Proceedings of the Woman's Rights Conventions, Held at Seneca Falls & Rochester, N.Y. July & August, 1848.
A Miraculous Survival:
The Seneca Falls and Rochester Proceedings
and Stanton’s Address
—
In Fine Condition
[cover title] Proceedings of the Woman's Rights Conventions, Held at Seneca Falls & Rochester, NY, July & August, 1848. NY: Robert J. Johnston, Printer, No. 59 Duane St., 1870.
Contents titles:
Report of the Woman’s Rights Convention, held at Seneca Falls, N.Y., July & August, 1848. Rochester: Printed by John Dick, at the North Star Office, 1848.
Together with:
Proceedings of the Woman’s Rights Convention, held at the Unitarian Church, Rochester, N.Y., August 2, 1848, to consider the rights of woman, politically, religiously and industrially. Revised by Mrs. Amy Post. New York: Robert J. Johnston, Printer, 1870.
Together with:
Address of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, delivered at Seneca Falls & Rochester, N.Y., July 19th & August 2d, 1848. New York: Robert J. Johnston, Printer, 1870.
Slim 8vo.; cream printed wrappers; fine. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
The Proceedings of these two foundational Woman’s Rights Conventions, at which Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and their colleagues launched the woman suffrage movement; along with the first appearance in print of Stanton’s Address. Each is printed with its own title page and separate pagination. Johnston, Stanton’s collaborator on this and other projects (most notably The Revolution), reset the type of each Proceedings from its original publication, reproducing the original title page of the Seneca Falls Proceedings with the citation of John Dick at Frederick Douglass’s North Star office as the printer (Douglass was present and voluble at Seneca Falls). The source of the text of Stanton’s address has seemed to suffrage scholars less easy to establish.
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony began working on this compilation—likely for fundraising distribution at later conventions—as early as 1867: on April 11 of that year Anthony wrote to Mary Post Hollowell that they’d see her on their working visit to Lockport, where they’d be collaborating with her and her mother, Amy Post, on the final corrections of the Seneca Falls and Rochester reports. The pamphlet came out in 1870, and in 1871 Stanton wrote to Anthony that she was bringing their 1870 version to be sold at the next convention.
Scholars have speculated that Stanton’s speech might have been composed closer to 1870 than to 1848. Gordon, the editor of Stanton’s papers, notes that “there is no evidence that ECS delivered any speech at the Rochester Convention, let alone one of this length. Second, no contemporary report of Seneca Falls noted a major speech by ECS … Finally, Lucretia Mott, present at both conventions, referred to ECS’s speech in September at Waterloo as ‘thy maiden speech.’” He also discusses differences between this text and that of the manuscript version now at the Library of Congress: between versions, “someone corrected the text, removed the first two paragraphs, changed tenses, added other statements, and made other minor adjustments.” This suggests Stanton’s active participation at press time, as it seems unlikely that Johnston would have undertaken changes of this quantity and character on his own. However, Gordon finds it puzzling that Stanton “neither quoted from nor referred readers to [this address] in histories of the conventions that she wrote after 1870.” (See The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, I., by Gordon, ed., pp. 94-5)
These texts bear out his suspicions.
The Report on the Seneca Falls convention reveals that the proceedings were devoted to the Declaration of Sentiments. Stanton was an active leader of the convention, and began the first day by reading the Declaration. She entertained comments and modifications by attendants, who then adopted it. The revised version was read during the afternoon session, was further modified, and adopted again. The final version appears in this Report, along with the signatures of those present. The women’s names appear first, followed by the men’s. The second day was devoted to further readings of the Declaration, various housekeeping issues, and an assertion
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