Editing Seneca Falls Convention (section)

== Background ==

=== Reform movement ===

In the decades leading up to 1848, a small number of women began to push against restrictions imposed upon them by society. A few men aided in this effort. In 1831, Reverend [[Charles Grandison Finney]] began allowing women to pray aloud in gatherings of men and women.<ref name=Isenberg5>Isenberg, 1998, pp. 5–6.</ref> The [[Second Great Awakening]] was challenging women's traditional roles in religion. Recalling the era in 1870, [[Paulina Wright Davis]] set Finney's decision as the beginning of the American women's reform movement.<ref name=Isenberg5/>

=== Women in abolition ===

Starting in 1832, [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist]] and journalist [[William Lloyd Garrison]] organized anti-slavery associations which encouraged the full participation of women. Garrison's ideas were not welcomed by a majority of other abolitionists, and those unwilling to include women split from his [[American Anti-Slavery Society]] to form other abolitionist societies.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Massachusetts Historical Society: No Union with Slaveholders |url=https://www.masshist.org/features/boston-abolitionists/no-union-with-slaveholders |access-date=2025-03-16 |website=www.masshist.org |quote=Disunion also threatened the abolitionist movement. The “Garrisonians” believed that the political system was hopelessly corrupt, while their opponents organized first the Liberty and then the Free Soil Party. The American Anti-Slavery Society split over the participation of women in the movement, and Garrison’s warm friendship and close working relationship with Frederick Douglass ended in discord.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=February 26, 2015 |title=Antislavery Connection - Women's Rights National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service) |url=https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/antislavery-connection.htm |access-date=2025-03-16 |website=www.nps.gov |language=en}}</ref>

A few women began to gain fame as writers and speakers on the subject of abolition. In the 1830s, [[Lydia Maria Child]] wrote to encourage women to write a [[Will (law)|will]],<ref>[[Thomas Wentworth Higginson|Higginson, Thomas Wentworth]]; Meyer, Howard N. [https://books.google.com/books?id=AtT-uDbbqG8C&pg=PA143 ''The magnificent activist'']{{Dead link|date=August 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, Da Capo Press, 2000, p. 143.</ref> and [[Frances Wright]] wrote books on women's rights and social reform. The [[Grimké sisters]] published their views against slavery in the late 1830s, and they began speaking to mixed gatherings of men and women for Garrison's [[American Anti-Slavery Society]], as did [[Abby Kelley]]. Although these women lectured primarily on the evils of slavery, the fact that a woman was speaking in public was itself a noteworthy stand for the cause of women's rights. [[Ernestine Rose]] began lecturing in 1836 to groups of women on the subject of the "Science of Government" which included the enfranchisement of women.<ref name=Buhle68>Buhle, 1978, p. 64.</ref>

[[File:Lucretia and James Mott.jpg|thumb|[[James Mott|James]] and [[Lucretia Mott]]]]

In 1840, at the urging of Garrison and [[Wendell Phillips]], [[Lucretia Coffin Mott]] and [[Elizabeth Cady Stanton]] traveled with their husbands and a dozen other American male and female abolitionists to [[London]] for the first [[World's Anti-Slavery Convention]], with the expectation that the motion put forward by Phillips to include women's participation in the convention would be controversial. In London, the proposal was rebuffed after a full day of debate; the women were allowed to listen from the gallery but not allowed to speak or vote. Mott and Stanton became friends in London and on the return voyage and together planned to organize their own convention to further the cause of women's rights, separate from abolition concerns. In 1842 [[Thomas M'Clintock]] and his wife Mary Ann became founding members of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society and helped write its constitution. When he moved to Rochester in 1847, [[Frederick Douglass]] joined [[Amy and Isaac Post]] and the M'Clintocks in this Rochester-based chapter of the American Anti-Slavery Society.<ref name=Wellman188/>

=== Women's rights ===

In 1839 in Boston, [[Margaret Fuller]] began hosting conversations, akin to French [[Salon (gathering)|'' salons'']], among women interested in discussing the "great questions" facing their sex.<ref>Marshall, Megan. ''The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005: 387. {{ISBN|978-0-618-71169-7}}</ref> [[Sophia Ripley]] was one of the participants. In 1843, Fuller published ''[[The Great Lawsuit]]'', asking women to claim themselves as self-dependent.<ref>{{cite web |title=Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) |url=https://www.learner.org/series/american-passages-a-literary-survey/spirit-of-nationalism/margaret-fuller-1810-1850/ |website=learner.org |access-date=2 April 2021}}</ref>

In the 1840s, women in America were reaching out for greater control of their lives. Husbands and fathers directed the lives of women, and many doors were closed to female participation.<ref name="nps quakers"/> State statutes and [[common law]] prohibited women from inheriting property, signing contracts, serving on juries and voting in elections. Women's prospects in employment were dim: they could expect only to gain a very few service-related jobs and were paid about half of what men were paid for the same work.<ref name="nps quakers"/> In Massachusetts, [[Brook Farm]] was founded by Sophia Ripley and her husband [[George Ripley (transcendentalist)|George Ripley]] in 1841 as an attempt to find a way in which men and women could work together, with women receiving the same compensation as men. The experiment failed.<ref>Hankins, 2004, p. 34.</ref>

In the fall of 1841, Elizabeth Cady Stanton gave her first public speech, on the subject of the [[Temperance movement]], in front of 100 women in Seneca Falls. She wrote to her friend Elizabeth J. Neal that she moved both the audience and herself to tears, saying "I infused into my speech a Homeopathic dose of woman's rights, as I take good care to do in many private conversations."<ref>Stanton, 1997, p. 25.</ref>

Lucretia Mott met with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Boston in 1842, and discussed again the possibility of a woman's rights convention.<ref name=Wellman188>Wellman, 2004, p. 188</ref> They talked once more in 1847, prior to Stanton moving from Boston to Seneca Falls.<ref name=Isenberg3/>

Women's groups led by Lucretia Mott and Paulina Wright Davis held public meetings in Philadelphia beginning in 1846.<ref name=Isenberg5/> A wide circle of abolitionists friendly to women's rights began in 1847 to discuss the possibility of holding a convention wholly devoted to women's rights.<ref name=Isenberg5/> In October 1847, [[Lucy Stone]] gave her first public speech on the subject of women's rights, entitled ''The Province of Women'', at her brother Bowman Stone's church in [[Gardner, Massachusetts]].<ref>Emerson, Dorothy May; Edwards, June; Knox, Helene. [https://books.google.com/books?id=djpfT5rHb5MC&pg=PA32 ''Standing Before Us''], Skinner House Books, 2000, p. 32.</ref>

In March 1848, Garrison, the Motts, [[Abby Kelley Foster]], [[Stephen Symonds Foster]] and others hosted an Anti-Sabbath meeting in Boston, to work toward the elimination of laws that apply only to Sunday, and to gain for the laborer more time away from toil than just one day of rest per week. Lucretia Mott and two other women were active within the executive committee,<ref>Anti-Sabbath Convention. [https://books.google.com/books?id=UxlIYw9d91kC ''Proceedings of the Anti-Sabbath Convention''], Retrieved on April 23, 2009.</ref> and Mott spoke to the assemblage. Lucretia Mott raised questions about the validity of blindly following religious and social tradition.<ref>Isenberg, 1998, pp. 87–88.</ref>

=== Political gains ===
{{Further|Married Women's Property Acts in the United States}}

On April 7, 1848, in response to a citizen's petition, the [[New York State Assembly]] passed the Married Woman's Property Act, giving women the right to retain the property they brought into a marriage, as well as property they acquired during the marriage. Creditors could not seize a wife's property to pay a husband's debts.<ref name=McMillen81/> Leading up to the passage of this law, in 1846, supporters issued a pamphlet, probably authored by Judge John Fine,<ref name=historynow>Historynow.org. Judith Wellman. [http://www.historynow.org/03_2006/historian.html ''The Seneca Falls Convention: Setting the National Stage for Women's Suffrage''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100203135337/http://www.historynow.org/03_2006/historian.html |date=February 3, 2010 }}, Retrieved April 27, 2009.</ref> which relied on its readers' familiarity with the [[United States Declaration of Independence]] to demand "That all are created free and equal&nbsp;...",<ref name=historynow/> and that this idea should apply equally to the sexes. "Women, as well as men, are entitled to the full enjoyment of its practical blessings".<ref name=historynow/> A group of 44&nbsp;married women of western New York wrote to the Assembly in March 1848, saying "your Declaration of Independence declares, that governments derive their just powers from the [[consent of the governed]]. And as women have never consented to, been represented in, or recognized by this government, it is evident that in justice no allegiance can be claimed from them&nbsp;... Our numerous and yearly petitions for this most desirable object having been disregarded, we now ask your august body, to abolish all laws which hold married women more accountable for their acts than infants, idiots, and lunatics."<ref name=historynow/>

[[File:GerritSmith-1840s.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Gerrit Smith]] made woman suffrage a plank in the [[Liberty Party (1840s)|Liberty Party]] [[Party platform|platform]] on June 14–15, 1848.]]

New York, however, was not the pioneer in this case. Already, in February 1839, [[Mississippi]] had enacted its own Married Women's Property Act, the first state law anywhere to allow married women to independently own and administer property, a statute which was expanded in 1846, 1857, 1868, 1880, and 1890.<ref>Sandra Moncrief, "The Mississippi Married Women's Property Act of 1839," ''Hancock County Historical Society'', [https://www.hancockcountyhistoricalsociety.com/vignettes/the-mississippi-married-womens-property-act-of-1839/]. Accessed 6 February 2024.</ref> The [[Pennsylvania General Assembly|General Assembly in Pennsylvania]] passed a similar married woman's property law a few weeks after New York, one which Lucretia Mott and others had championed. These progressive state laws were seen by American women as a sign of new hope for women's rights.<ref name=McMillen81>McMillen, 2008, p. 81.</ref>

On June 2, 1848, in [[Rochester, New York]], [[Gerrit Smith]] was nominated as the [[Liberty Party (1840s)|Liberty Party]]'s presidential candidate.<ref name=Wellman176/> Smith was Elizabeth Cady Stanton's first cousin, and the two enjoyed debating and discussing political and social issues with each other whenever he came to visit.<ref name=Wellman176>Wellman, 2004, p. 176. Judith Wellman offers the theory that [[Gerrit Smith]] and [[Elizabeth Cady Stanton]], during a possible visit by Smith to Seneca Falls between June 2 and June 14, 1848, challenged or encouraged each other to introduce women's voting rights in their separate political and social spheres, as both subsequently did so, Smith taking the first shot.</ref> At the [[National Liberty Convention]], held June 14–15 in [[Buffalo, New York]], Smith gave a major address,<ref>Claflin, Alta Blanche. [https://books.google.com/books?id=c10PAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA50 ''Political parties in the United States 1800–1914''], New York Public Library, 1915, p. 50</ref> including in his speech a demand for "universal suffrage in its broadest sense, females as well as males being entitled to vote."<ref name=Wellman176/> The delegates approved a passage in their [[party platform]] addressing votes for women: "Neither here, nor in any other part of the world, is the right of suffrage allowed to extend beyond one of the sexes. This universal exclusion of woman&nbsp;... argues, conclusively, that, not as yet, is there one nation so far emerged from barbarism, and so far practically Christian, as to permit woman to rise up to the one level of the human family."<ref name=Wellman176/> At this convention, five votes were placed calling for Lucretia Mott to be Smith's vice-president—the first time in the United States that a woman was suggested for federal executive office.<ref name=Wellman176/>

=== Quaker influence ===

Many members of the [[Religious Society of Friends]], known as Quakers, made their homes in western New York state, near Seneca Falls. A particularly progressive branch lived in and around [[Waterloo (town), New York|Waterloo]] in [[Seneca County, New York]]. These Quakers strove for marital relationships in which men and women worked and lived in equality.<ref name="nps quakers">National Park Service. Women's Rights. [http://www.nps.gov/wori/historyculture/quaker-influence.htm ''Quaker Influence'']. Retrieved on April 23, 2009.</ref>

The M'Clintocks came to Waterloo from a Quaker community in [[Philadelphia]]. They rented property from Richard P. Hunt, a wealthy Quaker and businessman.<ref name="nps quakers"/> The M'Clintock and Hunt families opposed slavery; both participated in the [[free produce movement]], and their houses served as stations on the [[Underground Railroad]].<ref name="nps quakers"/>

Though women Friends had since the 1660s publicly preached, written and led, and traditional Quaker tenets held that men and women were equals, Quaker women met separately from the men to consider and decide a congregation's business. By the 1840s, some [[Religious Society of Friends#Hicksite–Orthodox split|Hicksite]] Quakers determined to bring women and men together in their business meetings as an expression of their spiritual equality.<ref name="nps quakers"/> In June 1848, approximately 200&nbsp;Hicksites, including the Hunts and the M'Clintocks, formed an even more radical Quaker group, known as the Yearly Meeting of Congregational Friends, or [[Progressive Friends]]. The Progressive Friends intended to further elevate the influence of women in affairs of the faith. They introduced joint business meetings of men and women, giving women an equal voice.<ref name="nps quakers"/>