At the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, a woman’s
rights convention—the first ever held in the United States—
convened with almost 200 women in attendance.
The convention was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, two abolitionists who met at the 1840 World Anti-
Slavery Convention in London.
As women, Mott and Stanton were barred from the convention
floor, and the common indignation that this aroused in both of
them was the impetus for their founding of the women’s rights
movement in the United States.