Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/72

 

The first Woman's Rights Convention on record was held in Seneca Falls, N. Y., in July, 1848; the second in Salem, O., in April, 1850; the third in Worcester, Mass., in October, 1850. By this time the movement for the civil, educational and political rights of women was fully initiated, and every year thenceforth to the beginning of the Civil War national conventions were held in various States for the purpose of agitating the question and creating a favorable public sentiment. These were addressed by the ablest men and women of the time, and the discussions included the whole scope of women's wrongs, which in those days were many and grievous.

Immediately after the war the political disabilities of the negro man were so closely akin to those of all women that the advocates of universal suffrage organized under the name of the Equal Rights Association. The "reconstruction period," however, engendered so many differences of opinion, and a platform so broad permitted such latitude of debate, the women soon became convinced that their own cause was being sacrificed. Therefore in May, 1869, under the leadership of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony, the National Woman Suffrage Association was formed in New York City, having for its sole object the enfranchisement of women. From this time it held a convention in Washington, D. C., every winter.

The above mentioned associations and conventions, as well as the American Woman Suffrage Association, formed at Cleveland, O., in November, 1869, under the leadership of Mrs. Lucy Stone, are described in detail in the preceding volumes of this History. The present volume begins with the usual convention of the National Association in Washington in 1884. This place