The Seneca Falls Convention (from “Have To” History)

March 23, 2019June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Stuff You Don’t Really Want To Know (But For Some Reason Have To) About the Seneca Falls Convention (1848)…

Three Big Things:

1. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton – Denied the right to participate in the first “World’s Anti-Slavery Convention” in London in 1840, Mott and Stanton decided that if women were to be effective reformers, they’d need more rights themselves. They spearheaded the first “women’s rights convention” on record in Seneca Falls, NY, eight years later.

2. “The Declaration of Sentiments” – Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, this document (read at the convention) declared that “all men and women are created equal” and the “history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman.” It’s probably excerpted in the back of your textbook somewhere.

3. Controversy over Suffrage – Stanton was part of a contingent who wanted to push for women to be given the right to vote; Mott and other more cautious activists resisted, fearing it would be so unpopular as to harm their efforts overall. The resolution passed, however, despite having little impact on election laws at the time.

Background

The first half of the 19th century became a time of great social reform across the United States, although most movements were far more active and had much greater impact in the northern half of the young nation than the “tradition”-driven south. Temperance, prison reform, abolition, the beginnings of public education, better care for the mentally ill, and women’s rights were largely intertwined issues – sometimes conflicting but mostly supporting one another. Underlying all of these reform efforts was the idea that society (and the people within it) could be made better.

While men tended to lead most of these reform efforts, women were active in unprecedented ways. It was not unusual for reform-based organizations to vigorously debate whether or not to allow women to speak at their meetings or on their behalf publicly, weighing principle against the practical impact. Any group risked losing potential allies and essential support should they so brazenly defy social and political norms.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was a Quaker, and Lucretia Mott, who was not, were part of a group who travelled to London to take part in the first World’s Anti-Slavery Convention. While allowed to attend, they were forced to sit in the balcony and could not speak or participate. The decided that if women were to have meaningful impact in various other areas of reform, they would first need a little social and political efficacy of their own.

The Quakers believed in the “priesthood of all believers,” a particularly Protestant sort of Protestantism which meant the church as an institution went easy on the doctrinal details or authority of the clergy and heavy on the relationship with Jesus and personal Bible study. Their belief in the value of all individuals meant they were some of the earliest abolitionists and tended to be strong proponents of women’s rights. There was thus considerable support for the idea of a “women’s rights convention” from Quakers – both women and men – in the Seneca Falls area.

The Convention

The first day was intended to be exclusively for women, with men admitted on the second. Some women arrived with their children – of both sexes – and a few dozen men who hadn’t gotten the memo showed up as well. They were allowed to attend with the understanding they’d not interrupt or cause shenanigans.

Day One was largely devoted to the reading and discussion of the Declaration of Sentiments. A few changes were adopted, and it was voted on and approved by the Convention. The women then discussed a series of “resolutions” composed by multiple organizers by largely edited and finalized by Stanton. They said things like –

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 presentposition, nor their ignorance, by asserting that they have all the rights they want…
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 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…

That last one is the “right to vote” part that caused such a kerfuffle; it eventually passed along with the rest.

Day Two largely followed up on these same two documents, but with men allowed to participate this time, and there were discussions of other legalities and practicalities. Those present signed the final forms of the Declaration and the Resolutions, and there were more speeches rousing the crowd to action and on towards victory and so on and it was apparently all quite inspirational.

There were numerous other conventions across the north in subsequent months and years, some bigger and bolder, others not nearly as impressive. But the birth of them all was in Seneca Falls, New York, July 19th and 20th, 1848.

You Wanna Sound REALLY Smart? {Extra Stuff}

Mary Ann M’Clintock – Quaker woman whose name should probably join Stanton’s and Mott’s when discussing the organization and successful running of this major undertaking. M’Clintock hadn’t gone to London, but she was an active abolitionist and part of the earliest conversations in which the convention moved from “idea” to “goal.” Several of her daughters were involved as well, and her home was the site of several extensive planning sessions leading up to the convention. The original Declaration of Sentiments was drafted in her parlor and presumably with her input along with a small handful of other women present. She was voted Secretary of the Seneca Falls Convention and her husband, Thomas, served as “chair” for several sessions in which both men and women were in attendance.

Frederick Douglass – Former slave turned author, orator, and abolitionist, and who was the only African American of either sex to attend the Seneca Falls Convention. When the controversial issue of women’s suffrage was being debated, Douglass spoke in its favor and argued that he should not receive the vote unless women did as well. He recognized even then the intertwined natures of women’s rights and rights for Black Americans. It took others a bit longer.

Forever Unfit To Be A Slave (A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing, Part Two)

November 16, 2016June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

{This Post is Recycled – Reworked from a Previous Version and Reposted In It’s Updated Glory}

In Part One, I waxed eloquent about secession and the South’s stated reasons for attempting to leave. Among their many complaints – most of which involved perceived threats to slavery – was the North’s tolerance of those who snuck in and taught slaves stuff.

A little knowledge, it turns out, can be a dangerous thing.

Frederick Douglass, in his first autobiography (1845), describes his epiphany regarding education:

My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the door,—a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had never had a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to her marriage she had been dependent upon her own industry for a living. She… had been in a good degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery…

One thing Douglass’s account shares with those of Solomon Northup, Harriet Jacobs, and others, is their insistence that not all slave-owners were naturally cruel and evil people. They avoid neatly dividing people into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and instead focus on the system, and its effect on those involved – slave or free, black or white.

Rather than letting a few slaveholders off the moral hook, it puts the rest of us on it. When the problem is bad people, we’re safe because we’re not them. When the problem is something larger, something systemic, which we either ignore or tolerate, we’re no longer absolved.

Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters…
Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he said… “A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world.”

Mr. Auld was no fool. He knew that control – whether of populations or individuals – begins through the information to which they have access. Whoever controls knowledge controls everything else – especially when it comes to maintaining a system based on privilege and inheritance.

You know, like the one we pretend we don’t have today.

”Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.”

Mr. Auld is at least honest. Rather than claim young Frederick CAN’T learn, the problem is very much that he CAN – and as things stand, that helps no one. Raised expectations are a curse both ways.

These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought…

Isn’t that what the best learning does? Challenge everything, and force you to separate the assured from the assumed?

I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man… From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it…

If your room under the stairs is all you’ve ever known, you may not be happy, but you can hardly fathom more. Once you’ve gone to a museum or zoo, your horizons are forever altered – there are things out there of which you didn’t know. And Hogwarts… still full of limits, but compared to the room under the stairs…?

There’s nothing wrong with learning to be content with what you have, but that’s a choice we can only make if we have some glimpse of the alternatives. Until then, you’re just… stuck.

Douglass started tasting something bigger than he’d known, and for the first time found himself able to give form to his sense of bondage.

I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got hold of a book entitled “The Columbian Orator.” Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter, I found in it a dialogue between a master and his slave.
The slave was represented as having run away from his master three times. The dialogue represented the conversation which took place between them, when the slave was retaken the third time. In this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to say some very smart as well as impressive things in reply to his master—things which had the desired though unexpected effect; for the conversation resulted in the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master…

Slavery is bad, and running away was illegal. Talking back to one’s master was dangerous and not to be advised – it was unlikely to lead to your emancipation. All this book lacked to be utterly perverse by the standards of the day were zombies and a gay shower scene. And yet, Douglass discovered benefit in reading this work of subversive fiction.

Douglass connected with a character who was in some ways like himself – not in wise words or holy determination, but in the ways his life sucked, like being a slave. This fictional character, however, was able to demonstrate at least one possible way to endure or even flourish in the ugly, imperfect situation in which he was mired. He resonated far more than an idealized hero-figure of some sort could have, belching platitudes while fighting off the darkness with patriotic pluck.

Douglass became who he was partly because of a banned book.

The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than the one of which I was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men.

Here’s the number one reason governments and religions and parents and schools ban whatever they ban. It’s nearly impossible to maintain the illusion you’re doing someone a huge favor by keeping them locked under the staircase once they’ve visited Hogwarts – even by proxy. The power to question is the power to overcome.

As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out.
In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Anything, no matter what, to get rid of thinking!

Finally, something our elected representatives could support.

Douglass went on to become one of the most powerful speakers and important writers of the 19th century. He also turned out to be a pretty good American, despite his dissent regarding any number of issues.

Turns out you can do that.

Learning is dangerous, but not to the person doing the learning. It can hurt along the way, but you usually end up better off for it.

Learning is dangerous to men whose ideas lack sufficient merit or whose systems lack sufficient substance to maintain their influence over people once they have other options.

Schoolhouse Rock intoned in the 1970’s that “It’s great to learn – ‘Cause Knowledge is Power!” A few thousand years before, Jesus of Nazareth had promised his followers that “you will know the truth, and the truth will set your free.” He was speaking most directly of Himself and salvation, but the principle echoes past the specifics.

In a time of strict codes and limited freedom, He offended the churchiest of them with his associations, the liberties he took with the law designed to protect them from damnation, and by suggesting we might not need holy arbiters any longer to find our way.

At the risk of getting preachy, the curtain tore long before Martin Luther nailed his complaints to the door.

Perhaps the Scribes and Pharisees had underlying good intentions, being naturally rooted in the ways of Old Testament law. They grew up under a God who’d kill you for touching His ark, even if it was to prevent it falling to the ground. We’ll cut them some slack.

The Inquisitions and Puritans and Assigners of Scarlet Letters in New Testament times have no such excuse. If their faith is what they claim, it’s a faith based on light and truth and – above all – informed choice. Jesus and Paul may not have had much in common, but there’s no record of either lying or hiding something they didn’t want the world to see. They had enough faith in their message that it could withstand freedom of choice. They didn’t want to capture anyone who didn’t wish to be won.

You don’t make better citizens or better Christians by hiding or prohibiting things you don’t want them to know. You can’t strengthen faith by torturing those who sin. You certainly can’t narrow the gap between young people and American ideals by doing a better job bullsh*tting them.

It’s wrong to even try, of course, but it also just doesn’t work.

Let’s have a little faith in our spiritual ideals, and our foundational values as a nation. Let’s offer enough light and live enough of an example that we can risk letting those we love have a little freedom. If they come back…

Well, you know the rest.

RELATED POST: I’d Rather Be Aquaman

A Little Knowledge, Part Two – Forever Unfit

February 22, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 4 Comments

A little knowledge, it turns out, is a dangerous thing.

Frederick Douglass, in his first autobiography (1845), describes his epiphany regarding education:

My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the door,—a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had never had a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to her marriage she had been dependent upon her own industry for a living. She… had been in a good degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery…

Rather than letting a few slaveholders off the moral hook, it puts the rest of us on it. When the problem is bad people, we’re safe because we’re not them. When the real problem is something larger, tolerated by us all…

Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters…
Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he said… “A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world.”

You know, like the one we pretend we don’t have today.

”Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.”

These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought…

Isn’t that what the best learning does? Challenge everything, and force you to sort the assured from the assumed?

I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man… From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it…

There’s nothing wrong with learning to be content with what you have, but that’s a choice we can only make if we have some glimpse of the alternatives. I may wish I were rich, but as I endure Kardashians and Trumps, there are trade-offs I’m not willing to take to get there.

How many Hobbits, Starfighters, Wizards, or Divergents have begun their journeys only upon recognizing the nature of their limitations? Bilbo may wish to retire to the Shire in peace, but true contentment is only possible after gaining the freedom and perspective to make an honest choice.

Until then, you’re just… stuck.

Douglass started tasting something bigger than he’d known, and for the first time found himself able to give form and meaning to his sense of bondage.

I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got hold of a book entitled “The Columbian Orator.” Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter, I found in it a dialogue between a master and his slave.
The slave was represented as having run away from his master three times. The dialogue represented the conversation which took place between them, when the slave was retaken the third time. In this dialogue, the whole argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by the master, all of which was disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to say some very smart as well as impressive things in reply to his master—things which had the desired though unexpected effect; for the conversation resulted in the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master…

Slavery is bad, and running away was illegal. Talking back to one’s master was dangerous and not to be advised – it was unlikely to lead to your emancipation. All this book lacked to be utterly perverse were zombies and a gay shower scene. And yet, Douglass discovered benefit in reading this work of subversive fiction.

Douglass connected with a character who was in some ways like himself – not in wise words or holy determination, but in the ways his life sucked, like being a slave. This fictional character, however, was able to demonstrate at least one possible way to endure or even flourish in the ugly, imperfect situation in which he was mired. He resonated far more than an idealized hero-figure of some sort could have, belching platitudes while fighting off the darkness with patriotic pluck.

Douglass became who he was partly because of a banned book.

The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more painful than the one of which I was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men.

Here’s the number one reason governments and religions and parents and schools ban whatever they ban. It’s nearly impossible to maintain the illusion you’re doing someone a huge favor by keeping them locked under the staircase once they’ve visited Hogwarts – even by proxy. The power to question is the power to overcome.

As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out.
In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Anything, no matter what, to get rid of thinking!

Finally, something our elected representatives could support.

Douglass went on to become one of the most powerful speakers and important writers of the 19th century. He also turned out to be a pretty good American, despite his dissent regarding any number of issues.

Turns out you can do that.

Learning is dangerous, but not to the person doing the learning. It can hurt along the way, but you usually end up better off for it.

Learning is dangerous to men whose ideas lack sufficient merit or whose systems lack sufficient substance to maintain their influence over those with other options.

Schoolhouse Rock intoned in the 1970’s that “It’s great to learn – because Knowledge is Power!” A few thousand years before, Jesus of Nazareth had promised his followers that “you will know the truth, and the truth will set your free.” He was speaking most directly of Himself and salvation, but the principle echoes past the specifics.

In a time of strict codes and limited freedom, He offended the churchiest of them with his associations, the liberties he took with the law designed to protect them from damnation, and his words suggesting we might not need the holy arbiters any longer to find our way.

At the risk of getting preachy, the curtain tore long before Martin Luther nailed his complaints to the door.

Perhaps the Scribes and Pharisees had underlying good intentions, being naturally rooted in the ways of Old Testament law. They did grow up under a God who’d kill you for touching his ark, even if it was to prevent it falling to the ground. We’ll cut them some slack.

The Inquisitions and Puritans and Assigners of Scarlet Letters in New Testament times have no such excuse. If their faith is what they claim, it’s a faith based on light and truth and – above all – informed choice. Jesus and Paul may not have had much in common, but there’s no record either ever lied or hid anything they didn’t want the world to see. They didn’t want to capture anyone who didn’t wish to be won.

You don’t make better citizens or better Christians by more effectively blinding them to the things you don’t wish them to know. You can’t strengthen faith by torturing those who violate social norms, or even sin. You can’t narrow the gap between young people and American ideals by doing a better job bullsh*tting them.

It’s wrong, of course, but it also just doesn’t work.

Let’s have a little faith in our spiritual ideals as well as our values as a nation. Let’s offer enough light and live enough of an example that we can risk letting those we love have a little freedom. If they come back – well, you know the rest.

RELATED POST: I’d Rather Be Aquaman