"This bolt is the most shocking and unnatural incident in the history of womanity."
- The Oneida Whig, August 1 1848, The Library of Congress "Press coverage was surprisingly broad and generally venomous, particularly on the subject of female suffrage. Philadelphia’s Public Ledger and Daily Transcript declared that no lady would want to vote. ‘A woman is nobody. A wife is everything. The ladies of Philadelphia, . . . are resolved to maintain their rights as Wives, Belles, Virgins and Mothers.’... The New York Herald published the entire text of the Seneca Falls Declaration, calling it ‘amusing,’ but conceding that Lucretia Mott would ‘make a better President than some of those who have lately tenanted the White House.’ The only major paper to treat the event seriously was the liberal editor Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. Greeley found the demand for equal political rights improper, yet ‘however unwise and mistaken the demand, it is but the assertion of a natural right and as such must be conceded.’" - Constance Rynder, HistoryNet.com |
"We need not say that we think the movement excessively silly..." - The Recorder, August 3 1848, The Library of Congress "We are sorry to see that women, in several parts of this state, are holding what they call 'Women's Rights Conventions', and setting forth a formidable list of those rights in a parody on the American Declaration of Independence. ...Now it requires no argument to show that this is all wrong. Every true-hearted female will instantly feel that it is unwomanly." - The Mechanics Advocate, August 1848, The Library of Congress |