Thomas McClintock presided over the final session on Thursday evening, during which he read extracts from Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England that described the status of women in English common law. Short speeches by young Mary Ann McClintock and Frederick Douglass followed the reading of a poem by Cady Stanton, which was in reply to a pastoral letter signed by the ‘Lords of Creation.’ Lucretia Mott closed the meeting with an appeal to action and one additional resolution of her own: ‘The speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous and untiring efforts of both men and women, for the overthrow of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for securing to women of equal participation with men in the various trades, professions, and commerce.’ It, too, passed unanimously.

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In all, some 300 people attended the Seneca Falls Convention. The majority were ordinary folk like Charlotte Woodward. Most had sat through 18 hours of speeches, debates, and readings. One hundred of them– 68 women (including Woodward) and 32 men–signed the final draft of the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. Women’s rights as a separate reform movement had been born.

Press coverage was surprisingly broad and generally venomous, particularly on the subject of female suffrage. Philadelphia’s Public Ledger and Daily Transcript declared that no lady would want to vote. ‘A woman is nobody. A wife is everything. The ladies of Philadelphia, . . . are resolved to maintain their rights as Wives, Belles, Virgins and Mothers.’ According to the Albany Mechanic’s Advocate, equal rights would ‘demoralize and degrade [women] from their high sphere and noble destiny, . . . and prove a monstrous injury to all mankind.’ The New York Herald published the entire text of the Seneca Falls Declaration, calling it ‘amusing,’ but conceding that Lucretia Mott would ‘make a better President than some of those who have lately tenanted the White House.’ The only major paper to treat the event seriously was the liberal editor Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. Greeley found the demand for equal political rights improper, yet ‘however unwise and mistaken the demand, it is but the assertion of a natural right and as such must be conceded.’

Stung by the public outcry, many original signers begged to have their names removed from the Declaration. ‘Our friends gave us the cold shoulder, and felt themselves disgraced by the whole proceeding,’ complained Cady Stanton. Many women sympathized with the convention’s goals, but feared the stigma attached to attending any future meetings. ‘I am with you thoroughly,’ said the wife of Senator William Seward, ‘but I am a born coward. There is nothing I dread more than Mr. Seward’s ridicule.’

But Cady Stanton saw opportunity in public criticism. ‘Imagine the publicity given our ideas by thus appearing in a widely circulated sheet like the Herald!’ she wrote to Mott. ‘It will start women thinking, and men, too.’ She drafted lengthy responses to every negative newspaper article and editorial, presenting the reformers’ side of the issue to the readers. Mott sensed her younger colleague’s future role. ‘Thou art so wedded to this cause, ‘ she told Cady Stanton, ‘that thou must expect to act as pioneer in the work.’

News of the Seneca Falls Convention spread rapidly and inspired a spate of regional women’s rights meetings. Beginning with a follow-up meeting two weeks later in Rochester, New York, all subsequent women’s rights forums featured female chairs. New England abolitionist Lucy Stone organized the first national convention, held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850. Like Cady Stanton, Stone saw the connection between black emancipation and female emancipation. When criticized for including women’s rights in her anti-slavery speeches, Stone countered: ‘I was a woman before I was an abolitionist–I must speak for the women.’

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