Historical Resources

Materials Related to the 1850 Convention

• Why Commemorate the 1850 Convention?
• Call to the Convention (including list of names of those who signed the Call)
• Proceedings of the 1850 National Women's Rights Convention
• Members of the 1850 Convention
• Letters published with the Proceedings but not read aloud at the Convention
• "Argument on Woman's Rights," by H.H. Van Amringe, as reprinted in the Proceedings of the 1850 Convention
• Elizabeth Blackwell's critique of the 1850 Convention's Proceedings
• Contemporary newspaper accounts of the 1850 Convention
• [Harriet Taylor], "Enfranchisement of Women," reprinted from the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review for July 1851, Woman's Rights Tracts, . . . . No. 4 (Syracuse, 1852 or 1853) as excerpted.

Materials Related to the 1851 Convention

• Abby Kelley Foster's speech to the 1851 Convention
• Wendell Phillips' speech to the 1851 Convention
• Paulina Wright Davis' speech to the 1851 Convention

Male Voices on Woman's Rights

• BROTHER JONATHAN'S WIFE: A Lecture, by a retired editor [John Neal] (Philadelphia, 1842) as excerpted
• Adin A. Ballou, Diary for October 26, 1850
• Parker Pillsbury, "WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION AND PEOPLE OF COLOR." The North Star, December 5, 1850 [reprinted from the Pittsburgh Visitor]
• Theodore Parker, Sermon: of the public function of woman, preached at the Music hall, March 27, 1853
• Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet?" (1859)
• G. P. Webster and Thomas Nast, "A Dream of the Period," "Nast's Illustrated Almanac for 1871 (N.Y.: McLoughlin Bros., 1870), Pp.56-63

Rediscovered Voices

• Jane Grey Swisshelm
• Caroline Wells Healy Dall

Other Materials

• Report of the Massachusetts Committee on the Qualifications of Voters (1852)
• Lucretia Mott's Diary of Her Visit to Great Britain to Attend the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840
• Paulina Wright Davis, A History of the National Woman's Rights Movement (1870)
• Harriet H. Robinson, Massachusetts in the woman suffrage movement. A general, political, legal and legislative history from 1774, to 1881 (1883) [excerpted + Appendix H: The Woman Suffrage Commemorative Convention In 1880
• Catherine E. Beecher, The True Remedy for the Wrongs of Woman excerpts
• "LINES TO ABBY KELLEY FOSTER," By C. Louisa Morgan, The Liberator, November 1, 1850, reprinted from the Anti-Slavery Bugle.
• Controversy over the [Boston] Female Medical Education Society between "E.A.S." and Samuel Gregory in The Liberator (1850)
• Advertisements from The North Star (1850) for "water cure spas" and other alternative therapies
• Open letter in The Liberator on prostitution from Caroline Wells (Healey) Dall to Paulina Wright Davis
• "Pity," an unsigned poem about prostitution (from The Liberator)
• New York newspaper's humorous account of the Jenny Lind "Rage" (from The Liberator)
• Minnie Myrtle [Nancy Cummings Johnson (1815-1852)], "Strange Things I Have Seen and Heard" and other pieces from The Myrtle Wreath or Stray Leaves Recalled (N.Y.: Charles Scribner, 1854)
• "Woman's Mission," [poem] by Ebenezer Elliot. The North Star, October 3, 1850
• "WOMAN'S POWER" [poem] by Frank J. Walters,Godey's Lady's Book, February 1850
• "The Vacant Chair," [poem] by Richard Coe, Jr., Godey's Lady's Book, January 1850
• George Denison Prentice, Prenticeana or Wit and Humor in Paragraphs, by the Editor of the Louisville Journal (1860)
• "LATE, LATER, LATEST, AND HIGHLY IMPORTANT FROM CHARLESTON --
  OUR SPECIAL DISPATCHES BY THE UNDERGROUND LINE" (1861) [satire of rumors of secession]
• "Who's to Be President? By a Lady" [humorous poem] (1864)
• "Homely Girls," Frank Leslie's Budget of Fun, January 1866
• The Lady's Guide to Perfect Gentility, in Manners, Dress, and Conversation, in the Family, in Company, at the Piano Forte, The Table, in the Street, and in Gentlemen's Society. Also a Useful Instructor in Letter Writing, Toilet Preparations, Fancy Needlework, Millinery, Dressmaking, Care of Wardrobe, the Hair, Teeth, Hands, Lips, Complexion, etc. By Emily Thornwell (New York: Derby and Jackson, 1856)

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