At a gathering of abolitionists, held on July 19th, 1848, at the home of =Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton= in Seneca, N.Y., the question of women’s rights was eagerly discussed. Mrs. Stanton, the daughter of a lawyer, had found by frequent visits to her father’s office that according to the then existing laws, which had been adopted from England, married women had no right of disposal over their own inherited property, their own income, or their own children, no matter how unfit, degraded, and cruel their husbands might be. There was even no redress for corporal punishment which the husbands might inflict on their wives.
Another woman, present at the gathering, was =Lucretia Mott=, a Quaker teacher. It had been her experience, that female teachers, having paid for their education just as much as the males, obtained, when teaching, only half of the compensation granted to male teachers.
But the indignation of the two women over the inferior position of woman had been especially excited while attending the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention, held in 1840 at London. Both women, together with Mrs. Wendell Phillips, had been appointed delegates by the abolitionists of America, and as they were able speakers, much had been expected from their eloquence. But when the women submitted their credentials, they discovered that the English abolitionists had not reformed their antiquated views of male predominance and would not admit any woman as delegate nor on the platform. When the question was submitted to vote, the women were excluded by a large majority. This flat refusal to recognize woman’s right to an equal participation in all social, political, and religious affairs brought what is termed “the Woman Question” into greater prominence than ever before. The gathering in the Wesleyan chapel, at Seneca Falls, N.Y., Mrs. Stanton’s home, is known as the =First Woman’s Rights Convention=. Held on the 19th and 20th of July, 1848, it was attended by 68 women and 38 men. The simultaneous discussion of the subject of slavery and the natural rights of man had as their logical consequence, on the part of women, the demand of a privilege exercised in many cases by persons far below them in intelligence and education. They asserted that many of their number were taxpayers, that all were interested in good government, and that it would be unjust for women of intelligence to be deprived of a vote while ignorant negroes could have a voice in the government. Furthermore they asserted that the participation of women would have a purifying effect on politics.