Eunice Newton Foote, Scientist and Inventor

Eunice Newton Foote, scientist and inventor (born 17 July 1819)

Writing about Eunice Newton Foote as part of the New York Times "Overlooked No More" series, John Schwartz notes that her "ingenious experiment more than 150 years ago yielded a remarkable discovery that could have helped shape modern climate science had she not been overshadowed."

Eunice Foote's 1856 paper , published in
the American Journal of Science and the Arts

Could have, Schwartz says, because "the scientific paper she published that might have added her name to the pantheon of early climate scientists was quickly forgotten, and she faded into obscurity. There isn’t even a known photograph of her today."

Now, however, Eunice Newton Foote's name and her scientific observations have begun to gain recognition, as the "overlooked no more" obituary demonstrates. Better late than never?

Born in Goshen, Connecticut, Eunice Newton was the daughter of the wonderfully named "Isaac Newton." (He was actually "Isaac Newton Jr.," the son of a farmer named Isaac Newton, also from Goshen). Her mother's given name was Thirza (her surname is unknown). 

Together Isaac and Thirza Newton had eleven children and, at some point, Newton relocated from Goshen to East Bloomfield, New York. The family's fortunes rose and fell--at one point Isaac Newton seems to have become wealthy (due to his "large and bold" speculation), but at the time of his death, he "was much embarrassed with debt."

While nothing is known of Eunice Newton's childhood, records indicate that she was enrolled at the Troy Female Seminary from 1836 to 1838. While there, she seems to have attended science lectures at Rensellaer School, co-founded by Amos Eaton, a man dedicated to the belief that women should be educated in the sciences.

In 1841, Eunice Newton married Elisha Foote. The couple had two daughters, Mary, born in 1842, and Augusta, in 1844. 

Elisha Foote, a lawyer and inventor, had been trained in the law by Daniel Cady, the father of the suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Elisha Foote practiced law and then became a judge in Seneca Falls, New York. It should be no surprise, then, that both Elisha and Eunice Newton Foote attended the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, signing the "Declaration of Sentiments." Along with Stanton, Eunice Foote prepared the proceedings of the convention for publication.

Signatories of the "Declaration of Sentiments,"
Seneca Falls Convention;
Eunice Newton Foote's name is fifth on the list

By 1856, Eunice Newton Foote had written a scientific paper that was accepted for presentation at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Through a series of experiments, she had demonstrated the effect of the sun on various gases, in the process discovering that carbon dioxide became hottest. She then theorized about the effect of these gases on the earth's atmosphere, concluding that “An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature.”

Though her paper had been accepted for presentation at the association's meeting, as a woman Foote was not able to present it herself. Instead her paper was read by Joseph Henry, director of the Smithsonian Institution.

About the "gender disparities" that were apparent in this arrangement, Leila McNeill writes:

At the meeting, Henry appended Foote’s paper with his own added preface: “Science was of no country and of no sex. The sphere of woman embraces not only the beautiful and the useful, but the true.” The introduction, intended to praise Foote, more than anything highlights her difference as a woman in a sea of men, indicating that her presence among them was indeed unusual and needed justification. Even Scientific American’s praise of Foote’s paper was included in a column two pages after the AAAS meeting report. Though both Henry and Scientific American seemed to see Foote as an equal in scientific endeavors, she was still kept separate from the fold.

In 1857, Foote published a second scientific paper, "On a New Source of Electrical Excitation," in the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

In addition to her scientific experimentation, Foote received a patent for a rubber filling to improve the soles of boots and shoes (intended to "prevent the squeaking of boots and shoes"), and she developed a machine to improve paper making. 

According to a genealogical study of the Newton, Eunice Newton Foote was also a portrait and landscape painter. 

She died on 30 September 1888, just sixty-nine years old. 

For understanding Eunice Newton Foote's scientific achievement (and the reasons why her achievements were "lost"), I recommend Leila McNeill's Smithsonian essay, quoted above (click here) and John Perlin's "Foote-Note" on "the hidden history" of climate science (click here).

There is a short film, Eunice, available by clicking here. Also online is a presentation from the "Science Knows No Gender: In Search of Eunice Foote" symposium (UC Santa Barbara, 2018), particularly interesting for information about Foote's education, about Adam Eaton, and about the Troy Female Seminary (click here).

Update, 17 November 2021: As part of its "Retropolis" series, the Washington Post has just published another piece on the accomplishments--and disappearing--of Eunice Foote. Click here to read Gillian Brockell's "Did the 'father of climate science' steal his discovery from Eunice Newton Foote?" (The "Retropolis" series focuses on "the past, rediscovered.")

Update, 22 September 2022: This week's episode on the BBC's The Forum, hosted by the amazing Bridget Kendall, is "A Forgotten Founder of Climate Science: Eunice Newton Foote." To listen, click here.

Alice Bunker Stockham, Dress Reform, and "Karezza"

Alice Bunker Stockham (died 3 December 1912)

I first came across the name of Alice Bunker Stockham in connection with the Rational Dress Movement--a nineteenth-entury reform movement that I knew nothing about. (Which shouldn't be surprising, since, in my academic life, I was [I guess I still am] a medievalist--the nineteenth century is usually way too modern for my taste.)

Alice Bunker Stockham

Anyway, the movement to reform women's dress--to free women from the unhealthy and constrictive clothing in which they were imprisoned--began in the United States and in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century, arising at the same time as and in connection with the suffrage movement.

It also involved many of the same women, including, in the United States, Sarah Grimké, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, for example.

The aims of the reformers were to free women from the dictates of fashion (which didn't--and doesn't--seem to have been successful, at least if you spend any time at all looking at the women in music videos, on the red carpet, or, for that matter, in college classrooms), but especially from the devastating physical effects of corsets and "tight lacing." 

Throughout history, western women have engaged in various ways of shaping their torsos through corsets and lacing--at the turn of the sixteenth century, in the lessons she writes for her daughter, Anne of France is already warning Suzanne about the dangers of tight-lacing, which, she says, is not only ridiculous but will damage her health! And lest you think we are way past that today, check out all the five-star Amazon reviews for this "double steel boned," heavy-duty "waist-trainer" corset--with its "26 . . . steel bones," "4 rigid steel bars," and “waist tape for waistline support."

Perhaps the most well-known name associated with the efforts to reform women's clothing is that of Amelia Bloomer (1818-1894), who in 1849 introduced her trouser-like "bloomers" in order to free women from the excessive weight of their crinolines--the combined weight of a woman's skirt and petticoats meant that pounds, perhaps as many as thirteen pounds, were hanging off of a woman's waist. The development of the caged crinoline in mid-century did serve to reduce that weight (in 1857, Bloomer adopted it in favor of the garments she had devised), but that did not end the efforts to reform women's clothing. 

Despite the ridicule and hostility directed at those who had worn bloomers, a National Dress Reform Association was organized in the United States in 1856, advocating various modified, more freeing and "hygienic" dress styles for women. (Though even these reformed styles meant women were still wearing several pounds' worth of undergarments.) The group ultimately disbanded, since the idea of trousers seemed to present an insurmountable object.

But the reform movement reignited in the 1870s, principally in reaction to the introduction of the bustle, adding an iron cage and looped fabric in yet another distortion of the natural female body. In London, the Rational Dress Society was formed in 1881, promoted by Florence Pomeroy, viscountess Harberton, and the New Zealand feminist Eliza Mary King. Its stated goals:

The Rational Dress Society protests against the introduction of any fashion in dress that either deforms the figure, impedes the movements of the body, or in any way tends to injure the health. It protests against the wearing of tightly-fitting corsets; of high-heeled shoes; of heavily-weighted skirts, as rendering healthy exercise almost impossible; and of all tie down cloaks or other garments impeding on the movements of the arms. It protests against crinolines or crinolettes of any kind as ugly and deforming. . . . [It] requires all to be dressed healthily, comfortably, and beautifully, to seek what conduces to birth, comfort and beauty in our dress as a duty to ourselves and each other.

(For a report on King's visit to Canada and the United States in 1884, reported in the New York Times,click here--the story is found on page 5, along with other important news like "Hot Days in Saratoga," "Chicago's Summer Races," and "A Priest's Study Robbed").

Now to Alice Bunker. Born in Ohio in 1833, she was certainly an advocate for dress reform--as I said, it was in the context of the nineteenth-century dress reform movement that I first ran across her name. But, wow! Reading just a bit about her, reforming women's clothing is the least of her many efforts on behalf of women.

Alice Bunker enrolled in and graduated from Olivet College in Michigan, founded in 1844 by Congregationalists and dedicated to promoting education to students regardless of sex, race, or financial means. (It was, at first, denied accreditation because of its support of the cause of abolition.)

Bunker then attended Eclectic Medical College in Cincinnati, where she earned her M.D. in 1854, the fifth woman in the United States to become a doctor. ("Eclectic medicine" was a recognized branch of American medicine that promoted botanical remedies and physical therapy.) She married G. H. Stockman in 1857, then received more training at the Chicago Homeopathic Medical College, which opened in 1876. 

In her Chicago medical practice, Stockham focused on gynecology and obstetrics. Her 1884 Tokology, a Book for Every Woman (the title, tokology, from the Greek word for "obstetrics) was a practical book for women that recommended a high-fiber diet and exercise for pregnant women, that recommended pregnant women abstain from sex (such "continence" is good for their health), and that denounced women's corsets. 

Stockham acknowledged women's natural sexuality and denounced the sexual double standard:

When woman only is taught that virtue is the brightest jewel in her crown, when the popular verdict is that womanliness and modesty are synonymous for repression, when she lives in fear of maternity and believes restraint on her part prevents vitality of life germs, when, too, erroneous habit pervert every function, how can we tell what is natural for her?

Then, on the other hand, when man is taught that virtue is not synonymous with manliness, when the passions are stimulated by unnatural habits of living, by impure conversation, thoughts, books and practices, can we say this strength of passion is purely natural and healthy?

Stockham was also an advocate of masturbation as healthy for both men and women.

Stockham distributed her privately printed book to poor women and to prostitutes in order to promote their well-being and, if possible, to reduce unwanted pregnancies. Each copy of her book came with a certificate that entitled a woman to a free gynecological exam at Stockham's clinic. Stockham's book was translated into French, Finnish, German, and Russian (with a preface by Leo Tolstoy).

Her book also included lots of practical advice for women, including recipes, patterns for baby clothing, and lists of items necessary for childbirth, including an "abundant supply" of soft rags, "large and clean," as well as "two yards of rubber cloth for protecting the bed, a fountain syringe, a hot water bottle, safety pins, antiseptic, absorbent cotton, glycerine, arnica, ammonia, carbolic and castile soap, calenduline, olive oil and cosmoline."

In 1896, she published Karezza: Ethics of Marriage (the title, karezza, from the Italian word for carezza, "caress"), in which she laid out "a theory of conjugal life, in which there is a love communion between husband and wife from which results a mastery of the physical": "Karezza signifies 'to express affection in both words and action,' and while it fittingly denotes the union that is the outcome of deepest human affection, love's consummation, it is used technically throughout this work to designate a controlled sexual union." It is not a matter of self-control, but of mutual control. Karezza did not necessarily result in orgasm ("Unless procreation is desired, let the final propagative orgasm be entirely avoided"); rather, the goal was sexual desire and pleasure.

Stockham developed her ideas after a trip to India and her own study of Tantric sex. The goals of karezza, as she devised her plan, were to help women control their reproduction without mechanical methods of birth control, to promote women's equality (women were not to be reduced to passive objects who had to submit to their husbands' sexual desires), and to result in marital pleasure and fidelity.

In 1905, when Stockham was seventy-two years old, she was arrested on obscenity charges by Anthony Comstock, the U.S. Postal Inspector.* Under the Comstock Law, passed in 1873, 

whoever, within the District of Columbia or any of the Territories of the United States . . . shall sell . . . or shall offer to sell, or to lend, or to give away, or in any manner to exhibit, or shall otherwise publish or offer to publish in any manner, or shall have in his possession, for any such purpose or purposes, an obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, drawing or other representation, figure, or image on or of paper or other material, or any cast instrument, or other article of an immoral nature, or any drug or medicine, or any article whatever, for the prevention of conception, or for causing unlawful abortion, or shall advertise the same for sale, or shall write or print, or cause to be written or printed, any card, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind, stating when, where, how, or of whom, or by what means, any of the articles in this section . . . can be purchased or obtained, or shall manufacture, draw, or print, or in any wise make any of such articles, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof in any court of the United States... he shall be imprisoned at hard labor in the penitentiary for not less than six months nor more than five years for each offense, or fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than two thousand dollars, with costs of court.

Under this law, Comstock pursued all those who, like Stockham, distributed any kind of material about reproductive health--even anatomy books could be kept from distribution by mail.

Although she was defended by no less an advocate that Clarence Darrow, Stockham was convicted and fined, her books were banned, and the publishing house she had established was forced to close. 

  

Although Stockham did not promote the use of contraceptives, her theory of karezza was condemned in a series of letters and attacks by the Catholic church, culminating in the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office's 30 June 1952 monitum, or "solemn warning," published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, which condemned what it called "a reserved embrace."

The Sacred Congregation forbade the faithful to practice and priests and spiritual directors even to suggest that "a reserved embrace" was acceptable. Karezza was condemned because promoted “hedonism outside of a true marriage act." 

For an account of women's clothing and the efforts to "reform" it, the topic that drew me to Alice Bunker Stockham in the first place, I recommend Patricia Cunningham's Reforming Women's Fashion, 1850-1920: Politics, Health, and Art.

*Update, 30 July 2023: For Grace Haley's informative piece on the Comstock Act and the way it is being deployed by forced-birth activists and politicians today, here is a link to the essay, published at Jessica Valenti's Abortion, Every Day.

Lucretia Mott, American Activist

Lucretia Coffin Mott (died 11 November 1880)

I have mentioned Lucretia Mott's name in this blog more times than any other--you can click on the label "Lucretia Mott," below, to see where and when her name has come up in the last eleven months.  

Born on Nantucket Island in 1793, Lucretia Coffin Mott would play an integral part in key social movements for more than fifty years. 

In 1804, Lucretia Coffin entered a Quaker boarding school in New York, where she became a follower of Elias Hicks, an abolitionist. She would eventually become a teacher at the school, where she learned that women were paid less than men. And while at the Nine Partners school she met and married a fellow teacher, James Mott, in 1811.

By 1821, she had become a Quaker minister, speaking out on behalf of reform within the Society of Friends. She also became increasingly public in her opposition to slavery. But however close she became to abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, she had to face the reality that women were formally excluded from abolitionists groups. So, in 1833, she became one of the founders of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.

In 1837, as we have seen, she helped to organize the First Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women--along with women like Angelina and Sarah Grimké, she addressed audiences of men and women, and for all these women, speaking "promiscuously" caused a great deal of public opposition. Two further conventions followed, one in 1838 and another in 1839. There was so much opposition--not only were women organizing and speaking, but the convention was integrated, including black and white women and men--that a mob rioted and destroyed Pennsylvania Hall during the 1838 convention.

In 1840, Mott attended the international World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, one of six female delegates--the male delegates, however, opposed opening up their convention to women and voted to exclude their participation, so Mott was recognized only as a visitor, not a delegate. While there, Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another unseated woman delegate, decided that, on their return to the United States, they would organize a convention for women's rights. Their decision culminated, eight years later, in the Seneca Falls Convention. 

Mott spent the rest of her life advocating for the social causes she believed in. A committed pacifist, she opposed war with Mexico and the Civil War, attended meetings of the New England Non-Resistance Society, and was vice president of the Universal Peace Union, founded in 1866. In 1870, she was elected president of the Philadelphia Peace Society.

She attempted to heal the breach between suffragists after the Civil War, when the question of whether black men should gain the vote before women did, fractured the movement. 

She was elected the first president of the American Equal Rights Association, advocating for universal suffrage. Along with Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, she helped to create the National Women Suffrage Association. 

In 1876, at the time of the American Centennial, she presided at the National Women Association meeting in Philadelphia; two years later, she was at the thirtieth-anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention.

In assessing the totality of Lucretia Mott's life and work, Nancy Unger writes, "Lucretia Mott spoke frequently on the underlying unity of the various reforms she advocated": 

Mott refused to claim the moral superiority of women but was instead dedicated to achieving equality for all of America's disadvantaged and disenfranchised, including Indians, women, slaves, and free blacks. Increasingly libertarian in her religious interpretations, Mott grew to believe that a new spirit was at work in the world that demanded active involvement in reform. An enormously inspirational speaker and a tireless organizer, Lucretia Mott was one of her country's earliest, and most radical, feminists and reformers.

For Unger's essay, for American National Biography Online, click here (unfortunately, subscription is needed for access). For Mott's biography at the National Women's Hall of Fame, click here, and for the entry on Mott at the National Women's History Museum, click here.

There are several full-length biographies, but I like Carol Faulkner's biography of this "radical egalitarian": Lucretia Mott's Heresy: Abolition and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America.

The First National Women's Rights Convention

The National Women's Rights Convention (23 and 24 October 1850)

Earlier this year, we looked at the two-day convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. (If you missed those posts, click here and here.) Less well known is the first National Women's Rights Convention held in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1850.

Harriot Kezia Hunt
addressed the National
Women's Rights Convention
on the medical education
of women

About 300 people had attended the Seneca Falls Convention, which famously approved the Declaration of Sentiments. Two years later, there were 1,000 attendees for the first of what would eventually be twelve national conferences. (The tenth took place in 1860--the conventions were suspended during the years of the Civil War, the eleventh held in 1866. A gathering in Washington, D.C. was called the "twelfth National Convention" was held in January 1869.)

Many of the prominent organizers and speakers at the first convention--including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott--were still active in the 1869 gathering. Over nearly two decades, the issues remained the same: equal wages, access to education, access to work and careers, property rights, marriage rights, and, always, voting rights. Susan B. Anthony would later say that it was reading the text of the speech given by Lucy Stone that drew her to the suffrage movement.

Speakers included the abolitionist and suffragist William Lloyd Garrison, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass. (You can see the entire program and read the speeches by clicking here.) Interestingly, however, while one of the major themes of this first convention was opening the medical profession to women, physician Elizabeth Blackwell, who, she says, has "read through all the proceedings carefully," had deep reservations--"I feel a little perplexed by the main object of the Convention--Woman's Rights."

While Blackwell does express "respect and sympathy" and says she is prepared to do what she can, she also is clear that her "energy" is reserved for other causes. There were certainly deeper criticism and outright mocking from members of the press and the public. I thought I'd include here a section from the New York Herald's convention coverage, the paper's summary of "the actual designs of that piebald assemblage called the Women's Rights Convention":

1. abolish the Bible;

2. abolish the constitution and the laws of the land;

3. reorganize society upon a social platform of perfect equality in all things, of sexes and colors;

4. establish the most free and miscellaneous amalgamation of sexes and colors;

5. elect Abby Kelley Foster President of the United States and Lucretia Mott Commander-in chief of the Army;

6. To cut throats ad libitum [at their pleasure];

7. To abolish the gallows.

What struck me about this list, so fearful of women's "designs," is how closely it resembles Pat Robertson's view of feminism, from a 1992 fundraising letter (he was running for President). The "feminist agenda," he claimed, was not about equal rights: "it is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

Those women! Always wanting stuff, like equal rights. 

Lucy Stone, with a quotation from the
speech she made at the 1850 convention

Victoria Woodhull: First Female Candidate for President

Victoria California Claflin Woodhull (born 23 September 1838)

Victoria California Claflin Woodhull Blood Martin lived an extraordinary life--spiritual medium and fortuneteller, supporter of free love, advocate for women's rights, stockbroker, founder and editor of a newspaper, and the first woman to run for president, the 1872 nominee of the Equal Rights Party.

Victoria Claflin Woodhull, 1870,
photo by Matthrew Brady

But she had an inauspicious start in what became an extraordinary life--she was one of ten children born to Reuben Buckman Claflin, a one-eyed conman accused of theft, counterfeiting, and arson, a man who "could see more deviltry to do with that one eye than any two men with their four eyes." Her mother, Roxanna Hummel Claflin, was illiterate, a "religious zealot" given to praying--and cursing--loudly. 

While Victoria had almost no formal education, she was successful in her father's most lucrative business--she acted as a medium, sold various elixirs, told fortunes, and helped to "cure" all kinds of ailments. (Her sister Tennessee was once indicted for manslaughter after her patient died!)

Victoria Claflin married Canning Woodhull when she was fourteen, had two children with him, and divorced him eleven years later. She then married James Harvey Blood, probably about 1866--she would be divorced from him in 1876. Beginning in 1872, she had a long-term relationship with Benjamin Tucker, a proponent of anarchism and free love, a social movement that rejected traditional notions of marriage as a kind of slavery.

In the mean time, Victoria Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, opened a successful brokerage firm on Wall Street, Woodhull, Claflin & Co., becoming the first female stockbrokers. Then they founded a newspaper, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly. Victoria Woodhull became involved with the suffrage movement in 1869; on 11 January 1871 she became the first woman to testify before a Congressional committee--she addressed the House Judiciary Committee, arguing that women had already won the right to vote with the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

On 10 May 1872, Victoria Woodhull was nominated by the Equal Rights Party at their convention held in Apollo Hall, New York. (Frederick Douglass was nominated as vice president, but he did not attend the convention or acknowledge the nomination.) Woodhull would run again for president in 1892.

Later, however, Woodhull would lose the support of suffrage activists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton--her personal and professional life had just become too scandalous. After she divorced her second husband, Victoria Woodhull left for England.

Once in England, she continued lecturing. She married John Biddulph Martin in 1883 and turned again to publishing. Under the name of Victoria Woodhull Martin, she produced The Humanitarian, a magazine that included features about literature, politics, spirituality, and science--especially eugenics--a publication that continued from 1892 until 1901.

Woodhull retired in 1901, after her third husband's death. She died in England on 27 June 1927.

There are many biographies--but, as a place to start, I'll link you here (oops—see below) to the National Women's History Museum website, where you'll find a biography, bibliography, and links to other online resources. 

Update, 23 September 2017: Two years after writing this entry, I checked the links again, only to discover that Woodhull has been disappeared from the National Women's History Museum website! I thought that was worth noting . . . For once I'll suggest looking at the entry for Woodhull in Wikipedia--it's quite good! An excellent place to head for all of the biographical and bibliographical details, with links to primary source material.

Update, 23 September 2022: She's back! Mariana Brandman's biography of Victoria Woodhull was posted to the National Women's History Museum website this year. To access it, click here.

Update, 13 September 2025: Eden Collinsworth has just published a new biography of Woodhull, The Improbable Victoria Woodhull: Suffrage, Free Love, and the First Woman to Run for President (click here).

Seneca Falls Convention: Day Two

Seneca Falls Convention (second day, 20 July 1848)

The second day of the Seneca Falls convention saw the unanimous approval of the Declaration of Sentiments, introduced to the convention the day before, on the first day of the proceedings. Before the vote, the abolitionist Frederick Douglass spoke, as did other men, particularly to the question of women's property rights.

One of the interesting questions raised was whether men's signatures should be included--ultimately it was decided that their names should be included, but that there would be two sections, with women's signatures listed first.

The resolutions were again read and discussed, with the ninth--the one about women's voting rights--being regarded by some as the most problematic. Douglass argued that he, as a black man, would not accept the vote if women could not vote. 

For the rest of today's post, I'll include the text of the resolutions (I've set in boldface the controversial resolution on women's suffrage: 

WHEREAS, The great precept of nature is conceded to be, that "man shall pursue his own true and substantial happiness." [Sir William] Blackstone in his Commentaries [on the Laws of England] remarks, that this law of Nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this, and such of them as are valid, derive all their force, and all their validity, and all their authority, mediately and immediately, from this original; therefore,

Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way, with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of Nature and of no validity, for this is "superior in obligation to any other."

Resolved, That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of Nature, and therefore of no force or authority.

Resolved, That woman is man's equal—was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.

Resolved, That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, nor their ignorance, by asserting that they have all the rights they want.

Resolved, That inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual superiority, does accord to woman moral superiority, it is pre-eminently his duty to encourage her to speak and teach as she has opportunity, in all religious assemblies.

Resolved, That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.

Resolved, That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill-grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her appearance on the stage, in the concert, or in feats of the circus.

Resolved, That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.

Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

Resolved, That the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities.

Resolved, therefore, That, being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities, and the same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking, by any instrumentalities proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be held; and this being a self-evident truth growing out of the divinely implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be regarded as a self-evident falsehood, and at war with mankind.

As Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper would write in their four-volume History of Woman Suffrage, published in 1881:

The only resolution that was not unanimously adopted was the ninth, urging the women of the country to secure to themselves the elective franchise. Those who took part in the debate feared a demand for the right to vote would defeat others they deemed more rational, and make the whole movement ridiculous.

But Mrs. Stanton and Frederick Douglass seeing that the power to choose rulers and make laws, was the right by which all others could be secured, persistently advocated the resolution, and at last carried it by a small majority.

  

If you're looking for an overview on the Seneca Falls Convention, I recommend the excellent entry in West's Encyclopedia of American Law, available by clicking here.

Seneca Falls Convention: Day One

Seneca Falls Convention (first day, 19 July 1848)

Women's efforts to secure equality--in education, in the arts, as writers, under the law--were a centuries' long process. But we still identify the mid-nineteenth century movements in the U.S. and Great Britain as the so called first wave of feminism.

Lucretia Mott, 1841

In the United States, there is no more important event for first-wave feminism than the Seneca Falls Convention (held in Seneca Falls, New York).

There were certainly important events leading up to this momentous occasion--women's active participation in the abolitionist movement, for example, led to their taking more prominent roles in social reform, including speaking in public meetings and publishing. (We've already noted the work of Angelina and Sarah Grimké.)

Many of these women drew a parallel between  the status of enslaved people and women--a comparison that was not new, but that had been made in previous centuries by women like Mary Astell, Olympe de Gouges, and Mary Wollstonecraft, about whom I write in this blog.

In 1845 in the United States, Margaret Fuller published The Great Lawsuit, expanded as Woman in the Nineteenth Century. And we've also noted the work by Caroline Norton on behalf of women in Britain; her political activity began in the late 1830s.

But the idea of a women's rights conventions seems to have grown out of a trip by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott to London in 1840, where they attended a meeting of the World Anti-Slavery Society--where they were refused a seat as delegates in the hall and denied the opportunity to speak. The organizing and planning that followed resulted in the two-day Seneca Falls Convention.

On the first day of the meeting, in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Stanton spoke first, followed by Mott; Stanton then began the process of reading the "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions." The day was filled with discussion, alterations, and revisions.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
1848

For the rest of today's post, I'll include the complete text of the "Declaration of Sentiments":

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men—both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides. 

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women—the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

He allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.

He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and National legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions embracing every part of the country.

The announcement of the Seneca Falls Convention,
Seneca County Courier

If you're looking for an overview on the Seneca Falls Convention, I recommend the excellent entry in West's Encyclopedia of American Law, available by clicking here.

Update, 9 February 2019: For an interesting essay on the search for the original copy of the "Declaration of Sentiments," you may want to check out the New York Times piece by Liz Robbins and Sam Roberts, "Early Feminists Issued a Declaration of Independence. Where Is It Now?" You can access it by clicking here.

Carrie Chapman Catt: Suffragist, Political Activist, Organizer

Carrie Chapman Catt (co-founder, International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 3 June 1904)

Born on 9 January 1859 in Wisconsin, Carrie Clinton Lane played an important part in the American suffrage movement after becoming involved in 1887, though her role and views are not without controversy.

Carrie Chapman Catt,
1914

As Carrie Lane, she attended Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University), one of only six women in her class of twenty-seven. After her graduation in 1880, she worked as a law clerk and a teacher before becoming the first female superintendent of schools in the district of Mason City, Iowa.

In 1885 she married Leo Chapman, editor and publisher of the Mason City Republican newspaper. Shortly after their marriage, he traveled to San Francisco, where he died.

Although Carrie Chapman was not with him on the trip, she arrived a few days later and decided to remain in San Francisco, where she worked as a newspaper reporter.

She returned to Charles City, Iowa, in 1887 and joined the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association. In June 1990, she married George Catt, a wealthy engineer whom she had met in San Francisco (although he was, like his wife, a graduate of Iowa State Agricultural College). It was Catt who encouraged her to become involved in the suffrage movement at the national level.

Carrie Chapman Catt was an active member of the National American Women Suffrage Association and, in 1902, began working on the formation of an international women's group that would be formally constituted in Berlin on 3 June 1904, with Catt as the organization's first president. (The organization has been renamed several times since, and now is called the International Alliance of Women.)

New York Times, 1912

Catt continued her active political advocacy after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

After 1920, she helped to establish the League of Women Voters, and in 1923, with co-author Nettie Rogers Shuler, Catt published a history of the American suffrage movement, Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement.

She took up the pursuit of child labor laws, was actively involved in peace movements during both world wars, protested against Hitler's persecutions of the Jews in the early 1930s, well before the war began, and after World War II worked on behalf of disarmament.

But her advocacy for women did involve her in controversy. After Elizabeth Cady Stanton published The Woman's Bible in 1895, Catt was among those who broke with the NAWSA over fear that Stanton's challenge to religion's conventional views of women would alienate women of faith. Catt also made statements that support white supremacy. For an excellent essay exploring the links between white supremacy and the suffrage movement, posted by the New York Historical Society Museum & Library, click here. (The essay includes information about Catt and her activities.) 

While she was married twice, Catt lived for more than twenty years with her domestic partner Mary Garrett Hay. Catt died on 9 March 1947, choosing to be buried alongside Hay rather than either of her husbands. The single monument marking their graves reads: "Here lie two, united in friendship for 38 years through constant service to a great cause."

Her role in developing the "winning plan" to pass the Nineteenth Amendment is portrayed in the 2004 film Iron Jawed Angels.

There are several biographies, but I like Jacqueline Van Voris's Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life, published by Feminist Press. You might also be interested in Nate Levin's biography for young-adult readers, Carrie Chapman Catt: A Life in Leadership.

Phebe Ann Hanaford: Minister, Writer, Activist

Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford (born 6 May 1829)

Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford

Over the course of her long life--she died in on 2 June 1921, just two months after her ninety-second birthday--Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford accomplished a great deal. 

Born in Nantucket, she was a wife and mother, roles expected of most women of her day. But she also was well educated (taught by an Episcopalian minister who offered the girl a curriculum that included mathematics and classical languages), and she went on to become a writer, a teacher, a minister, a public speaker, a chaplain for the Connecticut legislature, and an important, if now little recognized, figure in the women's suffrage movement. 

Phebe Hanaford is also a significant figure in gay and lesbian history, identified as the "earliest certifiable lesbian minister" in the United States.

One reason for the obscurity of Hanaford today may, in fact, be due to her sexuality. According to Lisa M. Tetrault, a split at the Universalist Church of the Good Shepherd in Jersey City, after her three-year term as minster, may have been the result not of her activism on behalf of women's suffrage, as it has been conventionally explained, but because of her lesbian identity:

After separating from her husband (whom she never officially divorced), Hanaford had begun living with a woman named Ellen Miles. Newspaper clippings preserved in Hanaford's scrapbook reported that the disgruntlement among congregation members was, in fact, over Hanaford's liaison with Miles, whom the papers called the "minister's wife." Hanaford, it seems, was not simply asked to cease her women's rights activities, but more specifically, to "dismiss" Miss Miles. The split in the Jersey City congregation, then, actually appears to have been over Hanaford's intimate personal life. While we cannot know for certain the exact nature of Hanaford and Miles's relationship, their letters testify to a deep and abiding affection. The two remained life-long companions, separated after forty-four years together only by Miles's death in 1914.

Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford's published writing includes anti-slavery tracts, an 1865 life of Lincoln (it was the first biography of Lincoln to be published), and a volume of poetry.

And unlike so many of the women she had worked with to secure women the right to vote--Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Julia Ward Howe, among them--Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford lived long enough to see the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

When she died, her family buried her in an unmarked grave in Orleans, New York.

As a result of the efforts of Loretta Cody and the Reverend Sarah Barber-Braun, there is now a grave marker, funded by the New York State Universalist Convention.

There is an excellent biography: Loretta Cody's A Mighty Social Force: Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford, 1829-1921. But you might want to start with Tetrault's essay, "A Paper Trail: Piecing Together the Life of Phebe Hanaford," written for the Nantucket Historical Association.

Susan B. Anthony, Founding Mother

Susan B. Anthony (born 15 February 1820)

Abolitionist, suffragist, and social reformer, Susan Brownell Anthony campaigned tirelessly for the betterment of others. Early in her life, she was involved with her family's anti-slavery and temperance activities. She began her work on behalf of women's rights after she met Elizabeth Cady in 1851. She worked for more than fifty years to secure the vote for women--when she died on 13 March 1906, there was still more than a decade ahead for the campaign for women's suffrage.

In my last year of teaching, I listened as a young woman explained why she hadn't been in class for a week, why she didn't have her assignments complete, and why she couldn't possibly finish her work when it was due. 

"I have activism fatigue," she said. Her participation in various campus "social justice activities" meant she was just so tired and run down she had to take a break and rest. She thought her excuse was good.

It was not.

When I heard it, I thought about Susan B. Anthony's lifetime dedication and lifelong service.

She never quit work to complain that she suffered from "activism fatigue."

A tribute to Anthony: Women leave
"I voted" stickers on her tombstone

Caroline Seymour Severance, Activist and Organizer

Caroline Seymour Severance (born 12 January 1820)

Abolitionist, suffragist, social reformer and political organizer, Caroline Seymour Severance is less well known than many of the American women with whom she worked during her lifetime, women like Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony.

Caroline Severance in California,
c. 1910

Born in New York and educated in several female academies, the young Caroline Seymour was a teacher before she married Theodoric Severance in 1840.

Between 1841 and 1849, she gave birth to five children--and although we might expect her time to be fully occupied with her family, Severance later wrote that her marriage had freed her: "I was under bondage to authority, dogmas and conservative ideas until I married." 

Her husband may have been a banker but, she said, he was "very concerned with great movements to reform society, rather than simply bemoan its decaying state." She credits her marriage and family life with helping to shape her as a social reformer.

In their Cleveland home, the Severances welcomed abolitionists and women's rights activists: "We . . . became very active in the woman's rights movement of the time, attending our first convention in Akron in 1851. I was asked to prepare a tract for the Ohio Woman's Rights Association in 1853 arguing for equal property rights, and delivered it proudly at the state convention, in spite of the hooting and laughter from many of the disreputable sort who had infiltrated the audience."

The Severance family relocated to Boston in 1855 and to Los Angeles in 1875. In that Southern California city, she continued her dedication to political activism and social causes: she and her husband created the First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles in 1877, while Caroline herself worked to bring the kindergarten movement to Los Angeles, helped to establish the Los Angeles Women's Club, dedicated to improving the lives of homeless children, and founded the Los Angeles Public Library. She also helped develop the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, worked to found a local branch of the University of California (UCLA), promoted historic preservation, and opened an employment bureau.

Although she died before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, the indefatigable Severance lived long enough to see the state of California extend the suffrage to women in 1911, and she voted in the 1912 presidential election in California. She died in November 1914.

Ella Giles Ruddy's 1906 "appreciation" of Severance, The Mother of Clubs: Caroline M. Seymour Severance, is available for free at Google Books; to read or download, click here.(I linked to an Internet Archive copy, above.) California historian Virginia Elwood-Akers's 2012 full-length biography, Caroline Severance Seymour, is available at Amazon. 

Caroline Severance's grave,
Angelus Rosedale Cemetery,
Los Angeles

Update, 12 January 2023: A primary source here was Connecticut History on the Web, but that is a source that no longer exists. I've left the information in, but I’ve removed the dead links--I’m hoping that the account will be back online at some point . . . 

Update, 12 January 2025: Some of the information from Connecticut History on the Web is still accessible, thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Here is a link Constance Severance’s letter about her life, quoted above, and from this preserved capture of the now-disappeared site, you can still find a few more resources about her.