"It will be a beginning & we may hope in due time it will be followed by one of a more general character..." Lucretia Mott to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, July 16, 1848

Signers of the Declaration of Sentiments hoped for "a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country" to follow their own meeting in Seneca Falls, N.Y. In the next two years, "the infancy of the movement" included women's rights conventions in New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Local, state, and regional conventions continued through the 1850s.

The first "national woman's rights convention" in Worcester, Mass., in 1850, launched national efforts to "secure...political, legal, and social equality with man." Participants presented resolutions, made speeches, debated strategy, heard letters from advocates unable to attend and arranged for printed minutes of the meeting. They insured annual national meetings by appointing a central committee, including Antoinette Brown Blackwell, William H. Channing, Paulina Wright Davis, Abby K. Foster, Samuel J. May, J. Elizabeth Jones, Lucretia Mott, Wendell Phillips, Ernestine L. Rose, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and others, to coordinate efforts and call conventions. The changing members of this central committee served the movement throughout the decade.

In three important ways, the Seneca Falls convention influenced later conventions. The Declaration of Sentiments was read and debated, or natural rights arguments based on the Declaration of Independence similar to those adopted at Seneca Falls were passed. Signers Mary Hallowell, Lucretia and James Mott, Elizabeth M'Clintock Phillips, Amy Post, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Catherine F. Stebbins, and Martha C. Wright served in leadership positions. By 1860, the Seneca Falls agenda--to "employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf"--had been fully adopted.

Through national and local conventions to discuss "the purposes of this great movement" and celebrate "the successes which have already been achieved," activists changed society and themselves.

National Women's Rights Conventions                                                     1850 Convention