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Seneca Falls and Building a Movement, 1776–1890
"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. |