Seneca Falls Convention

The Seneca Falls Convention

Woman in early 19th century created the first women’s movement and gain right on

their own names which represented start of a great fight over being recognized as an

equal human being to men. They were gaining access in many different areas: political,

legal and cultural.

Quaker women pioneered in these kinds of changes. They had organized women’s

meetings at churches and preach sometimes at the cost of their lives. Quakers had many

of the greatest women such as Lucretia Mott. But it was still not enough for a major

reform. The South was more tolerant for women and it respected it’s position at that

period. On the North opposition to slavery became moralistic and all defenders of women

rights weren’t strong enough for starting any kind of reform because it was potentially

dangerous. So by giving away more public roles to women the society on South became

more successful and more and more women got involved in public activities then ever

before. With the first thread and textile factories in small New England entrepreneurs

hired the young women as their workers. The urban economic growth also contributed to

the development of women’s voluntary associations. The majority of employed women

worked as domestic servants and school teachers. The two Grimke sisters contributed

directly to the growing strength of abolitionist sentiment. They were speaking to big

audiences and then after a short period of time they wrote a letter that denounces them

which made the following point: “We cannot therefore, bear an obtrusive and

ostentatious part in measures of reform, and countenance any of that sex who so far

forget themselves as to itinerate in the character of public lecturers and teachers

(Matthews 112). “They were significant and inspirational to a lot of other women who

did public speeches and lectures. When they retired from the front lines they remained

the two who did the most about woman’s right to be a public speaker and speak about

important issues. Sojourner Truth and Frances Harper were two African-American

women born in slavery and became active in lectures and public speaking. They made a

strong impression on everyone who heard them and they were able to deliver strong

political messages. In Boston women like Maria Weston Chapman and Lydia Maria

Child were starting to oppose slavery in public. They founded Female Anti-Slavery

Society which had both blacks and whites as their members.

In the mid 1830s white working women did not accept lowering on their wages in New

England mills. So they went in a strike. By the 1840s women all around the U.S. were

organized into thousands of societies for charity and some kind of reforms. ”Their

activities would once again expand the things that woman could do-the idea of woman’s

sphere”. (Goldberg 104)”But women in textile industry had difficulties with the male

workers. Sarah Bagley became leader of labor and she organized mill workers against

longer working hours and for better conditions. She even organize petition to

Massachusetts legislature.

Some workers used their experience to challenge the ideal of domesticity itself.

“Woman is never thought to be out of her sphere t home; in the nursery, in the

kitchen, over a hot stove cooking form morning till evening-over a washtub, or toiling in

a cotton factory 14 hours per day. But let her once step out, plead the cause of right and

humanity, plead the wrongs of her slave sister of the South or of the worker of the

North…and a cry is raised against her, “out of her sphere”. (Goldberg 108)”

in the 1840s Antoinette Brown and Lucy Stone fought against discrimination in their

fields of work, Susan Anthony in teaching profession and Lucy Stanton in medicine.

Soon in some states, where there were possibilities, national conventions were held.

Speeches, newspaper publicity, letters and petitions contributed and signified that the

movement is slowly beginning to organize. In 1840 Mrs. Mott and Mrs. Stanton had talk

about possible convention about woman’s rights. After eight year from proposing such

meeting Lucretia Mot and Elizabeth Cady Stanton finally met at New York on summer

1848 at Woman’s rights Convention to discuss about the social, civil and religious