Last updated: January 23, 2024
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Boston's First Woman's Rights Convention
Library of Congress
The first Woman's Rights Convention held in Boston took place on June 2, 1854.[1] Organizers and speakers included Lucy Stone, William Lloyd Garrison, Abby Kelley Foster, Wendell Phillips, and other luminaries of the abolition movement. The significance and memory of that convention, however, has been overshadowed by something else that took place that day in Boston…the public rendition of Anthony Burns.
Born enslaved in Virginia, Burns escaped slavery by stowing away on a ship bound for Boston. Empowered by the Fugitive Slave Law and in cooperation with local authorities, federal slave catchers captured Burns on May 24 and held him in the courthouse. Over the next two days, word reached the community and activists quickly organized a massive protest meeting for the night of May 26 at Faneuil Hall. As the meeting took place, a group of militant abolitionists attempted to free Burns with an assault on the courthouse. Led by Lewis Hayden, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and others, this group fought bravely against the deputies guarding the courthouse but did not succeed in freeing Burns. On Friday June 2, under heavy military guard, authorities escorted Burns down State Street from the courthouse to a ship to send him back to slavery. An estimated 50,000 people took to the streets in protest.
Advertised in The Liberator and other publications weeks before, The New England Woman's Rights Convention set for that same day called together
All who believe in the right of laborers to control their earnings; all who believe in a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work; all who believe in the equal rights of all children in the community to all public provisions for education; all who believe in the right of human beings to determine their own proper sphere of action; all who believe in the right of all to a trial by jury of their peers; all who believe that “taxation without representation is tyranny;” all who believe in the right of adult Americans to have a voice in electing the government… [2]
In History of the United States: 1814-1861 by Elisha Benjamin Andrews (1898)
Little did the attendees know that in addition to discussing and debating these crucial issues, they also would be taking part in one of the largest antislavery protests in American history with the eyes of the nation firmly fixed on Boston.
Once handling preliminary matters in the morning, Lucy Stone and others postponed the rest of the sessions until later that afternoon, so all who wanted could bear witness to the public rendition of Burns.[3] They joined the thousands lining the streets protesting the military escort of Burns back to slavery. Galvanized by this tragic and overwhelming display of repression, convention goers returned to their meetings inspired and ready for action. According to The History of Woman Suffrage:
The sympathy for Burns intensified the feelings of those present against all forms of oppression. Those who had witnessed the military parade through the streets of Boston to drive the slave...from the land of the Pilgrims where he had sought refuge, were roused to plead with new earnestness and power for equal rights to all without distinction of sex or color.[4]
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As part of the evening meeting, Lucy Stone read a letter from Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who helped lead the unsuccessful charge against the courthouse the previous week. He explained in a private letter to Stone that he would not be able to attend what would have been his first Woman's Rights Convention for fear of arrest and the hardship that it would place on his "invalid" wife. He also promised her another letter to read publicly at the meeting.[5] Stone read his words to the packed audience:
I know that in a time like this, during a week so full of startling incidents and sad forebodings, it will be hard to turn aside to think of the singular daily tragedy of woman’s wrongs. Yet if the Woman’s Rights movement is less immediately important than the abolition movement, it is because this last slavery is really first to be removed in order of time; while the slavery of woman lies deeper in the social system, is fixed more firmly in history, and all the while is far less openly delineated and expressed.[6]
Speeches and debates took place throughout the evening as these activists honed their arguments and plans of action. In addition to calls that "taxation without representation is tyranny," several of the resolutions adopted similarly embraced the rhetoric of the American Revolution. For example, one resolution read "since 'governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,' to withhold the right of suffrage from woman is a practical denial of this self-evident truth of the Declaration of Independence."[7] To accomplish their goals, action items included the formation of committees for each of the New England states to lead petitions advocating for property and voting rights for women.
While the Burns rendition clearly overshadowed and even interrupted Boston's first Woman's Rights Convention, it did not dampen the enthusiasm of the participants. Rather, it sharpened and intensified their commitment to social action. As convention attendee and activist Josephine S. Griffing reflected, those gathered in Boston that day
asserted that the brutal and infamous outrage which was being perpetrated upon Anthony Burns, and through him, upon every man and every woman of this nation...was an irrefutable argument, demanding woman’s political right on the ground of universal humanity and justice…[8]
Footnotes:
[1] Papers advertised the convention being held at Cochituate Hall on Phillips Place, Tremont Street, yet subsequent sources indicate both Meonean Hall at Tremont Temple and Horticultural Hall on School Street as locations of the convention.
[2] "Call for a Woman's Rights Convention," The Una v. 2, (1854), p. 271.
[3] Joelle Million, Woman’s Voice, Woman’s Place: Lucy Stone and the Birth of the Woman’s Rights Movement (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003): 271.
[4] The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume 1, ed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage (Project Gutenberg Online, 2009): 255, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28020/28020-h/28020-h.htm#CHAPTER_VIII
[5] National American Woman Suffrage Association, National American Woman Suffrage Association Records: General Correspondence, -1961; Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. - 1961, 1839, Manuscript/Mixed Material, https://www.loc.gov/item/mss3413200508/.
[6] "Thomas Wentworth Higginson to Lucy Stone," The Una v. 2, (1854), p. 302.
[7] "Woman's Rights Convention," The Liberator, June 16, 1854, p. 4.
[8] Antislavery Bugle, June 17, 1854, p. 2.