Talk:Seneca Falls Convention

Meta text
Does that meta-text really belong in the article?:


 * This Digest places the events of the Seneca Falls Convention within the larger context of American reform movements of the 1840s, discusses the influence of the Declaration of Independence on the Convention, and provides teachers and students with a sampling of social studies curriculum resources such as primary source documents, books, articles, and lesson plans available through local libraries or the World Wide Web.

(clem 20:39, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC))

On 2 Nov 06 I found a couple of places where this article had clearly been vandalized, and I fixed those items. I think the damage was done a few weeks ago (didn't check the various drafts very carefully). It'll be interesting to see if this provokes someone to do some more damage. Tei Tetua 21:44, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Plagiarism
Most of this article seems to plagiarized from the ericdigests.org site. Is this acceptable for wikipedia? - Amorwikipedia 19:10, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
 * In this case, it appears okay. The text at ericdigests.org is apparently in the public domain, being previously published by the US government's Education Resources Information Center.  The texts at ericdigests.org are text versions of PDF documents available at the official ERIC site (here's the one used for this article: ).  As far as I can tell, the text is indeed in the public domain, even though we know who the author is.  However, you didn't ask about copyright; you asked about plagiarism.  Public domain states "Proper attribution to the author or source of a work, even if it is in the public domain, is still required to avoid plagiarism."  The source of the text, the ericdigests.org site, is linked to in the "External links" section, and has been for two-and-a-half years.  Whether that's sufficient to constitute "attribution" or not might be questioned, but it's certainly close.  =)  A more explicit explanation that much of the text came from that source may be in order, however.  Powers T 14:43, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Note about Susan B. Anthony and Women's Rights
I've edited this article a couple times to remove Susan B. Anthony's name from it. She did not attend the 1848 Convention, and was not involved in the women's rights movement at the time. She was involved in the temperance movement.

Susan B. Anthony was introduced to Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1851 by Amelia Bloomer. Bloomer and Anthony, who were working on temperance issues, came upon Stanton on a Seneca Falls street and Bloomer introduced Anthony to Stanton. A statue in Seneca Falls marks the location where the two women who would become the leaders of the suffrage movement met for the first time. But it was three years after the convention.

It's a great story -- just not the one many people believe! Martymaven (talk) 03:22, 22 June 2008 (UTC)martymaven

Was the convention at Seneca Falls specifically focused on women's rights? I believe that the first convention specifically to focus on women's rights took place in Worcester MA in 1850. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pepkoka (talk • contribs) 00:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Seneca Falls was most certainly focused on Women's Rights and has been acknowledged since it occurred that it was the first. There were many other conventions around the country in the succeeding years, as those involved in the movement sought to spread the word. The Worcester convention was an important one of those, but it probably would not have occurred if Seneca Falls hadn't happened 2 years earlier. Martymaven (talk) 03:22, 22 June 2008 (UTC)martymaven

Drastic, complete rewriting of article
I just made major changes to the article! I know this large-scale change to the article will needle some editors who were involved in its initial composition and subsequent maintenance, but it was suffering from too many hands, too much disjointedness, a profound lack of focus and too little use of cited sources. I apologize if I stepped on any toes, but I believe the subject should be treated better and presented more clearly. Cheers! Binksternet (talk) 21:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Added the dates upon which the convention occurred.
 * Added "Planning" section.
 * Added "First day" and Second day" sections to talk about the meeting itself.
 * Added "Afterward" section to discuss subsequent events and developments.
 * Added "Historiography" section to discuss how later views of the event developed and shifted.
 * Added news clippings from Library of Congress.
 * Added prior political developments affecting women
 * Added contemporary images of Stanton, Gerrit Smith, Douglass, and the historic tea table.
 * Provided inline references for Lerner and Carlacio.
 * Deleted significance of Seneca Falls location; the convention was held there because Stanton lived there and because the Wesleyan Chapel was expected to accept them. It could have been held in Auburn or Waterloo if a venue had been found.
 * Deleted Market Revolution paragraph: nothing about women's rights there.
 * Deleted extensive reference to John Locke as Stanton and the M'Clintock ladies used the United States Declaration of Independence as their model, not Locke. It was Thomas Jefferson who was influenced by Locke, originally.
 * Deleted women's reform societies as unsourced.
 * Deleted some not-very-closely-related "See also" entries
 * Deleted a slew of so-called references that weren't used in the article.

[edit] Resolutions, Declaration, grievances
This statement: "Between July 16 and July 19, at home on her own writing desk, Elizabeth Cady Stanton added a more radical point to the list of grievances and to the Resolutions: the issue of women's voting rights. To the grievances, she added "He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise."[29]" needs to be supported. I cannot find any references that say she added this on her own. [29] appears to only address the "never permitted" portion. Charleebraun (talk) 16:27, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The note about "never" is in addition to the source saying Stanton wrote the woman suffrage grievance and resolution. Judith Wellman, page 193, The road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the First Woman's Rights Convention. Wellman describes Stanton going home and, with no help from the other women, preparing the document for the convention, sharing its contents with her husband (who helped flesh it out), and composing on her own the grievance and the resolution about woman suffrage. Binksternet (talk) 20:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

New Main Picture
Is there any way we can get a different picture for this article? For a convention, a picture of a table is not optimal. --Fintelia (talk) 00:53, 1 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Imagine what a good image would be, and either create it or snap a photo of it. Binksternet (talk) 04:14, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://andreayoung82.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html. Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. John of Reading (talk) 17:07, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Women banned from speaking in public?
Article makes claims that are not proven or sourced.

"Female Quakers local to the area organized the meeting along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was not a Quaker. They planned the event during a visit to the area by Philadelphia-based Lucretia Mott. Mott, a Quaker, was famous for her oratorical ability, which was rare for non-Quaker women during an era in which women were often not allowed to speak in public."

Women were often not allowed to speak in public? I call bare assertion on this. I think this needs sourcing, or this claim should be removed. Can people cite any laws in the USA that banned women from speaking in public? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.187.175.80 (talk • contribs)


 * Women were barred by custom from speaking in public, so I doubt laws were needed. The force of society's disapproval was enough. All of this stuff is in the book sources on the topic. Binksternet (talk) 23:01, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
 * One possible book source is Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement, by Sally Gregory McMillen in 2008. Something about it is found on page 78.
 * Another book source is Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, by Douglas M Rife in 2002. Rife talks about this on page iv of the Foreword.
 * Jean H. Baker writes the matter on page 3 of Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited (2002). Hope that helps. Binksternet (talk) 23:08, 30 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Here is the testimony of a leading participant.  In 1900, at the age of 80, Susan B. Anthony wrote a magazine article that looked back on her lifetime of fighting for women's rights.  In it, she observed, "No advanced step taken by women has been so bitterly contested as that of speaking in public. For nothing which they have attempted, not even to secure the suffrage, have they been so abused, condemned and antagonized.  In this they were defying not only the prejudice of the ages, but also what the world had been taught was a divine command.  This was not because they advocated unpopular doctrines, but it extended even to conventions of school teachers and to prayer meetings themselves.  Bilpen (talk) 13:08, 3 May 2019 (UTC)