Analysis Of Seneca Falls Women's Right Convention By Judith Wellman

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In the article Seneca Falls Women’s Right convention the author, Judith Wellman speaks about the main causes she believes lead to the Seneca Falls Woman’s rights convention. This convention symbolized the first modern protest for woman’s rights and Wellman uses facts from the article to support her argument. For instance, Wellman states that there are three major reform organizations that pushed the people into networks before the Seneca Falls convention formed. The author identifies these networks as legal reforms, political abolitionists, and Quaker abolitionists The first network was one of the most influential, according to Wellman. It was the Legal Reformers and they worked towards the rights of married woman, like them being able to own property. Wellman believes that the Legal Reformers also brought to light other political issues. This network evolved from a statewide debate about legal rights of married Women in New York, which Wellman argued that this is what challenged people to take a look at woman’s place in society. Wellman supported this by stating that this debate brought upon two questions, “The right of married women to own property & “The right of woman as citizens to participate in in a democratic government” (Wellman 18). Wellman also states, “these two questions, of property rights and citizenship rights, although often debated separately, were integrally intertwined” (Wellman 18). In other words, what Wellman is saying is that although both of these questions differ they correlated upon another each other in a positive way. Wellman asserted that what raised even more attention to this debate was a speech given in the 1830’s that argued that married woman had the right to own property. Furthermore, they also had the right to vote and hold office. The reason why Wellman kept implying that this speech was so impactful is because when the issue was ignored, and they tried to delay passing the law it actually brought it even more attention. Furthermore, these events did lead to some success in April 1848 when the New York legislature finally passed the first Married Woman’s property act. Wellman belives that they were inspired or shamed by the protests and they finally gave in. Also, Wellman argued that this event helped form the Woman’s right convention because it was the first step to equality as well as it encouraged action. This is why Wellman believes Legal reformers were one of the most impactful networks to the Women’s …show more content…
This network was a division of people who didn’t support slavery, as well as some who did, which ultimetley caused the division. This didn’t occur in Seneca Falls, but instead in Waterloo and Wellman believes that it drew people from outside of Seneca Falls into the issue, and that is why it was an influencer. However, an event in waterloo created a breakout in religious bonds, and after the Quaker group that called themselves “friends” formed. The group “friends” is important to Wellman’s argument because they are the group who linked there issues to women’s rights. Overall, the main reason why Wellman includes them in the network is because the Quakers had a huge impact on the movement. They were one of the largest groups to sign the Seneca Falls Declaration of sediments. Without them, it would probably not have been

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