Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement [Paperback]

In the 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 women's rights movement and change the course of history. InSeneca Falls and theOrigins of the Women's Rights Movement, Sally McMillen reveals, 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 to 1890, focusing on four extraordinary figures--Mott, 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 far-reaching 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.


Introduction
1. Separate Spheres: Law, Faith, Tradition
2. Fashioning a Better World
3. Seneca Falls
4. The Woman's Movement Begins, 1850 - 1860
5. War, Disillusionment, Division
6. Friction and Reunification, 1870 - 1890
Epilogue: Make the World Better
Appendices
The 1848 Declaration of Rights and Sentiments
Solitude of Self, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Endnotes
Index
Acknowledgments

McMillen tells the story of the woman's rights movement quite well, and her book adds to our understanding of the woman's rights movement. --Sherry H. Penney,The Journal of American History