Clarina Nichols - About the Early Women's Movement

In the summer of 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott called for the first women’s rights convention ever held in the United States — or the world. Both women had been present at the 1840 anti-slavery convention in London. That humiliating experience had created a strong bond between them, even though they were as different as two women could be. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was young, brilliant, and bold, with a flair for fashion. Lucretia Mott was an older, plain-dressing Quaker revered for her work in the anti-slavery movement.

Their historic meeting was held inside a sweltering brick chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. Some 300 people gathered to discuss women’s concerns. Mrs. Stanton read a statement she called the “Declaration of Sentiments.” Modeled on the Declaration of Independence, it began with words familiar to everyone in the audience: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.”

No one at that meeting failed to notice those two added words.

For two days the women discussed their complaints. Then they passed a long list of resolutions, including a controversial demand that women be given the right to vote.

Two years later the First National Women’s Rights Convention was held in Worcester, Massachusetts. This time women and men came from as far away as Ohio and California. At that time there were so many reform-minded people working for so many different causes that the public didn’t know which ones to take seriously. Were women actually going to stand up before a public audience and speak their minds? The public was confused — but curious.

A reporter for the New York Tribune observed: “The room was crowded to excess, every seat and aisle and the space around the platform being ﬁlled, men and women standing on their feet the whole evening.”

The chief organizer of the event was a wealthy widow named Paulina Wright Davis, who had created a sensation in the East with her lectures on female anatomy. This was not a proper subject for proper ladies. Women who went to doctors in those days didn’t even undress, for that would have been immodest. With downcast eyes they described their symptoms, often with the most roundabout expressions. Mrs. Davis was trying to change that. She traveled around New England with a mannequin, which she used to teach women the female anatomy, including the names of their reproductive organs.

Mrs. Davis was a confident speaker who lectured widely, despite frequent criticism and threats. Other women, like Lucretia Mott and Ernestine Rose, were also experienced public speakers. But there were also women at that first national convention who were speaking in public for the first time. Some said they were so nervous they trembled from head to toe. Others described feeling faint and light-headed when they tried to speak. The majority had a hard time projecting their voices across the large hall.

Despite these difficulties, people in the audience were astonished by how eloquent many of the women were — and how outspoken. One speaker, Abby Price, took a global view of the situation: “In many countries we see women reduced to the condition of a slave and compelled to do all the drudgery necessary to her Lord’s subsistence,” she said. “In others she is dressed up as a mere plaything for his amusement.”

Abby Price pointed out that even gifted young girls could look forward to nothing better than mindless factory work or half-paid work as seamstresses, hat-makers, or typesetters. She claimed some women were driven into a life of prostitution in order to make a living wage.

Clarina Nichols attended the 1850 convention. She was enthralled by what she heard and saw. At one point she was so worked up that she had to go back to her room and lie down to quiet her racing heart.

As a professional journalist, she was one of the most accomplished women at the Worcester convention. Behind the scenes, she was out-going, witty, and well-informed. She served on two committees, and though she did not speak at the convention, she left a strong impression on her fellow delegates. They named her one of five vice presidents for the following year’s convention.

Over the course of two days the members of the First National Women’s Rights Convention of 1850 passed these resolutions:

•Women should have equal access to education and jobs.
•Women should receive equal pay for equal work.
•Married women should be allowed to hold and control property in their own names.
•Mothers should have equal custody rights with fathers.
•Women should be allowed to vote.

The women and men at this convention claimed these rights not only for themselves but for all black women in slavery. They asked the members of the convention to “remember the million and a half of slave women at the South, the most grossly wronged and foully outraged of all women.” They argued that people opposed to slavery should also support women’s rights. Couldn’t any logical person see that they were both about freedom and equal rights?

Frederick Douglass, the great ex-slave turned abolitionist, had no trouble supporting both causes. He came to all the early women’s rights convention and was proud to call himself a “woman’s rights man.”

Nichols signed the resolutions along with nearly 270 other women and men. No longer was she a lonely crusading editor in Vermont. Now she was part of a national women’s rights movement. She knew that sooner or later she would have to swallow her fears and step up to the podium, but she was not looking forward to it. “If my pen would serve the cause as well, I should never open my lips in public,” she said.

On October 15, 1851, at the Second National Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, Clarina Nichols made her public speaking debut. Her speech, “The Responsibilities of Woman,” was soon after issued as a pamphlet and distributed widely.