1. Women Reformers of Seneca Falls Respond to the Market Revolution
a. 1848- Charlotte Woodward persuaded six of her friends to travel to Seneca Falls to attend a “convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women.”
b. Surprisingly, almost 300 people (men and women) attended the 2 day meeting
c. Declaration of Sentiments- The resolutions passed at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 calling for full female equality, including the right to vote. i. Men had originally deprived women of legal rights, of the right to their own property, of custody of their children in cases of divorce, of the right to higher education, of full participation in religious worship and activity, and of the right to vote. ii. Attendees approved all but one of the resolutions unanimously. The last, which was voted against, was thought too radical.
d. The struggle for women’s rights was only one of many reform movements that emerged in the United States in the wake of the economic and social disruptions of the market revolution that deeply affected regions like Seneca Falls.
e. Many of the reformers belonged to liberal religious groups with wide social perspectives.
f. Seneca Falls- early 1840s- “Temperance Reformation”- a more limited, but extremely popular reform cause dedicated to promoting abstinence from alcohol.
g. Nation’s best-known woman reformer- Lucretia Mott i. Well known antislavery orator- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
h. The reforming women of Seneca Falls, grouped together on behalf of social improvement, had found in the first women’s rights convention a way to speak for the needs of working women.
2. Immigration and Ethnicity
a. Introduction