Various women lectured; such as Ernestine L. Rose—­a Polish woman, banished for asserting her liberty.  The question of women’s rights received a powerful impetus at this period from the vast number of women who were engaged in the anti-slavery agitation.  Any research into the validity of slavery perforce led the investigators to inquire into the justice of the enforced status of women; and the two causes were early united.  Women like Angelina and Sarah Grimke and Lucretia Mott were pioneers in numerous anti-slavery conventions.  But as soon as they dared to address meetings in which men were present, a tempest was precipitated; and in 1840, at the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery Association, the men refused to serve on any committee in which any woman had a part; although it had been largely the contributions of women which were sustaining the cause.  Affairs reached a climax in London, in 1840, at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention.  Delegates from all anti-slavery organisations were invited to take part; and several American societies sent women to represent them.  These ladies were promptly denied any share in the proceedings by the English members, thanks mainly to the opposition of the clergy, who recollected with pious satisfaction that St. Paul permitted not a woman to teach.  Thereupon Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton determined to hold a women’s rights convention as soon as they returned to America; and thus a World’s Anti-Slavery Convention begat an issue equally large.

Accordingly, the first Women’s Rights Convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York, July 19-20, 1848.  It was organised by divorced wives, childless women, and sour old maids, the gallant newspapers declared; that is, by Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mrs. Lucretia Mott, Mrs. McClintock, and other fearless women, who not only lived the purest and most unselfish of domestic lives, but brought up many children besides.  Great crowds attended.  A Declaration of Sentiments was moved and adopted; and as this exhibits the temper of the convention and illustrates the then prevailing status of women very clearly, I shall quote it: 

DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to such a course.