Feminism, First Wave

The first women's rights convention advertises itself as "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman".

Held in Seneca Falls, New York, it spans two days over July 19–20, 1848.

Attracting widespread attention, it will soon be followed by other women's rights conventions, including the Rochester Women's Rights Convention in Rochester, New York, two weeks later.

In 1850 the first in a series of annual National Women's Rights Conventions will meet in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Female Quakers local to the area have organized the meeting along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who is not a Quaker.

They had planned the event during a visit to the area by Philadelphia-based Lucretia Mott.

Mott, a Quaker, is famous for her oratorical ability, which is rare for non-Quaker women during an era in which women are often not allowed to speak in public.

The meeting comprisea six sessions including a lecture on law, a humorous presentation, and multiple discussions about the role of women in society.

Stanton and the Quaker women present two prepared documents, the Declaration of Sentiments and an accompanying list of resolutions, to be debated and modified before being put forward for signatures.

A heated debate springs up regarding women's right to vote, with many—including Mott—urging the removal of this concept, but Frederick Douglass, who is the convention's sole African American attendee, argues eloquently for its inclusion, and the suffrage resolution is retained.

Exactly one hundred of approximately three hundred attendees sign the document, mostly women.

The convention is seen by some of its contemporaries, including featured speaker Mott, as one important step among many others in the continuing effort by women to gain for themselves a greater proportion of social, civil and moral rights, while it is viewed by others as a revolutionary beginning to the struggle by women for complete equality with men.

Stanton considers the Seneca Falls Convention to be the beginning of the women's rights movement, an opinion that will be echoed in the History of Woman Suffrage, which Stanton co-writes.

The convention's Declaration of Sentiments becomes "the single most important factor in spreading news of the women's rights movement around the country in 1848 and into the future", according to Judith Wellman, a historian of the convention.

By the time of the National Women's Rights Convention of 1851, the issue of women's right to vote will have become a central tenet of the United States women's rights movement.

These conventions will become annual events until the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.

Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin Dudevant, writing pseudonymously as George Sand, champions women’s rights in her novel Mauprat; in Le Meunier d’Angibault, she examines socialism and republican ideals.