Historical Library

General Information

1850 Convention

The first National Woman's Rights Convention resolved to support "equality for all, without distinction of sex or color," setting it apart from others of its day. Contemporaries saw it as the beginning of the organized women's rights movement.

1851 Convention

Male Voices on Woman's Rights

Rediscovered Voices

Diaries

Other Materials

Report of the Massachusetts Committee on the Qualifications of Voters (1852)
Lucretia Mott's Diary of Her Visit to Great Britain to Attend the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840
Paulina Wright Davis, A History of the National Woman's Rights Movement (1870)
Harriet H. Robinson, Massachusetts in the woman suffrage movement. A general, political, legal and legislative history from 1774, to 1881 (1883) [excerpted + Appendix H: The Woman Suffrage Commemorative Convention In 1880
Catherine E. Beecher, The True Remedy for the Wrongs of Woman excerpts
"LINES TO ABBY KELLEY FOSTER," By C. Louisa Morgan, The Liberator, November 1, 1850, reprinted from the Anti-Slavery Bugle.
Controversy over the [Boston] Female Medical Education Society between "E.A.S." and Samuel Gregory in The Liberator (1850)
Advertisements from The North Star (1850) for "water cure spas" and other alternative therapies
Open letter in The Liberator on prostitution from Caroline Wells (Healey) Dall to Paulina Wright Davis
"Pity," an unsigned poem about prostitution (from The Liberator)
New York newspaper's humorous account of the Jenny Lind "Rage" (from The Liberator)
Minnie Myrtle [Nancy Cummings Johnson (1815-1852)], "Strange Things I Have Seen and Heard" and other pieces from The Myrtle Wreath or Stray Leaves Recalled (N.Y.: Charles Scribner, 1854)
"Woman's Mission," [poem] by Ebenezer Elliot. The North Star, October 3, 1850
"WOMAN'S POWER" [poem] by Frank J. Walters,Godey's Lady's Book, February 1850
"The Vacant Chair," [poem] by Richard Coe, Jr., Godey's Lady's Book, January 1850
George Denison Prentice, Prenticeana or Wit and Humor in Paragraphs, by the Editor of the Louisville Journal (1860)
"LATE, LATER, LATEST, AND HIGHLY IMPORTANT FROM CHARLESTON -- OUR SPECIAL DISPATCHES BY THE UNDERGROUND LINE" (1861) [satire of rumors of secession]
"Who's to Be President? By a Lady" [humorous poem] (1864)
"Homely Girls," Frank Leslie's Budget of Fun, January 1866
The Lady's Guide to Perfect Gentility, in Manners, Dress, and Conversation, in the Family, in Company, at the Piano Forte, The Table, in the Street, and in Gentlemen's Society. Also a Useful Instructor in Letter Writing, Toilet Preparations, Fancy Needlework, Millinery, Dressmaking, Care of Wardrobe, the Hair, Teeth, Hands, Lips, Complexion, etc. By Emily Thornwell (New York: Derby and Jackson, 1856)

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