A Historiographical Examination of the Seneca Falls Convention

by Meghan Pearce

The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and its resulting document, the revolutionary Declaration of Sentiments, are generally recognized as the foundational symbolic moments in the history of the organized women’s rights movement in the United States. Beneath the consensus on the Seneca Falls Convention's importance lies a profound conflict over its causal significance. Scholarship is divided between traditionalists, who view the event as the revolutionary genesis of the women’s rights movement, and revisionists, who interpret it as a continuation of pre-existing reform efforts. This tension is pivotal, as choosing between these two frameworks fundamentally determines how historians evaluate the convention's relationship to the broader nineteenth-century reform landscape.

The foundational interpretation of the women’s rights movement, and the one most commonly found in secondary sources and popular memory, is articulated by the traditionalists, who frame the 1848 convention as the singular starting point for the revolutionary break that launched the organized battle for women’s rights reform in the United States. To defend this “birth” narrative, traditionalist historians consistently champion the Declaration of Sentiments as their indispensable primary source, using its contents to argue that the document’s creation marked a radical and unprecedented shift away from earlier forms of reform. Through this document, traditionalists argue that it proves the convention's status as the true starting point, or “birth” of the movement.

The traditionalist framework is exemplified by early scholarly interpretations that emphasize the immediate controversy and political novelty of the convention. For example, Elizabeth Myette Coughlin and Charles Edward Coughlin’s 1973 article, “Convention in Petticoats: The Seneca Falls Declaration of Woman’s Rights,” argues that the event’s significance lies in its challenge to the long-entrenched status quo of women’s reform behavior. Coughlin and Coughlin use the creation of the revolutionary Declaration of Sentiments, and the ensuing reactions, to further support their argument surrounding the convention’s novelty. Emphasizing the originality of the Declaration of Sentiments, the authors write, “. . . For the first time the demands of the early feminists were set down, clearly challenging the existing social order and calling for woman suffrage as a remedy for society's ills.”¹

Coughlin and Coughlin rely on Robert S. Cathcart’s rhetorical theories to define the convention as “the start” of the women’s rights movement. Cathcart claimed that two ingredients were required to determine the start of a social movement: first, a rhetorical demand that cannot be met by existing agencies for social change, and second, a counter-rhetoric branding the agitators as "devils of destruction."² Following Cathcart, the two authors explore the previous rhetoric describing women’s social roles and behavioral expectations. To this end, Coughlin and Coughlin emphasize the rhetorical role of the Bible in defining women’s lives.³ The authors also demonstrate the specific rhetorical demands of the convention. These included reversing a woman’s status as "legally dead,” her exclusion from ministry, her inability to vote, and restrictions on receiving a quality education.⁴ Finally, Coughlin and Coughlin describe the ensuing counter-rhetoric that took place after the convention. Examples of this counter-rhetoric included local ministers denouncing the demands of the convention and newspapers immediately printing letters to the editor, articles, and editorials.⁵ They emphasize the intensity of the counter-rhetoric, acknowledging that this intense response influenced many signers of the Declaration of Sentiments to withdraw their names in hopes of avoiding the ensuing ridicule and personal attacks.⁶

Overall, Coughlin and Coughlin’s work sets the foundation for the traditionalist thesis by interpreting the convention and its product, the Declaration of Sentiments, as social and cultural novelties. Drawing on Cathcart’s rhetorical model, the authors see the convention’s novel rhetorical demands and the hostile counter-rhetoric that they engendered as the official “start” of the women’s rights movement. Coughlin and Coughlin’s interpretive focus on conflict and reaction has proven to be influential, establishing a framework that later historians built upon when describing the convention’s influence.

Building on the convention’s immediate political and rhetorical challenge, Miriam Gurko’s 1974 book, The Ladies of Seneca Falls, anchors the traditionalist narrative by shifting the interpretive focus away from the convention’s effects to the individual agency and unique strategy of the convention’s founding members. This biographical approach reinforces the notion that the Seneca Falls Convention was born of individual genius rather than broader, pre-existing social forces. If the convention was the product of unique minds gathered in a specific place, at a specific time, it could rightly be interpreted as the genesis of the women’s rights movement. In particular, Gurko identifies the relationship between Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott as the original source of the convention and its goals.⁷ Gurko is precise in stating that the women’s rights movement began while Stanton and Mott walked and talked with each other in 1840.⁸

Like the Coughlin and Coughlin piece, Gurko emphasizes the importance of the stated rhetoric in the Declaration of Sentiments, using this to support her contention that the convention started the women’s rights movement.⁹

While Gurko remains firmly within the traditionalist narrative, she also expands the timeline for her evidence, even calling attention to the eighteenth-century work of Mary Wollstonecraft. Importantly, she mentions Wollstonecraft not to guide the traditional narrative toward a more comprehensive view of the broader origins of the women’s rights movement, but, rather, to underline Stanton and Mott’s use of Wollstonecraft in their crafting of the movement.¹⁰ By centering the origins of the movement on the actions and intellect of a few key figures, Gurko’s biographical method reinforced the traditionalist narrative’s focus on a singular creation story for the women’s rights movement. Gurko’s approach also provided a framework for later biographical and legacy-focused works that similarly advocated for a singular “starting point.”

While Gurko’s 1974 work connected the movement’s origins to the relationship between Stanton and Mott, Bradford Miller’s 1995 book, Returning to Seneca Falls, adopts a similar biographical approach by arguing that the convention’s origins and later significance rested on the powerful partnership between Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass. Miller argues that Stanton and Douglass were the “Mother” and “Father” of the convention.¹¹ By continuing to center the convention’s origins on the visionary agency of two key individuals, Miller upholds the traditionalist narrative, presenting Seneca Falls as an event born of a unique partnership rather than of long-term, broader social forces. Miller’s work reinforces the traditional narrative of a singular genesis by emphasizing the biographical influence of the event’s key leaders.

Miller’s methodology strategically highlights specific prior reform movements, yet this inclusion simultaneously reinforces the traditionalist view of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention as the definitive starting point of the women’s rights movement. Miller chooses to mention previous movements, such as the temperance and abolition movements, to claim that these earlier examples demonstrated women’s pre-convention confinement to speaking out about causes unrelated to women’s rights.¹² It is also important to note that this is one of the only pre-convention mentions of women’s roles in previous areas of reform. In alignment with both the Coughlins' and Gurko's pieces, Miller’s method of largely discussing only the Seneca Falls Convention’s activities supports the traditionalist thesis that claims the 1848 convention is the true start of the women’s rights movement.

The traditionalist approach is also apparent in Virginia Bernhard and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese’s 1995 edited collection, The Birth of American Feminism: The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. This book is largely a compilation of primary documents, but it also asserts the convention’s status as a singular “birth” through its editorial framing and its explicit title. Indeed, the editors’ decision to title the book with the definitive and unambiguous noun “birth” establishes a clear interpretive boundary, arguing implicitly that the women’s rights movement begins here and not in the temperance, abolitionist, or moral reform movements of previous decades.

Their editorial methodology further operates as a decisive structural argument reinforcing the linear narrative where the Declaration of Sentiments serves as the “zero” or starting point for organized action. The basis of their methodology can be seen in how the editors focus almost exclusively on the documents, correspondence, and speeches surrounding the 1848 convention. For example, the editors include documents directly related to the convention, such as the Declaration of Sentiments, the proceedings of the Seneca Falls Convention, an article published in The North Star detailing the convention, and letters from organizers including Emily Collins and Elizabeth Blackwell.¹³ Further evidence of this focus is seen in the final section of the book, which the editors explicitly label “Part 4: The Momentum: Women’s Rights Conventions After Seneca Falls,” a choice that directly implies all subsequent organizational activity flows from the 1848 event.¹⁴ Therefore, this selective focus functionally frames the Seneca Falls Convention as the official starting point of the women’s rights movement.

Bernhard and Fox-Genovese make this framing clear in their editors’ note, explicitly stating that this collection “illustrates women’s awakenings to activism and reform in nineteenth-century America.”¹⁵ The key phrasing in their note works to position the convention as the official start of the women’s rights movement. This approach has the advantage of providing clarity and a defined origin point; however, it suffers from the disadvantage of being exclusionary, effectively erasing decades of women’s political engagement that non-traditionalist narrative historians emphasize.

Building upon the explicit editorial framing found in Bernhard and Fox-Genovese’s anthology, Ellen Carol DuBois’s 1999 article, “Seneca Falls Goes Public,” is perhaps the most nuanced example of the traditionalist narrative. While DuBois acknowledges that female unhappiness was preexisting and widespread, she argues that the strategic decision to publicly declare these grievances in 1848 was the first occurrence of its kind.¹⁶ Seneca Falls, she argues, transformed scattered female discontent into an organized and visible political movement. DuBois is explicit in her traditionalist claims that Seneca Falls was the genesis of the women’s rights movement. “From Seneca Falls on,” she writes, “the feminist movement functioned both from within and without the basic doctrines of American political life.”¹⁷

Although DuBois is undeniably traditionalist in tone, she also describes the pre-convention work of Ernestine Rose as a hesitant prelude to the 1848 convention.¹⁸ Importantly, while DuBois credits Ernestine Rose’s pre-convention influence on Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she still recognizes the 1848 convention as the official “start” of the women’s movement. Overall, DuBois’s methodology serves as one of the more sophisticated defenses of the traditionalist narrative. DuBois strategically acknowledges revisionist evidence (the work of Ernestine Rose) only to subordinate this example of preexisting discontent to the singular political event of 1848. By doing so, DuBois reinforces the traditionalist narrative by establishing the convention as the defining beginning of the women’s rights movement.

Sally G. McMillen’s 2008 book, Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement, serves as the final comprehensive example of the traditionalist narrative. Influenced by Gurko’s methodology, McMillen begins her work by following a largely biographical narrative. While McMillen focuses on the lives of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, she does so while also calling attention to the restrictive social and gendered spheres of the time.¹⁹

Unlike other traditionalists, McMillen examines the social and political context of mid-nineteenth-century America. For example, she offers a more comprehensive discussion of the role slavery played in nineteenth-century society. She also discusses at length the roles that economic and social class played in the leadership careers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.²⁰ While McMillen’s broader context separates her from other traditionalists, she centers this background firmly around the 1848 convention and its leaders.

Like DuBois, McMillen cites the tensions present at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention as the catalyst that prompted American women to organize their own efforts.²¹ McMillen uses this tension to provide the background for what resulted from that friction: the 1848 convention and the American women’s rights movement.

By incorporating evidence describing class, biography, and the 1840 convention into her analysis, McMillen positions her work as a contemporary defense of the traditionalist argument. She uses the broader context not to challenge the origin of the movement, but, rather, to strengthen the idea that the 1848 convention was the women’s rights movement’s official political and social starting point.

Despite their shared commitment to framing the Seneca Falls Convention as the definitive origin of the women’s rights movement, traditionalist historians employ different methodological strategies to defend this claim. Early traditionalist works, such as Coughlin and Coughlin’s 1973 book, establish the argument by focusing on rhetorical analysis. They use the dramatic conflict between the Declaration of Sentiments and hostile counter-rhetoric as proof of the movement’s 1848 start. Gurko (1974) and Miller (1995) provide important biographical context to the traditionalist narrative. These authors focus on the individual agency of the convention's key figures and founders, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Frederick Douglass, arguing that the movement's creation was born from visionary partnerships. Miller's work, in particular, attempts to strengthen this narrative by explicitly subordinating pre-convention movements like the temperance movement to the later actions of the “mother” and “father” figures of the 1848 convention. Recent traditionalist scholarship, including DuBois (1999) and McMillen (2008), acknowledges preexisting discontent and broader social forces. However, both authors still subordinate these factors to the influence of the 1848 convention. They use the social context not to challenge the movement’s origins, but to solidify the significance of the Seneca Falls Convention’s organized action. Overall, while the commitment to the “birthplace” thesis remains consistent across traditionalist scholarship, the interpretive and methodological strategies employed by these authors evolved from rhetorical analysis to sophisticated biographical and social contextualization methods.

The traditionalist view, traced from Coughlin and Coughlin’s rhetorical analysis through McMillen’s comprehensive and nuanced defense, consistently defined the origins of the women’s rights movement through the “genesis” narrative. These authors emphasized the unprecedented political action and singular genius of the 1848 convention. However, as these works established the definitive “birthplace” story, a significant revisionist historiography emerged to fundamentally challenge this neat, linear interpretation.

Beginning in the late 1970s, these scholars deliberately shifted their focus away from 1848, arguing that framing the convention as the absolute start of the women’s rights movement distorted the movement's true, often untidy origins. Instead, they contended that Seneca Falls was primarily a moment of culmination, representing a necessary political step built upon decades of preexisting grassroots activity, abolitionist engagement, and social discontent. This alternative, or revisionist, framework locates the origins of women’s rights in broader social forces rather than in the strategic actions of a few key individuals in 1848.

Revisionist historiography on the origins of the women’s rights movement begins with the work of Keith E. Melder. His 1977 book, Beginnings of Sisterhood: The American Woman’s Rights Movement, 1800–1850, directly challenges the “genesis” claim by arguing that the 1848 convention was not the sudden, spontaneous birth of a movement, but rather the complex culmination of over half a century of gradual changes. Melder’s work examines the pre-convention lives of reform-minded women in the United States, discussing their involvement in various social movements, including the temperance and anti-slavery movements.²² Melder also calls attention to other areas of growing concern in women’s reform circles, including prison and education reform.²³ He notes that women actively spoke out on these issues and demanded to be heard.²⁴ Melder also discusses the importance of the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention, although, unlike his traditionalist peers, he sees this event as part of an ongoing women’s rights effort.²⁵

Melder also addresses Coughlin and Coughlin’s traditionalist rhetorical argument; unlike those authors, who saw the Declaration of Sentiments as a fundamentally new type of women’s rights rhetoric, Melder points to earlier work by Catharine E. Beecher. Beecher had argued that women’s domestic work should be considered a science and was deserving of respect.²⁶ Melder shows that a decade before the convention, Beecher had become a household name.

Melder states his revisionist claims explicitly, arguing that “official historians of the suffrage movement give the Seneca Falls meeting an exaggerated role in establishing the woman’s movement.”²⁷ By reframing the convention as the product of a complex culmination of almost half a century of previous organizational experience and preexisting public rhetoric, Melder’s work initiates the revisionist interpretation of the women’s rights movement. His analysis shifted the scholarly conversation on the origins of women’s rights away from the singular political actions of 1848 toward broader, continuous social forces that predated the Seneca Falls meeting.

While Melder’s 1977 work initiated the revisionist challenge by rooting the movement’s origins in pre-1848 social forces, Ellen Carol DuBois’s 1978 book, Feminism and Suffrage, advanced the critique. DuBois dated the true start of the women’s movement to the post-Civil War split over the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, maintaining that the women’s rights movement began not at Seneca Falls, but decades later, when women formed the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) to prioritize their own political and social causes.²⁸ DuBois’s emphasis on the causal importance of later events separates her from other revisionists. This analytical divide is also evident in her discussion of pre-1848 women’s efforts, where she acknowledges the presence of discontent but dismisses its causal value by calling it unorganized and unexamined. DuBois similarly acknowledges the influence of the convention as a sign of growing societal tensions; however, she does not see it as the official “start” of the women’s movement.²⁹

Interestingly, while DuBois’s 1978 work embraces the revisionist narrative, her 1995 analysis is far more traditionalist in tone, representing an interpretive shift that remains difficult to explain. Unlike her earlier text, which dated the origins of the women’s movement to the 1860s, her 1995 work more clearly identifies Seneca Falls as an origin point, suggesting that she may have genuinely shifted her perspective over the years.

By relocating the movement’s true moment of independent political action to the post-Civil War formation of the AERA, DuBois delivers a unique revisionist argument. She drastically diminishes the causal significance of the 1848 convention by defining the movement not by its tentative start in 1848, but by the birth of an autonomous AERA in the late 1860s.

While DuBois’s 1978 work questions the causal significance of the Seneca Falls convention by relocating the movement’s start to the post-Civil War era, Judith Wellman’s 1991 article, “The Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention: A Study of Social Networks,” returns the inquiry to the pre-1848 social landscape. She argues that the convention was not an isolated event but was, rather, the product of a highly diverse and complicated system of interconnected reform networks. Similar to other revisionists, Wellman calls attention to the pre-convention lives of reformers, paying particular attention to the actions of women who were also political abolitionists, radical Quakers, and legal reformers. Wellman argues that these preexisting networks of reform made Seneca Falls possible, meaning that for her, the start of the women’s rights movement predates 1848. That being said, Wellman offers a complex and arguably unclear perspective on the true “start” of the movement; she states that the 1848 convention was the “first” example of an organized women’s rights meeting, yet later in the article, she recalls the organized efforts of Ernestine Rose and other reformers in the 1830s.³⁰ In her conclusion, Wellman attributes Stanton’s presence in Seneca Falls to a “historical accident,” arguably making clear once again that the true start of organization began with pre-1848 efforts and connections, rather than a sudden burst of political organization.³¹

Overall, despite some unclear language, Wellman reframes the 1848 convention as a complex but inevitable product of existing reform networks. By placing more emphasis on pre-1848 influences, Wellman strengthens the revisionist narrative that the movement’s true organizational origins were far more diffuse and long-term in scope.

Like Wellman’s 1991 article, which demonstrates pre-1848 continuity through preexisting reform networks, Lori D. Ginzberg’s 2005 book, Untidy Origins: A Study of Woman’s Rights in Antebellum New York, redirects the revisionist narrative to the pre-1848 grassroots level. Ginzberg starts her argument with the full-text inclusion of an 1846 petition calling for “the elective franchise to women.” This petition was written by six women, none of whom were organizers of the 1848 convention.³² As part of her methodology, Ginzberg calls attention to pre-1848 examples to substantiate her claim that the origins of the women’s rights movement are far from simple and cannot be traced back solely to the 1848 convention. Ginzberg uses these historical examples to highlight pre-1848 rhetoric, addressing the same two rhetorical requirements cited by Coughlin and Coughlin in support of an earlier “start date.”³³

While Ginzberg recognizes the 1848 convention as an important event, she places it in the context of several pre-1848 events. These relevant events included the legal movement created by the suffrage and citizenship discourse at the 1829 Virginia Constitutional Convention and the 1830s–1840s women’s textile workers' petitions, which called for ten-hour workdays and the ability to form unions, demanding their rights be acknowledged.³⁴Although Ginzberg’s argument centers on the presence of organized women’s rights efforts in nineteenth-century New York primarily before 1848, she traces her timeline back as far as Abigail Adams’s famous 1776 plea to “remember the ladies.”³⁵ By integrating political actions that predate and relate to the issues discussed at the 1848 convention, such as demands for labor rights and constitutional inclusion, Ginzberg functionally redates the women's rights movement’s starting point.

When Ginzberg uses the presence of petitioning and grassroots records to demonstrate the existence of organized and explicit demands that predate the convention, she successfully validates the revisionist narrative of "untidy origins,” suggesting that the movement’s true roots were far more decentralized, widespread, and older than the singular event of Seneca Falls.

The final, most contemporary piece of scholarship within the revisionist narrative is Lisa Tetrault’s 2014 book, The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Tetrault delivers one of the most powerful revisionist critiques by shifting the narrative almost completely away from the events of history and toward what she argues is its manufactured memory. Tetrault’s method is unlike others in the revisionist camp; she does not attempt to argue for an earlier “starting point,” focusing instead on tracing where the traditionalist narrative originated in the first place. She states as early as her introduction that the often-told narrative surrounding the Seneca Falls convention is primarily a “triumphant mythology.”³⁶ It is also important to note that while the bulk of Tetrault’s book is concerned with tracking the development of this memory, she does not attempt to make a definitive claim regarding the exact starting point of the women’s rights movement, crediting instead a multitude of pre-1848 examples of organized efforts.³⁷

As part of her pursuit of the origins of the Seneca Falls “mythology,” Tetrault spends considerable time discussing the actions of key convention figures later in their lives. She pays particular attention to the roles that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony played in their own work, History of Woman Suffrage.³⁸ Tetrault also examines competing statements from other key figures, such as Lucy Stone. Based on her study, Tetrault claims that the mythology around the memory of the Seneca Falls convention was largely created in the elitist interests of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.³⁹ However, it is also important to note that in Tetrault’s pursuit of tracing the narrative back to its origins, she does not attempt to negate or discard the women’s efforts; rather, she recognizes the immense complexity and pressures that influenced the way Seneca Falls was remembered.⁴⁰ By demonstrating that the traditionalist narrative was a calculated political mythology intentionally constructed by suffrage leadership to serve individual interests, Tetrault's work delivers a final revisionist blow, effectively attempting to deconstruct the entire foundation of the traditionalist narrative.

While united by their fundamental rejection of the 1848 convention as the women’s rights movement’s absolute starting point, revisionist historians employ distinct methodologies to suggest that the movement's origins are more decentralized and continuous. The initial challenge, presented by Melder in 1977, established this framework by rooting the movement in pre-1848 social forces; he used evidence of women’s organizational efforts in various earlier reform movements and existing rhetoric, such as the writings of Catharine E. Beecher, to argue for a culmination origin history rather than a sudden birth history. Similarly, in 1999, Wellman analyzed the elite social networks that existed among reformers, arguing that the convention was the product of preexisting conditions. Ginzberg continues this argument by shifting her methodology to engage with evidence at the grassroots level, using the example of petitioning by ordinary women before 1848 to suggest that the movement was already well underway. In contrast, DuBois’s 1978 work stands as the outlier among her revisionist peers; she dismisses pre-1848 events to argue that the true origins of the women’s rights movement developed in a post-Civil War society. Finally, the work of Tetrault in 2014 provides another unique critique, arguing that the traditionalist narrative is largely a manufactured political mythology created by the convention's key figures in an effort to simplify and control the memory of the movement’s complex past. Overall, the revisionist narrative is far from uniform.

The historiography surrounding the 1848 Seneca Falls convention is defined by a fundamental conflict between two distinct narratives. On one side, the traditionalist narrative relies on rhetorical, biographical, and contextual analysis to reinforce the “genesis” or “birth” thesis, emphasizing the convention's apparently unprecedented action and the individual vision of its founders. On the other side are the revisionists, who utilize methodologies focused on larger social forces, grassroots activism, and the influence of historical memory to suggest that the convention was a culmination of decades-long, decentralized, preexisting efforts. Because of this split in the historiography, the convention's lasting significance is twofold: it was a powerful and pivotal event that successfully launched a larger national political movement, and it remains a subject of continuous scholarly struggle over historical memory and causal significance.

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1. Coughlin, Elizabeth Myette, and Charles Edward Coughlin. “Convention in Petticoats: The Seneca Falls Declaration of Woman's Rights.” (Today's Speech 21, no. 4 1973), 17. ↩
2. Ibid. ↩
3. Coughlin and Coughlin, “Convention in Petticoats: The Seneca Falls Declaration of Woman's Rights,” 17-18. ↩
4. Coughlin and Coughlin, “Convention in Petticoats: The Seneca Falls Declaration of Woman's Rights,” 18. ↩
5. Coughlin and Coughlin, “Convention in Petticoats: The Seneca Falls Declaration of Woman's Rights,” 22. ↩
6. Ibid. ↩
7. Gurko, Miriam. “The Ladies of Seneca Falls: The Birth of the Woman's Rights Movement.” (Macmillan, 1974), 83. ↩
8. Gurko, “The Ladies of Seneca Falls: The Birth of the Woman's Rights Movement,” 85. ↩
9. Gurko, “The Ladies of Seneca Falls: The Birth of the Woman's Rights Movement,” 101. ↩
10. Gurko, “The Ladies of Seneca Falls: The Birth of the Woman's Rights Movement,” 18. ↩
11. Miller, “Returning to Seneca Falls : the First Woman's Rights Convention & its meaning.“ 21 & 51. ↩
12. Miller, Bradford. “Returning to Seneca Falls : the First Woman's Rights Convention & its meaning.“ (Hudson, N.Y. : Lindisfarne Press, 1995,) 7. ↩
13. Bernhard, Virginia, and Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth.”The birth of American Feminism : the Seneca Falls woman's convention of 1848.” (St. James, N.Y.: Brandywine Press, 1995,) 85- 99. ↩
14. Bernhard, Virginia, and Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth.”The birth of American Feminism : the Seneca Falls woman's convention of 1848.” vii. ↩
15. Bernhard, Virginia, and Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth.”The birth of American Feminism : the Seneca Falls woman's convention of 1848.” ix. ↩
16. DuBois, Ellen Carol. “Seneca Falls Goes Public.” (The Public Historian 21, no. 2 1999,) 43–44. ↩
17. DuBois, “Seneca Falls Goes Public,” 44. ↩
18. DuBois, “Seneca Falls Goes Public,” 46. ↩
19. McMillen, Sally G., “Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Woman's Rights Movement.” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) 9. ↩
20. McMillen, “Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Woman's Rights Movement,” 10-16. ↩
21. McMillen, “Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Woman's Rights Movement,” 72. ↩
22. Melder, Keith E. “Beginnings of Sisterhood: The American Woman’s Rights Movement, 1800–1850.” (New York : Schocken Books, 1977) 49-50. ↩
23. Ibid. ↩
24. Ibid. ↩
25. Melder, “Beginnings of Sisterhood: The American Woman’s Rights Movement, 1800–1850” 113. ↩
26. Melder, “Beginnings of Sisterhood: The American Woman’s Rights Movement, 1800–1850” 129-132. ↩
27. Melder, “Beginnings of Sisterhood: The American Woman’s Rights Movement, 1800–1850” 145. ↩
28. DuBois, Ellen Carol. “Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869,” (Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1978) 63-67. ↩
29. DuBois, “Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848–1869,” 23. ↩
30. Wellman, Judith. “The Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention: A Study of Social Networks.” (Journal of women's history 3, no. 1 1991) 19. ↩
31. Wellman, “The Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention: A Study of Social Networks,” 29. ↩
32. Ginzberg, Lori D. “Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman’s Rights in Antebellum New York,” (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005) 2-3. ↩
33. Ginzberg, “Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman’s Rights in Antebellum New York,” 6-9. ↩
34. Ginzberg, “Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman’s Rights in Antebellum New York,” 33, 35-36, ↩
35. Ginzberg, “Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman’s Rights in Antebellum New York,” 30. ↩
36. Tetrault, Lisa. “The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898,” (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014) 4. ↩
37. Tetrault, “The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898,” 5. ↩
38. Tetrault, “The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898,” 112. ↩
39. Tetrault, “The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898,” 115-116. ↩
40. Tetrault, “The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898,” 118. ↩

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