Abstract
The World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 is remembered most as the event that inspired Lucretia Coffin Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to organize the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention. Few scholars, however, have analyzed the debate proceedings that ultimately resulted in women’s exclusion from the convention. An analysis of the convention proceedings questions Wendell Phillips’ strategy of speaking on behalf of the women, arguing instead that William Lloyd Garrison’s strategy of silence was the more rhetorically astute response to the exclusion of women. Garrison’s silent protest not only attracted more attention to the women’s rights cause, but also inspired women to speak on their own behalf.
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Notes
In order to present the most reliable account of the debate over the “woman question” at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention, all references to the delegates’ statements, names, credentials, and countries have been taken from the transcripts published in the Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention, Called by the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and Held in London from Friday June 12th, to Tuesday, June 23rd, 1840, microfilm edition [34]. Partial transcripts of the convention proceedings are available in the History of Woman Suffrage [44: 50–62] and in the June 17, 1840, issue of the Anti-Slavery Reporter [2: 132–39]
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Lisa Shawn Hogan studies the history and rhetoric of the women’s rights movement.
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Hogan, L.S. A Time for Silence: William Lloyd Garrison and the “Woman Question” at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention. Gend. Issues 25, 63–79 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-008-9054-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-008-9054-8