forty men at the convention, Lucretia’s hus-
band, James being one of the men there. He was the chairman of the event because the women
felt that if they were in charge it would not be possible to have an orderly convention. The con–
vention consisted of six different sessions including discussing the topic of women’s roles in so-
ciety, lecture on law, and a humorous presentation. Stanton and Mott introduced the Declaration
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of Sentiments and a list of things they wanted to be resolved, hoping to get women to sign this
document. It outlined the entire convention as well as Stanton’s resolutions that she had came up
with over the years to argue that men and women are equal and that women deserve to have
equality in all aspects of society and life. In the eleven resolutions there were many statements
written by Stanton that included rights that woman should have. Signers of the Declaration of
Sentiments hoped for “a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country” to follow
their own meeting. Mott did not have anything to do with the resolutions that Stanton had created
and thought that if she had presented these at the convention, people would see them as “ridicu-
lous”. Stanton did not listen to her opinion and thought firmly that these would represent what
woman want and what rights they deserve. During the convention when the voting rights for
women topic came up, there were some disagreements between Mott and people at the conven-
