The Seneca Falls ConventionBy: Cameron Schepner

What was it?

• The Seneca Falls Convention was a meeting of about three hundred men and women who met to discuss the rights that women are entitled to, like owning property, attending college, and suffrage, or the right to vote.

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Setting

• The Seneca Falls Convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York, in the summer of 1848.

• It was held in the Wesleyan Chapel.• It took place on July 19-20.• The Seneca Falls Convention was the first public

meeting about women’s rights in American history.

People at the Convention

• Lucretia Mott, a Quaker, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was not a Quaker, were the two most important women at the Convention.

• Mott and Stanton met at an Anti-Slavery Convention in London. • They decided, after being treated unfairly, to host a women’s rights

convention in America.• Frederick Douglass, a famous escaped slave and abolitionist, was

also in attendance at the Convention. Frederick Douglass, on many occasions during the Convention, defended the cause of women’s rights and swayed the other attendants to agree with the women.

• Susan B. Anthony was also a key participant in this Convention.

Frederick Douglass

Lucretia Mott

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Susan B. Anthony

Causes of the Convention

• The Seneca Falls Convention was organized mostly because Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and many other women were angry at their treatment by men.

• While Mott and Stanton were at the Anti-Slavery Convention in London, they were not allowed to sit with the men or speak at the podium.

• They were very frustrated, so they decided to hold a convention on women’s rights in America.

During the Convention

• The Seneca Falls Convention took place over six sessions. • In the first session, the morning session, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

read the Declaration of Sentiments, and the attendants discussed each paragraph.

• The second session was about discussion of the resolutions that Stanton had drafted.

• During the third session, Lucretia Mott made a speech about the struggle for women’s rights. The editor of the National Reformer, a newspaper in Auburn, New York, even reported that Mott’s speech was "one of the most eloquent, logical, and philosophical discourses which we ever listened to."

During the Convention cont.

• On the next day, during the fourth session they discussed the paragraphs of the Declaration of Sentiments in more depth.

• The fifth session was when Frederick Douglass stood up for the resolution of women’s suffrage.

• The sixth session was the official passing of all the resolutions.

The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions

• The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was a document based on the Declaration of Independence stating eighteen “injuries and usurpations” of man upon women.

• Some of these were: men having taken women’s right to vote; men having taken women’s right to submit laws; and men having taken women’s right to attend colleges.

• The Declaration of Sentiments was signed by one hundred men and women, but most of the signers were women.

Results of the Convention

• The Seneca Falls Convention sparked a very large debate lasting fifty years about women’s suffrage and women’s rights.

• The Women’s Suffrage Movement and the Women’s Rights Movement both started with the Seneca Falls Convention and the Declaration of Sentiments.

• Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton started a National Women’s Suffrage Association.

Five Facts

• The Seneca Falls Convention was a meeting of about three hundred men and women who met to discuss the rights that women are entitled to, like owning property, attending college, and suffrage, or the right to vote.

• The Seneca Falls Convention was the first public meeting about women’s rights in American history.

• Lucretia Mott, a Quaker, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was not a Quaker, were the two most important women at the Convention.

• The Seneca Falls Convention was organized mostly because Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and many other women were angry at their treatment by men.

• The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was a document based on the Declaration of Independence stating eighteen “injuries and usurpations” of man upon women.