Proceedings of the Ninth National Woman's Rights Convention.
Proceedings of the Ninth National Woman's Rights Convention Held in New York City, Thursday May 12, 1859...With...The Speech of Wendell Phillips...Published for the Convention. Rochester, N. Y.: Steam Press of A. Strong & Co., Democrat and American Office, 1859.
8vo; 20 pp.; lacks original wrappers; disbound; else fine.
First Edition. Susan B. Anthony was chairperson of this ninth national meeting. Phillips’ speech occupies pp. 9-20. Other notables prominently participating were Caroline H. Dall, T. W. Higginson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Caroline Severance, Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, and Lucretia Mott. Caroline Dall introduced five resolutions, such as this: "That it is our burden duty to open, in every way, new vocations to women, to raise their wages by every advisable means, and to secure to them an education which shall be less a decoration to their persons than a tool to their hands." Other discussions had to do with the injustice of asserting the mental inferiority of women, and intellectual advancement of American women as seen by their literary productions, and their advancement into the realms of science, art, medicine, and industry.
When the hour arrived for the Ninth Convention to begin, the hall was so packed that it was impossible for Mrs. Mott to reach the platform, and Miss Anthony was obliged to open the meeting. This convention, like several which preceded it, was greatly disturbed by noise and interruptions from the audience, until finally it was turned over to Wendell Phillips who "knew better than any one else how to play with and lash a mob and thrust what he wished to say into their long ears." At the end of his speech Miss Anthony immediately adjourned the convention, to prevent violent demonstrations. The disturbances at these conventions were not so much because the mob objected to the doctrine of woman's rights as they were addressed by the leading anti-slavery speakers and therefore had to bear the odium attached to that hated cause.
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