Seneca Falls - New York Observer. Vol. XXVI, No. 32, Whole No. 1317. Saturday, August 5, 1848.
The Woman’s Rights Conventions at Seneca Falls and Rochester:
Responses from the Press
Reactions in the press to the landmark conventions on Woman’s Rights held at Seneca Falls from July 19-20, 1848, and then at Rochester on August 2, 1848, were mixed. According to a study cited by Sally McMillen, “42 percent of the national press opposed the Convention, 28 percent were neutral, and 20 percent approved of it” (see McMillen, Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement. Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 139 ff). Among the papers expressing enthusiastic support were Frederick Douglas’s North Star, which called it “one of the most interesting events of the past week,” and praised the speakers’ “brilliant talents and excellent dispositions.” The Seneca County Courier lauded the Resolutions at the end of the convention’s now famous Declaration of Sentiments as “spirited, and spicy,” and “radical.” Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, on the other hand, was more or less neutral. Some of the more vitriolic and dismissive notices of the convention were included by Stanton, Anthony, and Gage as an appendix in their History of Woman Suffrage, Vol 1 (see pp. 802 ff). The Mechanic’s Advocate of Albany, for example, in an editorial titled “Women out of their Latitude,” criticized the convention’s claims to equality as “impracticable, uncalled for, and unnecessary. . . . [Such a change] would...demoralize and degrade from their high sphere and noble destiny, women of all respectable and useful classes, and prove a monstrous injury to all mankind.” The Worcester (Mass.) Telegraph labeled the women at Seneca, “Amazons,” and the Lowell (Mass.) Courier began their article mockingly, “The women in various parts of the State have taken the field in favor of a petticoat empire. . . .” The items below provide further examples of the response to these founding events of the Woman’s Movement in America.
“Rights of Women – Declaration of Independence,” in the New York Observer. Vol. XXVI, No. 32 (Saturday, August 5, 1848).
Folio; faint damp-staining to bottom edge; light foxing; slight imperfection to upper-right corner, evidently from printing press; contemporary annotation in upper right hand corner.
Belonging to the neutral camp, this notice of the Convention at Seneca Falls is based on an article in the Seneca County Courier. It notes in part, “Their declaration of sentiments sets forth that ‘the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her,’ and then enters into particulars: concluding with a pledge to appeal to the pulpit, the press, the people and the Legislatures.”
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