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Summary
Summary
In a quiet town of Seneca Falls, New York, over the course of two days in July, 1848, a small group of women and men, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, held a convention that would launch the woman's rights movement and change the course of history. The implications of that remarkable convention would be felt around the world and indeed are still being felt today. In Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Woman's Rights Movement , the latest contribution to Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments in American History series, Sally McMillen unpacks, for the first time, the full significance of that revolutionary convention and the enormous changes it produced. The book covers 50 years of women's activism, from 1840-1890, focusing on four extraordinary figures--Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony. McMillen tells the stories of their lives, how they came to take up the cause of women's rights, the astonishing advances they made during their lifetimes, and the lasting and transformative effects of the work they did. At the convention they asserted full equality with men, argued for greater legal rights, greater professional and education opportunities, and the right to vote--ideas considered wildly radical at the time. Indeed, looking back at the convention two years later, Anthony called it "the grandest and greatest reform of all time--and destined to be thus regarded by the future historian." In this lively and warmly written study, Sally McMillen may well be the future historian Anthony was hoping to find. A vibrant portrait of a major turning point in American women's history, and indeed in human history, Seneca Falls, 1848 is essential reading for anyone wishing to fully understand the origins of the woman's rights movement.
Author Notes
Sally McMillen is the Mary Reynolds Babcock Professor of History and Department Chair at Davidson College. She is the author of Motherhood in the Old South and Southern Women: Black and White in the Old South. She lives in Davidson, North Carolina.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
McMillen, who chairs the history department at Davidson College, presents a fine history of the 1848 Seneca Falls convention, which galvanized the women's movement through the remainder of the 19th century and also affected concurrent struggles for temperance, abolition and educational reform. Narrowing her focus to four suffragists-Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone-McMillen nimbly weaves their stories with the larger narrative of reform. After a splendid introductory chapter that outlines the legal injustices most women suffered (typically, they could not vote, hold property or receive equal pay for their work), McMillen describes the convention itself, about which we know relatively little (Stanton gave it just two sentences in her mammoth memoir) and then traces its unexpectedly weighty impact on reformers through the decades. She does an outstanding job of discussing how religion functioned as both an impetus and an obstacle to reform, and pays particular attention to how the women's movement broke apart during Reconstruction because of internal bickering, racism and class divisions. This is not a revisionist work or a substantial challenge to the conventional historiography of suffrage, but a well-written and cogent synthesis accessible to the general reader while remaining firmly grounded in primary sources. 20 b&w illus. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Choice Review
The lives of four extraordinary reformers--Lucretia Coffin Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony--frame this study of Seneca Falls as a catalyst for the 19th-century women's movement. Extensive use of family and organization papers personalizes their courage in challenging institutionalized economic, legal, social, and political oppression, devoting their lives to this radical cause, and sustaining their activism over a half century. McMillen's engaging narrative deftly accentuates how the 1848 Declaration of Rights and Sentiments might have been just so many words on the page without the dedication of these pioneering activists. One might question the author's assertion that woman suffrage may have been achieved much earlier had the reformers worked together, ignoring their differences. That statement diminishes the enormity of institutional and public opposition. To enfranchise women was to utterly transform perceptions of women and fundamentally alter power relations in the US. McMillen (Davidson College) provides a highly readable, comprehensive history of this pivotal event. Like Jean Baker's Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists (2005), this book reveals the human side of this revolutionary reform movement. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General and undergraduate collections. C. M. Kennedy Clarion University of Pennsylvania
Library Journal Review
This book joins a plethora of similar titles that include Eleanor Flexner's 1959 classic Century of Struggle and notable recent works such as Judith Wellman's The Road to Seneca Falls and Lori Ginzberg's Untidy Origins. While it covers familiar ground, it reflects current scholarship and provides a balanced assessment of the early woman's rights movement and its leaders. McMillen (history, Davidson Coll.) describes the birth of the movement at the 1848 Seneca Falls, NY, convention, its growth over the next decade, and the post-Civil War dissention that split the movement into two competing national organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman's Suffrage Association (AWSA). She highlights the lives of four leaders-Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone-but does not neglect the many other individuals who played noteworthy roles. The book concludes with the reunification of NWSA and AWSA in 1890 as a second generation of women took up the banner for suffrage and equal rights. The result is a useful text for undergraduate history and women's studies courses; general readers will also find it accessible and informative. Recommended for academic and public libraries.-Linda V. Carlisle, Southern Illinois Univ., Edwardsville (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Editor's Note | p. ix |
| Introduction | p. 3 |
| 1 Separate Spheres: Law, Faith, Tradition | p. 9 |
| 2 Fashioning a Better World | p. 35 |
| 3 Seneca Falls | p. 71 |
| 4 The Women's Movement Begins, 1850-1860 | p. 104 |
| 5 War, Disillusionment, Division | p. 149 |
| 6 Friction and Reunification, 1870-1890 | p. 185 |
| Epilogue: "Make the World Better" | p. 229 |
| Appendix A Declaration of Rights and Sentiments | p. 237 |
| Appendix B "Solitude of Self," by Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Address Delivered by Mrs. Stanton before the Committee of the Judiciary, U.S. Congress, January 18, 1892 | p. 242 |
| Notes | p. 251 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 296 |
| Index | p. 298 |
