Seneca Falls and Building a Movement, 1776-1890

[sheshe2]

Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.

—Susan B. Anthony, The Revolution, 1869

Notions of equality that inspired America’s war for independence from Great Britain brought only modest and fleeting change to the status of women, most of whom remained “civilly dead.” Women had no legal identity separate from their husbands and were unable to sign contracts, own property, obtain access to education, obtain divorces easily, and gain custody of their children after divorce well into the nineteenth century. The desire to address this inequality and challenge the country to live up to its revolutionary promise led to a two-day convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, where 300 women and men gathered to debate Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments. Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, it outlined women’s inferior status and included a radical demand for suffrage.

After Seneca Falls, women’s rights conventions became annual events, where women met to discuss educational opportunities, divorce reform, property rights, and sometimes labor issues. Women lent their support to abolishing slavery believing universal suffrage would follow, but both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments ignored their demand for suffrage. National leaders responded differently, leading to a split in the movement and contrasting campaigns for voting rights at the local, state, and national levels. In 1878 the first federal women’s suffrage amendment was introduced but was soundly defeated later in the first full Senate vote in 1887. As the nineteenth century neared an end, competing national suffrage groups reunited as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and groundwork was laid for a national movement.

Early Feminist Inspirations
But I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God has designed us to occupy.

—Sarah Grimké, Letters on Equality of the Sexes, 1838

The beginning of the American women’s suffrage movement is often marked by either the 1848 women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, or the earlier 1840 World Antislavery Convention in London, where Lucretia Mott and five other American women delegates were barred from participating after making the long journey. The women’s treatment convinced Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton of the need to convene a meeting focusing exclusively on women’s rights. Although the 1840 and 1848 conventions were undeniably pivotal events, women had for decades been writing and speaking about their inequality in private letters, public lectures, and published books, as shown here. A half-century of feminist writing and political activism preceded Seneca Falls, providing both an intellectual framework and fearless role models for the first generation of suffragists.

https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/women-fight-for-the-vote/about-this-exhibition/seneca-falls-and-building-a-movement-1776-1890/

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F*** MAGA that wants to take us backward.

We are woke and we can damn well vote.

[Drum]

1. Related:

https://suffsmusical.com/