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Seneca Falls Convention

The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights convention. Dumenil, 2012, p. 56, which says, "The exclusion of women delegates from the London [anti-slavery] convention in 1840 had a decided impact on the events that led to the first women's rights convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, eight years later… Well before the 1848 convention, reformers had agitated for improved economic and legal rights for women". Other scholarly sources that describe Seneca Falls as "the first women's rights convention" include Wellman, 2004 (the book's title itself include those words); Isenberg, 1998, p. 1; and McMillen, 2008, p. 115. No scholarly source describes an earlier meeting as a "women's rights convention". Bonnie S. Anderson, in Joyous Greeting: The First International Women's Movement 1830–1860, Oxford University Press, 2000, makes no mention of an earlier convention in Europe or elsewhere.

The Seneca Falls convention was the first that was organized by women explicitly for the purpose of discussing women's rights as such. It was not, however, the first convention at which women's rights were among the topics that were discussed:

 * The Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in 1837 held in New York City, defended the right of women to speak out on the great issues of the day and specifically in opposition to slavery.

In June 1848, two other conventions included a discussion of the rights of women:

 * The Conference of Badasht in Persia, a foundational meeting of the Bábí religion at which Táhirih advocated women's rights, supported by Quddús and the standards set were endorsed by the Báb and Baháʼu'llah which became norms in the Baháʼí Faith and echo still in Persian culture,
 * and the National Liberty Party Convention in New York at which Gerrit Smith said that women should be able to vote. It advertised itself as "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman". Held in the Wesleyan Chapel of the town of Seneca Falls, New York, it spanned two days over July 19–20, 1848. Attracting widespread attention, it was soon 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 met in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Female Quakers local to the area organized the meeting along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was not a Quaker. They planned the event during a visit to the area by Philadelphia-based Lucretia Mott. Mott, a Quaker, was famous for her oratorical ability, which was rare for non-Quaker women during an era in which women were often not allowed to speak in public.

The meeting comprised 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 presented 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 sprang up regarding women's right to vote, with many – including Mott – urging the removal of this concept, but Frederick Douglass, who was the convention's sole African American attendee, argued eloquently for its inclusion, and the suffrage resolution was retained. Exactly 100 of approximately 300 attendees signed the document, mostly women.

The convention was 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 was viewed by others as a revolutionary beginning to the struggle by women for complete equality with men. Stanton considered the Seneca Falls Convention to be the beginning of the women's rights movement, an opinion that was echoed in the History of Woman Suffrage, which Stanton co-wrote.

The convention's Declaration of Sentiments became "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 had become a central tenet of the United States women's rights movement. These conventions became annual events until the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.

Reform movement
In the decades leading up to 1848, a small number of women began to push against restrictions imposed upon them by society. A few men aided in this effort. In 1831, Reverend Charles Grandison Finney began allowing women to pray aloud in gatherings of men and women. The Second Great Awakening was challenging women's traditional roles in religion. Recalling the era in 1870, Paulina Wright Davis set Finney's decision as the beginning of the American women's reform movement.

Women in abolition
Starting in 1832, abolitionist and journalist William Lloyd Garrison organized anti-slavery associations which encouraged the full participation of women. Garrison's ideas were not welcomed by a majority of other abolitionists, and those unwilling to include women split from him to form other abolitionist societies.

A few women began to gain fame as writers and speakers on the subject of abolition. In the 1830s, Lydia Maria Child wrote to encourage women to write a will, and Frances Wright wrote books on women's rights and social reform. The Grimké sisters published their views against slavery in the late 1830s, and they began speaking to mixed gatherings of men and women for Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, as did Abby Kelley. Although these women lectured primarily on the evils of slavery, the fact that a woman was speaking in public was itself a noteworthy stand for the cause of women's rights. Ernestine Rose began lecturing in 1836 to groups of women on the subject of the "Science of Government" which included the enfranchisement of women.

In 1840, at the urging of Garrison and Wendell Phillips, Lucretia Coffin Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton traveled with their husbands and a dozen other American male and female abolitionists to London for the first World's Anti-Slavery Convention, with the expectation that the motion put forward by Phillips to include women's participation in the convention would be controversial. In London, the proposal was rebuffed after a full day of debate; the women were allowed to listen from the gallery but not allowed to speak or vote. Mott and Stanton became friends in London and on the return voyage and together planned to organize their own convention to further the cause of women's rights, separate from abolition concerns. In 1842 Thomas M'Clintock and his wife Mary Ann became founding members of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society and helped write its constitution. When he moved to Rochester in 1847, Frederick Douglass joined Amy and Isaac Post and the M'Clintocks in this Rochester-based chapter of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Women's rights
In 1839 in Boston, Margaret Fuller began hosting conversations, akin to French  salons, among women interested in discussing the "great questions" facing their sex. Sophia Ripley was one of the participants. In 1843, Fuller published The Great Lawsuit, asking women to claim themselves as self-dependent.

In the 1840s, women in America were reaching out for greater control of their lives. Husbands and fathers directed the lives of women, and many doors were closed to female participation. State statutes and common law prohibited women from inheriting property, signing contracts, serving on juries and voting in elections. Women's prospects in employment were dim: they could expect only to gain a very few service-related jobs and were paid about half of what men were paid for the same work. In Massachusetts, Brook Farm was founded by Sophia Ripley and her husband George Ripley in 1841 as an attempt to find a way in which men and women could work together, with women receiving the same compensation as men. The experiment failed.

In the fall of 1841, Elizabeth Cady Stanton gave her first public speech, on the subject of the Temperance movement, in front of 100 women in Seneca Falls. She wrote to her friend Elizabeth J. Neal that she moved both the audience and herself to tears, saying "I infused into my speech a Homeopathic dose of woman's rights, as I take good care to do in many private conversations."

Lucretia Mott met with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Boston in 1842, and discussed again the possibility of a woman's rights convention. They talked once more in 1847, prior to Stanton moving from Boston to Seneca Falls.

Women's groups led by Lucretia Mott and Paulina Wright Davis held public meetings in Philadelphia beginning in 1846. A wide circle of abolitionists friendly to women's rights began in 1847 to discuss the possibility of holding a convention wholly devoted to women's rights. In October 1847, Lucy Stone gave her first public speech on the subject of women's rights, entitled The Province of Women, at her brother Bowman Stone's church in Gardner, Massachusetts.

In March 1848, Garrison, the Motts, Abby Kelley Foster, Stephen Symonds Foster and others hosted an Anti-Sabbath meeting in Boston, to work toward the elimination of laws that apply only to Sunday, and to gain for the laborer more time away from toil than just one day of rest per week. Lucretia Mott and two other women were active within the executive committee, and Mott spoke to the assemblage. Lucretia Mott raised questions about the validity of blindly following religious and social tradition.

Political gains
On April 7, 1848, in response to a citizen's petition, the New York State Assembly passed the Married Woman's Property Act, giving women the right to retain the property they brought into a marriage, as well as property they acquired during the marriage. Creditors could not seize a wife's property to pay a husband's debts. Leading up to the passage of this law, in 1846, supporters issued a pamphlet, probably authored by Judge John Fine, which relied on its readers' familiarity with the United States Declaration of Independence to demand "That all are created free and equal ...", and that this idea should apply equally to the sexes. "Women, as well as men, are entitled to the full enjoyment of its practical blessings". A group of 44 married women of western New York wrote to the Assembly in March 1848, saying "your Declaration of Independence declares, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. And as women have never consented to, been represented in, or recognized by this government, it is evident that in justice no allegiance can be claimed from them ... Our numerous and yearly petitions for this most desirable object having been disregarded, we now ask your august body, to abolish all laws which hold married women more accountable for their acts than infants, idiots, and lunatics."

New York, however, was not the pioneer in this case. Already, in February 1839, Mississippi had enacted its own Married Women's Property Act, the first state law anywhere to allow married women to independently own and administer property, a statute which was expanded in 1846, 1857, 1868, 1880, and 1890. The General Assembly in Pennsylvania passed a similar married woman's property law a few weeks after New York, one which Lucretia Mott and others had championed. These progressive state laws were seen by American women as a sign of new hope for women's rights.

On June 2, 1848, in Rochester, New York, Gerrit Smith was nominated as the Liberty Party's presidential candidate. Smith was Elizabeth Cady Stanton's first cousin, and the two enjoyed debating and discussing political and social issues with each other whenever he came to visit. At the National Liberty Convention, held June 14–15 in Buffalo, New York, Smith gave a major address, including in his speech a demand for "universal suffrage in its broadest sense, females as well as males being entitled to vote." The delegates approved a passage in their party platform addressing votes for women: "Neither here, nor in any other part of the world, is the right of suffrage allowed to extend beyond one of the sexes. This universal exclusion of woman ... argues, conclusively, that, not as yet, is there one nation so far emerged from barbarism, and so far practically Christian, as to permit woman to rise up to the one level of the human family." At this convention, five votes were placed calling for Lucretia Mott to be Smith's vice-president—the first time in the United States that a woman was suggested for federal executive office.

Quaker influence
Many members of the Religious Society of Friends, known as Quakers, made their homes in western New York state, near Seneca Falls. A particularly progressive branch lived in and around Waterloo in Seneca County, New York. These Quakers strove for marital relationships in which men and women worked and lived in equality.

The M'Clintocks came to Waterloo from a Quaker community in Philadelphia. They rented property from Richard P. Hunt, a wealthy Quaker and businessman. The M'Clintock and Hunt families opposed slavery; both participated in the free produce movement, and their houses served as stations on the Underground Railroad.

Though women Friends had since the 1660s publicly preached, written and led, and traditional Quaker tenets held that men and women were equals, Quaker women met separately from the men to consider and decide a congregation's business. By the 1840s, some Hicksite Quakers determined to bring women and men together in their business meetings as an expression of their spiritual equality. In June 1848, approximately 200 Hicksites, including the Hunts and the M'Clintocks, formed an even more radical Quaker group, known as the Yearly Meeting of Congregational Friends, or Progressive Friends. The Progressive Friends intended to further elevate the influence of women in affairs of the faith. They introduced joint business meetings of men and women, giving women an equal voice.

Planning
Lucretia and James Mott visited central and western New York in the summer of 1848 for a number of reasons. They visited the Cattaraugus Reservation of the Seneca Nation, which was then part of the Iroquois Confederacy; women of that nation were known to enjoy a strong position. The Motts also visited former slaves living in the province of Ontario, Canada. Mott was present at the meeting in which the Progressive Friends left the Hicksite Quakers. They also visited Lucretia's sister Martha Coffin Wright in Auburn, NY, where Mott preached to prisoners at the Auburn State Penitentiary. Her skill and fame as an orator drew crowds wherever she went.

Announcement

After Quaker worship on Sunday July 9, 1848, Lucretia Coffin Mott joined Mary Ann M'Clintock, Martha Coffin Wright (Mott's witty sister, several months pregnant), Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Jane Hunt for tea at the Hunt home in Waterloo. The two eldest M'Clintock daughters, Elizabeth and Mary Ann Jr. may have accompanied their mother. Jane Hunt had given birth two weeks earlier, and was tending the baby at home. Over tea, Stanton, the only non-Quaker present, vented a lifetime's worth of pent-up frustration, her "long-accumulating discontent" about women's subservient place in society. The five women decided to hold a women's rights convention in the immediate future, while the Motts were still in the area, and drew up an announcement to run in the Seneca County Courier. The announcement began with these words: "WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.—A Convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman". The notice specified that only women were invited to the first day's meetings on July 19, but both women and men could attend on the second day to hear Lucretia Mott speak, among others. On July 11, the announcement first appeared, giving readers just eight days' notice until the first day of convention. Other papers such as Douglass's North Star picked up the notice, printing it on July 14. The meeting place was to be the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Seneca Falls. Built by a congregation of abolitionists and financed in part by Richard Hunt, the chapel had been the scene of many reform lectures, and was considered the only large building in the area that would open its doors to a women's rights convention.

Declaration, grievances, resolutions
At their home in Waterloo on Sunday, July 16, the M'Clintocks hosted a smaller planning session for the convention. Mary Ann M'Clintock and her eldest daughters, Elizabeth and Mary Ann Jr., discussed with Stanton the makeup of the resolutions that would be presented to the convention for approval. Each woman made certain her concerns were appropriately represented among the ten resolutions that they composed. Taken together, the resolutions demanded that women should have equality in the family, education, jobs, religion, and morals. One of the M'Clintock women selected the Declaration of Independence from 1776 as a model for the declaration they wanted to make at their convention. The Declaration of Sentiments was then drafted in the parlor on a round, three-legged, mahogany tea table. Stanton changed a few words of the Declaration of Independence to make it appropriate for a statement by women, replacing "The history of the present King of Great Britain" with "The history of mankind" as the basis for "usurpations on the part of man toward woman." The women added the phrase "and women" to make "... all men and women are created equal ..." A list of grievances was composed to form the second part of the Declaration.

Between July 16 and July 19, at home on her own writing desk, Stanton edited the grievances and resolutions. Henry Brewster Stanton, a lawyer, politician and Stanton's husband, helped substantiate the document by locating "extracts from laws bearing unjustly against woman's property interests." On her own, Stanton added a more radical point to the list of grievances and to the resolutions: the issue of women's voting rights. To the grievances, she added "He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise", and to the Sentiments, she added a line about man depriving woman of "the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation ..." Stanton then copied the Declaration and resolutions into final draft form for presentation at the meeting. When he saw the addition of woman suffrage, Henry Stanton warned his wife "you will turn the proceedings into a farce." He, like most men of his day, was not in favor of women gaining voting rights. Because he intended to run for elective office, he left Seneca Falls to avoid being connected with a convention promoting such an unpopular cause. Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked her sister Harriet Cady Eaton to accompany her; Eaton brought her young son Daniel.

On July 16, Lucretia Mott sent a note to Stanton apologizing in advance for James Mott not being able to attend the first day, as he was feeling "quite unwell". Lucretia Mott wrote to say she would bring her sister, Martha Wright, and that the two women would participate in both days of the convention.

First day
On July 19, 1848, the morning of the first day of convention, the organizing committee arrived at the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel shortly before ten o'clock on a hot, sunny day to find a crowd gathered outside and the church doors locked—an overlooked detail. Stanton's young nephew Daniel was lifted through an open window so that he could unbar the doors from the inside. Even though the first session had been announced as being exclusively for women, some young children of both sexes had been brought by their mothers, and about 40 men were there expecting to attend. The men were not turned away, but were asked to remain silent. Mary Ann M'Clintock Jr., 26 years old, was appointed secretary, to take notes.

Morning session

Starting at 11 o'clock, Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke first, exhorting each woman in the audience to accept responsibility for her own life, and to "understand the height, the depth, the length, and the breadth of her own degradation." Lucretia Mott then spoke, encouraging all to take up the cause. Stanton read the Declaration of Sentiments in its entirety, then re-read each paragraph so that it could be discussed at length, and changes incorporated. The question of whether men's signatures would be sought for the Declaration was discussed, with the vote looking favorable for including men, but the motion was tabled until the following day when men themselves could participate. The first session adjourned at 2:30 p.m.

Afternoon session
After a pause for refreshment in the 90° heat, an afternoon session began with Stanton and then Mott addressing the audience. The Declaration of Sentiments was read again and more changes were made to it. The resolutions, now numbering eleven with Stanton's addition of women's suffrage, were read aloud and discussed. Lucretia Mott read a humorous newspaper piece written by her sister Martha Wright in which Wright questioned why, after an overworked mother completed the myriad daily tasks that were required of her but not of her husband, she was the one upon whom written advice was "so lavishly bestowed." Twenty-seven-year-old Elizabeth W. M'Clintock then delivered a speech, and the first day's business was called to a close.

Evening speech
In the evening, the meeting was opened to all persons, and Lucretia Mott addressed a large audience. She spoke of the progress of other reform movements and so framed for her listeners the social and moral context for the struggle for women's rights. She asked the men present to help women gain the equality they deserved. The editor of the National Reformer, a paper in Auburn, New York, reported that Mott's extemporaneous evening speech was "one of the most eloquent, logical, and philosophical discourses which we ever listened to."

Second day
A larger crowd attended on the second day, including more men. Amelia Bloomer arrived late and took a seat in the upstairs gallery, there being none left in the main seating area. Quaker James Mott was well enough to attend, and he chaired the morning meeting; it was still too radical a concept that a woman serve as chair in front of both men and women.

Morning session, day two
After Mott opened the meeting, the minutes of the previous day were read, and Stanton presented the Declaration of Sentiments. In regard to the grievance "He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns," Assemblyman Ansel Bascom stood to say that he had recently been at the New York State Assembly which passed the Married Woman's Property Act. Bascom spoke at length about the property rights it secured for married women, including property acquired after marriage. Further discussion of the Declaration ensued, including comments by Frederick Douglass, Thomas and Mary Ann M'Clintock, and Amy Post; the document was adopted unanimously. The question of men's signatures was solved by having two sections of signatures, one for women followed by one for men. One hundred of the 300 present signed the Declaration of Sentiments, including 68 women and 32 men. Amelia Bloomer was one of the participants who did not endorse the Declaration; she was focused at that time on the temperance movement. Ansel Bascom was the most conspicuous attendee who chose not to sign the Declaration. The National Reformer reported that those in the audience who evidently regarded the Declaration as "too bold and ultra", including the lawyers known to be opposed to the equal rights of women, "failed to call out any opposition, except in a neighboring BAR-ROOM ."

Afternoon session, day two

At the afternoon session, the eleven resolutions were read again, and each one was voted on individually. The only one that was materially questioned was the ninth, the one Stanton had added regarding women's right to vote. It read: "Resolved, that it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise." Those who opposed this resolution argued that its presence would cause the other, more rational resolutions to lose support. Others argued that only the social, civil and religious rights of women should be addressed, not the political rights. James and Lucretia Mott were against the resolution; Lucretia said to Stanton, "Why Lizzie, thee will make us ridiculous." Stanton defended the concept of woman suffrage, saying women would then be able to affect future legislation and gain further rights. Frederick Douglass, the only African American at the meeting, stood and spoke eloquently in favor; he said that he could not accept the right to vote himself as a black man if women could not also claim that right. Douglass projected that the world would be a better place if women were involved in the political sphere. "In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world." Douglass's powerful words rang true with many in attendance, and the resolution passed by a large majority. Lucretia Mott spoke to end the session.

Evening session, day two
Quaker Thomas M'Clintock served as chair for the evening session, opening it at half-past seven. The minutes were read, then Stanton spoke in defense of the many severe accusations brought against the much-abused "Lords of Creation." Following Stanton, Thomas M'Clintock read several passages from Sir William Blackstone's laws, to expose for the audience the basis of woman's current legal condition of servitude to man. Lucretia Mott stood to offer another resolution: "Resolved, That the speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous and untiring efforts of both men and women, for the overthrow of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to woman an equal participation with men in the various trades, professions and commerce." This, the twelfth resolution, passed.

Mary Ann M'Clintock Jr. spoke briefly, calling upon woman to arouse from her lethargy and be true to herself and her God. Douglass again rose to speak in support of the cause of woman. Lucretia Mott spoke for an hour with one of her "most beautiful and spiritual appeals". Although Lucretia Mott's reputation as a speaker drew the audience, Mott recognized Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mary Ann M'Clintock as the "chief planners and architects" of the convention. To close the meeting, a committee was appointed to edit and publish the convention proceedings, with Amy Post, Eunice Newton Foote, Mary Ann M'Clintock Jr., Elizabeth W. M'Clintock and Stanton serving.

News reports
Local newspapers printed reports of the convention, some positive, others not. The National Reformer reported that the convention "forms an era in the progress of the age; it being the first convention of the kind ever held, and one whose influence shall not cease until woman is guaranteed all the rights now enjoyed by the other half of creation—Social, Civil and POLITICAL ." The Oneida Whig did not approve of the convention, writing of the Declaration: "This bolt is the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of womanity. If our ladies will insist on voting and legislating, where, gentleman, will be our dinners and our elbows? Where our domestic firesides and the holes in our stockings?"

Soon, newspapers across the country picked up the story. Reactions varied widely. In Massachusetts, the Lowell Courier published its opinion that, with women's equality, "the lords must wash the dishes, scour up, be put to the tub, handle the broom, darn stockings." In St. Louis, Missouri, the Daily Reveille trumpeted that "the flag of independence has been hoisted for the second time on this side of the Atlantic." Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune wrote "When a sincere republican is asked to say in sober earnest what adequate reason he can give, for refusing the demand of women to an equal participation with men in political rights, he must answer, None at all. However unwise and mistaken the demand, it is but the assertion of a natural right, and such must be conceded."

Religious reaction
Some of the ministers heading congregations in the area attended the Seneca Falls Convention, but none spoke out during the sessions, not even when comments from the floor were invited. On Sunday, July 23, many who had attended, and more who had not, attacked the Convention, the Declaration of Sentiments, and the resolutions. Women in the congregations reported to Stanton, who saw the actions of the ministers as cowardly; in their congregations, no one would be allowed to reply.

Further conventions
Signers of the Declaration of Sentiments hoped for "a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country" to follow their own meeting. Because of the fame and drawing power of Lucretia Mott, who would not be staying in the Upstate New York area for much longer, some of the participants at Seneca Falls organized the Rochester Women's Rights Convention two weeks later in Rochester, New York, with Lucretia Mott as its featured speaker. Unlike the Seneca Falls convention, the Rochester convention took the controversial step of electing a woman, Abigail Bush, as its presiding officer. In the next two years, "the infancy ... of the movement", other local and state women's rights conventions were called in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.

Charlotte Woodward, alone among all 100 signers, was the only one still alive in 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment passed. Woodward was not well enough to vote herself.

Remembrances

A stamp was issued in 1948 in remembrance of the Seneca Falls Convention, featuring Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Lucretia Mott as part of a Centennial Celebration in Seneca Falls.

The Women's Rights National Historical Park was established in 1980, and covers a total of 6.83 acres (27,600 m2) of land in Seneca Falls and nearby Waterloo, New York, USA. The park consists of four major historical properties, including the Wesleyan Methodist Church, which was the site of the Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton's home, and the M'Clintock House, which was where the Declaration of Sentiments, resolutions, and speeches were drawn up for the Seneca Falls Convention. The Wesleyan Methodist Church and the M'Clintock House were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

In 1998 First Lady Hillary Clinton gave a speech on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention.

In 2015, #FindtheSentiments was launched by the White House under Barack Obama in an effort to find an original of the Declaration of Sentiments. The call to action was picked up by social media and several historical sites. To date, the Sentiments have not been found.

Historiography
In 1870, Paulina Wright Davis authored a history of the antebellum women's rights movement, The History of the National Woman's Rights Movement, and received approval of her account from many of the involved suffragists including Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Davis' version gave the Seneca Falls meeting in 1848 a minor role, equivalent to other local meetings that had been held by women's groups in the late 1840s. Davis set the beginning of the national and international women's rights movement at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850, at the National Women's Rights Convention when women from many states were invited, the influence of which was felt across the continent and in Great Britain. Stanton seemed to agree; in an address to the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) convention in 1870, on the subject of the women's rights movement, she said "The movement in England, as in America, may be dated from the first National Convention, held at Worcester, Mass., October, 1850."

In 1876, in the spirit of the nation's centennial celebrations, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony decided to write a more expansive history of the women's rights movement. They invited Lucy Stone to help, but Stone declined to be part of the project; she was of the opinion that Stanton and Anthony would not fairly portray the divisive split between NWSA and American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Stanton and Anthony wrote without her and, in 1881, they published the first volume of the History of Woman Suffrage, and placed themselves at each of its most important events, marginalizing Stone's contribution.

According to Lisa Tetrault, a professor of women's history, the Seneca Falls Convention was central to their rendition of the movement's history. Neither Stanton nor Anthony had been at the 1850 convention, which was associated with their rivals. Stanton, however, had played a key role at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, at which Stone had not been present. In the early 1870s, Stanton and Anthony began to present Seneca Falls as the beginning of the women's rights movement, an origin story that downplayed Stone's role. Pointing out that the women's rights movement could be said to have begun even earlier than Seneca Falls, Tetrault said the History of Woman Suffrage dealt with these earlier events relatively briefly in its first three chapters, the first of which is titled "Preceding Causes." In the volume, Stanton did not mention the Liberty Party's plank on woman suffrage pre-dating the Seneca Falls Convention by a month, and she did not describe the Worcester National Women's Rights Convention, organized by Stone and Davis in 1850, as the beginning of the women's rights movement. Rather, Stanton named the 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention in London as the birth of the "movement for woman's suffrage, in both England and America". She positioned the Seneca Falls meeting as her own political debut, and characterized it as the beginning of the women's rights movement, which she called "the greatest movement for human liberty recorded on the pages of history—a demand for freedom to one-half the entire race."

Stanton worked to enshrine the Declaration of Sentiments as a foundational treatise in a number of ways, not the least of which was by imbuing the small, three-legged tea table upon which the first draft of it was composed with an importance similar to that of Thomas Jefferson's desk upon which he wrote the Declaration of Independence. The M'Clintocks gave Stanton the table, then Stanton gave it to Susan B. Anthony on the occasion of her 80th birthday, though Anthony had no part in the Seneca Falls meeting. In keeping with Stanton's promotion of the table as an iconic relic, women's rights activists put it in a place of honor at the head of the casket at the funeral of Susan B. Anthony on March 14, 1906. Subsequently, it was displayed prominently on the stage at each of the most important suffrage meetings until 1920, even though the grievance and resolution about woman suffrage was not written on it. The table is kept at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Lucretia Mott reflected in August 1848 upon the two women's rights conventions in which she had participated that summer, and assessed them no greater than other projects and missions she was involved with. She wrote that the two gatherings were "greatly encouraging; and give hope that this long neglected subject will soon begin to receive the attention that its importance demands."

Historian Gerda Lerner has pointed out that religious ideas provided a fundamental source for the Declaration of Sentiments. Most of the women attending the convention were active in Quaker or evangelical Methodist movements. The document itself drew from writings by the evangelical Quaker Sarah Grimké to make biblical claims that God had created woman equal to man and that man had usurped God's authority by establishing "absolute tyranny" over woman. According to author Jami Carlacio, Grimké's writings opened the public's eyes to ideas like women's rights, and for the first time they were willing to question conventional notions about the subordination of women.

title: Seneca Falls Convention


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Morrill Tariff

The Morrill Tariff was an increased import tariff in the United States that was adopted on March 2, 1861, during the administration of US President James Buchanan, a Democrat. It was the twelfth of the seventeen planks in the platform of the incoming Republican Party, which had not yet been inaugurated, and the tariff appealed to industrialists and factory workers as a way to foster rapid industrial growth.

It was named for its sponsor, Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont, who drafted it with the advice of the economist Henry Charles Carey. The eventual passage of the tariff in the US Senate was assisted by multiple opponent senators from the South resigning from Congress after their states declared their secession from the Union. The tariff rates were raised to both make up for a federal deficit that had led to increased government debt in recent years and to encourage domestic industry and foster high wages for industrial workers.

The Morrill Tariff replaced a lower Tariff of 1857 which, according to historian Kenneth Stampp, had been developed in response to a federal budget surplus in the mid-1850s.

Two additional tariffs sponsored by Morrill, each higher than the previous one, were passed under President Abraham Lincoln to raise revenue that was urgently needed during the American Civil War.

The tariff inaugurated a period of continuous protectionism in the United States, and that policy remained until the adoption of the Revenue Act of 1913, or Underwood Tariff. The schedule of the Morrill Tariff and both of its successors were retained long after the end of the Civil War.

Origins
Tariff in United States history has often been made high to encourage the development of domestic industry, and had been advocated, especially by the Whig Party and its longtime leader, Henry Clay. Such a tariff was enacted in 1842, but in 1846 the Democratic Party enacted the Walker Tariff, which cut tariff rates substantially. The Democrats cut rates even further in the Tariff of 1857, which was highly favorable to the South.

Meanwhile, the Whig Party collapsed, and tariffs were taken up by the new Republican Party, which ran its first national ticket in 1856. Some former Whigs from the border states and the Upper South remained in Congress as "Opposition," "Unionist," or "American," (Know Nothing) members and supported higher tariffs.

The Panic of 1857 led to calls for protectionist tariff revision. The famous economist Henry C. Carey blamed the panic on the new tariff. His opinion was widely circulated in the protectionist media for higher tariffs.

Efforts to raise the tariffs began in earnest in the 35th Congress of 1857–1859. Two proposals were submitted in the US House of Representatives.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman John S. Phelps, Democrat from Missouri, wrote the Democrats' plan, which retained most of the low rates of the Tariff of 1857, with minor revisions to stimulate revenue.

Ways and Means members Morrill and Henry Winter Davis, a Maryland "American," produced the Republican proposal to raise the tariffs. It replaced the existing ad valorem tariff schedule with specific duties and drastically increased tariff rates on goods that were produced by popular "protected" industries, such as iron, textiles, and other manufactured goods. The economic historian Frank Taussig argued that in many cases, the substitution of specific duties was used to disguise the extent of the rate increases. Supporters of the specific rates argued that they were necessary because European exporters routinely provided US customers with fake invoices showing lower prices for goods than were actually paid. Specific rates made such subterfuge pointless.

However, the House took no action on either tariff bill during the 35th Congress.

House actions
When the 36th Congress met in 1859, action remained blocked by a dispute until 1860 over who would be elected the Speaker of the House. In 1860, the Republican William Pennington of New Jersey was elected as speaker. Pennington appointed a pro-tariff Republican majority to the Ways and Means Committee, with John Sherman of Ohio its chairman.

The Morrill bill was passed out of the Ways and Means Committee. Near the end of first session of the Congress (December 1859–June 1860), on May 10, 1860, the bill was brought up for a floor vote and passed 105–64.

The vote was largely but not entirely sectional. Republicans, all from the northern states, voted 89–2 for the bill. They were joined by 7 northern Democrats from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Five of them were "anti-Lecompton Democrats," who opposed the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution for Kansas.

Also, 14 northern Democrats voted against the bill.

In the Border States, four "Opposition" Representatives from Kentucky voted for it, as did its cosponsor, Winter of Maryland, a Maryland "Unionist," and a Democrat from Delaware. Eight Democrats from the Border States and a member of the American Party from Missouri voted against it.

Thirty-five southern Democrats and three Oppositionists voted against it; one Oppositionist from Tennessee voted for it.

Thus the sectional breakdown was 96–15 in the North, 7–9 in the Border States, and 1–39 in the South.

There were 55 abstentions, including 13 Republicans, 12 northern Democrats, 13 southern Democrats, and 8 southern "Oppositionists" and "Americans." (The remaining Representatives were mostly "paired" with opposing Representatives who could not be present.

Senate action
The Morrill bill was sent on to the US Senate. However, the Senate was controlled by Democrats and so it was bottled up in the Finance Committee, chaired by Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia.

That ensured that the Senate vote would be put off until the second session in December 1860 and meant that the tariff would be a prominent issue in the 1860 election.

1860 election
The Republican Party included a strong pro-tariff plank in its 1860 platform and sent prominent tariff advocates touting the bill, such as Morrill and Sherman, to campaign in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where the tariff was popular. Both Democratic candidates, John C. Breckinridge and Stephen Douglas, opposed all high tariffs and protectionism in general.

The historian Reinhard H. Luthin documents the importance of the Morrill Tariff to the Republicans in the 1860 presidential election. Lincoln's record as a protectionist and support for the Morrill bill, he notes, helped him to secure support in the important state of Pennsylvania and neighboring New Jersey. Lincoln carried Pennsylvania handily in November, as part of his sweep of the North.

On February 14, 1861, President-elect Lincoln told an audience in Pittsburgh that he would make a new tariff his priority in the next session if the bill did not pass by his inauguration, on March 4.

Renewed Senate action
The second session of the 36th Congress began in December 1860. At first, it appeared that Hunter would keep the Morrill bill tabled until the end of the term in March.

However, in December 1860 and January 1861, seven southern states seceded, and their low-tariff senators withdrew. Republicans took control of the Senate in February, and Hunter lost his hold on the Finance Committee.

Meanwhile, the Treasury was in financial crisis, with less than $500,000 on hand and millions in unpaid bills. The Union urgently needed new revenue. A recent historian concludes that "the impetus for revising the tariff arose as an attempt to augment revenue, stave off 'ruin,' and address the accumulating debt."

The Morrill bill was brought to the Senate floor for a vote on February 20 and passed 25 to 14. The vote was split almost completely down party lines. It was supported by 24 Republicans and the Democrat William Bigler of Pennsylvania. It was opposed by 10 Southern Democrats, 2 Northern Democrats, and 2 Far West Democrats. Twelve Senators abstained, including 3 Northern Democrats, 1 California Democrat, 5 Southern Democrats, 2 Republicans, and 1 Unionist from Maryland.

There were some minor amendments related to the tariffs on tea and coffee, which required a conference committee with the House, but they were resolved, and the final bill was approved by unanimous consent on March 2.

Though a Democrat himself, President James Buchanan favored the bill because of the interests of his home state, Pennsylvania. He signed the bill into law as one of his last acts in office.

Adoption and amendments
The tariff took effect one month after it was signed into law. Besides setting tariff rates, the bill altered and restricted the Warehousing Act of 1846.

The tariff was drafted and passed the House before the Civil War began or was expected, and it was passed by the Senate after seven States had seceded.

At least one author has argued that the first Morrill should not be considered "Civil War" legislation.

In fact, the tariff proved to be too low for the revenue needs of the Civil War and was quickly raised by the Second Morrill Tariff, or Revenue Act of 1861, later that Fall.

Impact
In its first year of operation, the Morrill Tariff increased the effective rate collected on dutiable imports by approximately 70%. In 1860, American tariff rates were among the lowest in the world and also at historical lows by 19th-century standards, the average rate for 1857 to 1860 being around 17% overall (ad valorem), 21% on dutiable items only. The Morrill Tariff immediately raised those averages to about 26% overall, or 36% on dutiable items. Further increases by 1865 left the comparable rates at 38% and 48%. Although higher than in the immediate antebellum period, the new rates were still significantly lower than between 1825 and 1830, when rates had sometimes been over 50%.

The United States needed $3 billion to pay for the immense armies and fleets raised to fight the Civil War, over $400 million for 1862 alone. The chief source of revenue had been tariffs. Therefore, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, despite being a longtime free-trader, worked with Morrill to pass a second tariff bill in summer 1861, which raised rates another 10% to generate more revenue. The subsequent bills were primarily revenue driven to meet the war's needs but enjoyed the support of protectionists such as Carey, who again assisted Morrill in the bill's drafting.

However, the tariff played only a modest role in financing the war and was far less important than other measures, such as $2.8 billion in bond sales and some printing of greenbacks. Customs revenue from tariffs totaled $345 million from 1861 to 1865, or 43% of all federal tax revenue, but military spending totaled $3,065 million.

Reception abroad
The Morrill Tariff was met with intense hostility in Britain, where free trade dominated public opinion. Southern diplomats and agents sought to use British ire towards the Morrill Tariff to garner sympathy, with the aim of obtaining British recognition for the Confederacy. The new tariff schedule heavily penalized British iron, clothing, and manufactured exports by making them more costly and sparked public outcry from many British politicians. The expectation of high tax rates probably caused British shippers to hasten their deliveries before the new rates took effect in the early summer of 1861.

When complaints were heard from London, Congress counterattacked. The Senate Finance Committee chairman snapped, "What right has a foreign country to make any question about what we choose to do?"

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, British public opinion was sympathetic to the Confederacy, in part because of lingering agitation over the tariff. As one diplomatic historian has explained, the Morrill Tariff:

"not unnaturally gave great displeasure to England. It greatly lessened the profits of the American markets to English manufacturers and merchants, to a degree which caused serious mercantile distress in that country. Moreover, the British nation was then in the first flush of enthusiasm over free trade, and, under the lead of extremists like Cobden and Gladstone, was inclined to regard a protective tariff as essentially and intrinsically immoral, scarcely less so than larceny or murder. Indeed, the tariff was seriously regarded as comparable in offensiveness with slavery itself, and Englishmen were inclined to condemn the North for the one as much as the South for the other. 'We do not like slavery,' said Palmerston to Adams, 'but we want cotton, and we dislike very much your Morrill tariff.'"

Many prominent British writers condemned the Morrill Tariff in the strongest terms. The economist William Stanley Jevons denounced it as a "retrograde" law. The famous novelist Charles Dickens used his magazine, All the Year Round, to attack the new tariff. On December 28, 1861, Dickens published a lengthy article, believed to be written by Henry Morley, which blamed the American Civil War on the Morrill Tariff:

"If it be not slavery, where lies the partition of the interests that has led at last to actual separation of the Southern from the Northern States?... Every year, for some years back, this or that Southern state had declared that it would submit to this extortion only while it had not the strength for resistance. With the election of Lincoln and an exclusive Northern party taking over the federal government, the time for withdrawal had arrived.... The conflict is between semi-independent communities [in which] every feeling and interest [in the South] calls for political partition, and every pocket interest [in the North] calls for union.... So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils.... [T]he quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel."

Others, such as John Stuart Mill, denied tariffs had anything to do with the conflict:

"...what are the Southern chiefs fighting about? Their apologists in England say that it is about tariffs, and similar trumpery. They say nothing of the kind. They tell the world, and they told their own citizens when they wanted their votes, that the object of the fight was slavery. Many years ago, when General Jackson was President, South Carolina did nearly rebel (she never was near separating) about a tariff; but no other State abetted her, and a strong adverse demonstration from Virginia brought the matter to a close. Yet the tariff of that day was rigidly protective. Compared with that, the one in force at the time of the secession was a free-trade tariff: This latter was the result of several successive modifications in the direction of freedom; and its principle was not protection for protection, but as much of it only as might incidentally result from duties imposed for revenue. Even the Morrill tariff (which never could have been passed but for the Southern secession) is stated by the high authority of Mr. H. C. Carey to be considerably more liberal than the reformed French tariff under Mr. Cobden's treaty; insomuch that he, a Protectionist, would be glad to exchange his own protective tariff for Louis Napoleon's free-trade one. But why discuss, on probable evidence, notorious facts? The world knows what the question between the North and South has been for many years, and still is. Slavery alone was thought of, alone talked of. Slavery was battled for and against, on the floor of Congress and in the plains of Kansas; on the slavery question exclusively was the party constituted which now rules the United States: on slavery Fremont was rejected, on slavery Lincoln was elected; the South separated on slavery, and proclaimed slavery as the one cause of separation."

The communist philosopher Karl Marx also saw slavery as the major cause of the war. Marx wrote extensively in the British press and served as a London correspondent for several North American newspapers including Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. Marx reacted to those who blamed the war on the Morrill Tariff and argued instead that slavery had induced secession and that the tariff was just a pretext. In October 1861, he wrote:

"Naturally, in America everyone knew that from 1846 to 1861 a free trade system prevailed, and that Representative Morrill carried his protectionist tariff through Congress only in 1861, after the rebellion had already broken out. Secession, therefore, did not take place because the Morrill tariff had gone through Congress, but, at most, the Morrill tariff went through Congress because secession had taken place."

Rationale
According to the historian Heather Cox Richardson, Morrill intended to offer protection to both the usual manufacturing recipients and a broad group of agricultural interests. The purpose was to appease interests beyond the Northeast, which traditionally supported protection. For the first time, protection was extended to every major farm product:

Planning to distribute the benefits of a tariff to all sectors of the economy, and also hoping to broaden support for his party, Morrill rejected the traditional system of protection by proposing tariff duties on agricultural, mining, and fishing products, as well as on manufactures. Sugar, wool, flaxseed, hides, beef, pork, corn, grain, hemp, wool, and minerals would all be protected by the Morrill Tariff. The duty on sugar might well be expected to appease Southerners opposed to tariffs, and, notably, wool and flaxseed production were growing industries in the West. The new tariff bill also would protect coal, lead, copper, zinc, and other minerals, all of which the new northwestern states were beginning to produce. The Eastern fishing industry would receive a duty on dried, pickled, and salted fish. "In adjusting the details of a tariff," Morrill explained with a rhetorical flourish in his introduction of the bill, "I would treat agriculture, manufactures, mining, and commerce, as I would our whole people—as members of one family, all entitled to equal favor, and no one to be made the beast of burden to carry the packs of others."

According to Taussig, "Morrill and the other supporters of the act of 1861 declared that their intention was simply to restore the rates of 1846." However, he also gives reason to suspect that the bill's motives were intended to put high rates of protection on iron and wool to attract the West and Pennsylvania:

"The important change which they (the sponsors) proposed to make from the provisions of the tariff of 1846 was to substitute specific for ad-valorem duties. Such a change from ad-valorem to specific duties is in itself by no means objectionable; but it has usually been made a pretext on the part of protectionists for a considerable increase in the actual duties paid. When protectionists make a change of this kind, they almost invariably make the specific duties higher than the ad-valorem duties for which they are supposed to be an equivalent.... The Morrill tariff formed no exception to the usual course of things in this respect. The specific duties which it established were in many cases considerably above the ad-valorem duties of 1846. The most important direct changes made by the act of 1861 were in the increased duties on iron and on wool, by which it was hoped to attach to the Republican party Pennsylvania and some of the Western States'"

Henry C. Carey, who assisted Morrill in drafting the bill and was one of its most vocal supporters, strongly emphasized its importance to the Republican Party in his January 2, 1861 letter to Lincoln: "the success of your administration is wholly dependent upon the passage of the Morrill bill at the present session." According to Carey:

"With it, the people will be relieved — your term will commence with a rising wave of prosperity — the Treasury will be filled and the party that elected you will be increased and strengthened. Without it, there will be much suffering among the people — much dissatisfaction with their duties — much borrowing on the part of the Government — & very much trouble among the Republican Party when the people shall come to vote two years hence. There is but one way to make the Party a permanent one, & that is, by the prompt repudiation to the free trade system."

Representative John Sherman later wrote:

"The Morrill tariff bill came nearer than any other to meeting the double requirement of providing ample revenue for the support of the government and of rendering the proper protection to home industries. No national taxes, except duties on imported goods, were imposed at the time of its passage. The Civil War changed all this, reducing importations and adding tenfold to the revenue required. The government was justified in increasing existing rates of duty, and in adding to the dutiable list all articles imported, thus including articles of prime necessity and of universal use. In addition to these duties, it was compelled to add taxes on all articles of home production, on incomes not required for the supply of actual wants, and, especially, on articles of doubtful necessity, such as spirits, tobacco and beer. These taxes were absolutely required to meet expenditures for the army and navy, for the interest on the war debts and just pensions to those who were disabled by the war, and to their widows and orphans."

Relation to tariff
While slavery dominated the secession debate in the south, the Morrill tariff provided an issue for secessionist agitation in some southern states. The law's critics compared it to the 1828 Tariff of Abominations, which sparked the Nullification Crisis, but its average rate was significantly lower.

Robert Barnwell Rhett railed against the pending Morrill Tariff before the 1860 South Carolina convention. Rhett included a lengthy attack on tariffs in the Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States, which the convention adopted on December 25, 1860, to accompany its secession ordinance:

"And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress, is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue— to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures."

The Morrill Tariff played less prominently elsewhere in the South. In some portions of Virginia, secessionists promised a new protective tariff to assist the state's fledgling industries.

In the North, enforcement of the tariff contributed to support for the Union cause by industrialists and merchant interests. The abolitionist Orestes Brownson derisively remarked that "the Morrill Tariff moved them more than the fall of Sumter." In one such example, the New York Times, which had opposed Morrill's bill on free trade grounds, editorialized that the tariff imbalance would bring commercial ruin to the North and urged its suspension until the secession crisis passed: "We have imposed high duties on our commerce at the very moment the seceding states are inviting commerce to their ports by low duties." As secession became more evident and the fledgling Confederacy adopted a much lower tariff, the paper urged military action to enforce the Morrill Tariff in the South.

Historiography
Historians, James Huston notes, have been baffled by the role of high tariffs in general and have offered multiple conflicting interpretations over the years. (Low tariffs, all historians agree, were noncontroversial and needed to fund the federal government.) One school of thought says the Republicans were the willing tools of would-be monopolists. A second school says the Republicans truly believed that tariffs would promote nationalism and prosperity for everyone along with balanced growth in every region, as opposed to growth only in the cotton South. A third school emphasizes the undeniable importance of the tariff in cementing party loyalty, especially in industrial states. Another approach emphasizes that factory workers were eager for high tariffs to protect their high wages from European competition.

Charles A. Beard argued in the 1920s that very long-term economic issues were critical, with the pro-tariff industrial Northeast forming a coalition with the anti-tariff agrarian Midwest against the plantation South.

According to Luthin in the 1940s, "Historians are not unanimous as to the relative importance which Southern fear and hatred of a high tariff had in causing the secession of the slave states." However, none of the statesmen seeking a compromise in 1860–61 to avert the war ever suggested the tariff might be either the key to a solution or a cause of the secession.

In the 1950s, historians began to move away from the Beard thesis of economic causality. In its place, historians, led by Richard Hofstadter, began to emphasize the social causes of the war as centered on the issue of slavery.

The Beard thesis has enjoyed a recent revival among economists, pro-Confederate historians, and neo-Beardian scholars. A 2002 study by economists Robert McGuire and T. Norman Van Cott concluded:

"A de facto constitutional mandate that tariffs lie on the lower end of the Laffer relationship means that the Confederacy went beyond simply observing that a given tax revenue is obtainable with a 'high' and 'low' tax rate, a la Alexander Hamilton and others. Indeed, the constitutional action suggests that the tariff issue may in fact have been even more important in the North–South tensions that led to the Civil War than many economists and historians currently believe."

Rather than contributing to secession, Marc-William Palen notes how the tariff was passed through Congress only by the secession of Southern states. Thus, secession itself allowed for the bill's passage, rather than the other way around.

Allan Nevins and James M. McPherson downplay the significance of the tariff; argue that it was peripheral to the issue of slavery; and note that slavery dominated the secessionist declarations, speeches, and pamphlets. Nevins also points to the argument of Alexander Stephens, who disputed Toombs's claims about the severity of the Morrill Tariff. Though initially opposed to secession, Stephens would later cite slavery as the "cornerstone" for his support of secession.

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title: Morrill Tariff


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Homestead Acts

The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a homestead. In all, more than 160 e6acre of public land, or nearly 10 percent of the total area of the United States, were given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders; most of the homesteads were west of the Mississippi River. These acts were the first sovereign decisions of post-war North–South capitalist cooperation in the United States.

An extension of the homestead principle in law, the Homestead Acts were an expression of the Free Soil policy of Northerners who wanted individual farmers to own and operate their own farms, as opposed to Southern slave owners who wanted to buy up large tracts of land and use slave labor, thereby shutting out free white farmers.

For a number of years individual Congressmen put forward bills providing for homesteading, but it was not until 1862 that the first homestead act was passed. The Homestead Act of 1862 opened up millions of acres. Any adult who had never taken up arms against the federal government of the United States could apply. Women and immigrants who had applied for citizenship were eligible.

Several additional laws were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 sought to address land ownership inequalities in the south during Reconstruction. It explicitly included Black Americans and encouraged them to participate, and, although rampant discrimination, systemic barriers, and bureaucratic inertia considerably slowed Black gains, the 1866 law was part of the reason that within a generation after its passage, by 1900, one quarter of all Southern Black farmers were farm owners.

Most homesteading occurred during the period 1900–1930.

Background
Land-grant laws similar to the Homestead Acts had been proposed by northern Republicans prior to Civil War but they had been repeatedly blocked in Congress by Democrats who wanted western lands open for purchase by slave owners. The Homestead Act of 1860 passed in Congress but was vetoed by President James Buchanan, a Democrat. After the Southern states seceded from the Union in 1861 (and their representatives had left Congress), the bill passed and was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln (May 20, 1862). Daniel Freeman became the first person to file a claim under the new act.

Between 1862 and 1934, the federal government granted 1.6 million homesteads and distributed 270000000 acre of federal land for private ownership. This was a total of 10% of all land in the United States. Homesteading was discontinued in 1976, except in Alaska, where it continued until 1986. About 40% of the applicants who started the process were able to complete it and obtain title to their homesteaded land after paying a small fee in cash.

Homestead laws depleted Native American resources as much of the land they relied on was taken by the federal government and sold to settlers. Native ancestral lands had been limited through history, mainly through land allotments and reservations, causing a gradual decrease in this indigenous land. Many of these land-grabs occurred during and after treaty negotiations between indigenous tribes and the United States. Native Americans often traded their land in exchange for citizenship and civil rights. Due to the United States' economic power, these tribes had little leverage and millions of acres of land were transferred from their ownership. It was difficult for indigenous people to legally challenge this infringement because they lacked legal rights and legal standing. These treaties were used to naturalize and civilize Native Americans.

As an indirect, de facto way to secure the dispossessed land, the US government allowed late homesteading during the early twentieth century. This acted as a way to solidify settlements and permanently disrupt tribal land practices in the face of backlash.

This Homestead Acts also resulted in tensions between settlers and indigenous people, partly due to settlers moving onto indigenous territory while it was still occupied. Settlements excused Indian removal and culminated in multiple wars waged by settler militia.

Also involved in the acts were Buffalo soldiers, African-American soldiers who were key in building the American frontier in the West. They often engaged in wars with Native Americans, led by the government, to take over indigenous land.

Preemption Act of 1841
The Preemption Act of 1841 allowed settlers to claim up to 160 acres of federal land for themselves and prevent its sale to others including large landowners or corporations; they paid only a low fixed price of $1.25 per acre ($3.09 per hectare). To qualify, a person had to be either 21 years old or a "head of household" (such as a parent or surviving sibling supporting a family), a citizen or an immigrant declaring to become a citizen, and a resident on that land for a minimum of 14 months. To get permanent title to the land, the person had to accomplish certain actions, such as continue to reside on it or improve it for at least five years; they could not leave or abandon it for more than six months at a time.

Donation Land Claim Act of 1850
The Donation Land Claim Act allowed settlers to claim land in the Oregon Territory, then including the modern states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and parts of Wyoming. The Oregon Donation Land Claim Act was passed in 1850 and allowed white settlers to claim 320 acres or 640 to married couples between 1850 and 1855 when the act was repealed. Before it was repealed in 1855, the land was sold for $1.25 per acre. After the creation of the Oregon territory in 1848, the US government had passed the most generous land distribution bill in US history.

The Oregon Land Donation Act of 1850 had many negative effects on Indigenous people as well as Black people in the Pacific Northwest. Not only did the act use the land taken away from the Indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest, but the act also barred Black citizens from owning land and real estate. The act guaranteed land for White settlers and "half-breed" Indian men to the Oregon territory. This act followed the passing of the 1848 territorial organic act which allowed any white settler to claim a maximum of six hundred and forty acres. The Land Donation Act, however, also acknowledged women's property rights due to Congress allowing the donation of four hundred acres to settlers—land that could be claimed by heads of households—including women. This act differed from the Homestead Act of 1866 due to the ineligibility of Black citizens from applying.

Homestead Act of 1862

The "yeoman farmer" ideal of Jeffersonian democracy was still a powerful influence in American politics during the 1840–1850s, with many politicians believing a homestead act would help increase the number of "virtuous yeomen". The Free Soil Party of 1848–52, and the new Republican Party after 1854, demanded that the new lands opening up in the west be made available to independent farmers, rather than wealthy planters who would develop it with the use of slaves forcing the yeomen farmers onto marginal lands. Southern Democrats had continually fought (and defeated) previous homestead law proposals, as they feared free land would attract European immigrants and poor Southern whites to the west.

The intent of the Homestead Act of 1862 was to reduce the cost of homesteading under the Preemption Act; after the South seceded and their delegates left Congress in 1861, the Republicans and supporters from the upper South passed a homestead act signed by Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, which went into effect on Jan. 1st, 1863. Its leading advocates were Andrew Johnson George Henry Evans and Horace Greeley. George Henry Evans famously coined the phrase "Vote Yourself a Farm" in a bid to garner support for the movement.

In addition to the previous requirement in the Preemption Act of being either 21 years old or the head of a family, the 1862 act also allowed for persons under 21 who had served in the regular or volunteer forces of the U.S. army or navy for at least 14 days during "the existence of an actual war domestic or foreign".

The new act also required that the person "has never borne arms against the United States Government or given aid and comfort to its enemies"; unlike the 1848 and 1850 laws, it did not have any provision mentioning race. The act insured adult U.S. citizens 160 acres of land from the government to "improve their plot by cultivating the land".

The Homestead act expanded, rather than changed, the 1841 Preemption Act. The claimed homestead could include the same land which they had previously filed a preemption claim (on up to 160 acres at $1.25 per acre, or up to 80 acres of subdivided and surveyed land at $2.50 per acre), and they could expand their current ownership to contiguous adjacent land up to 160 acres total.

The homestead application must be "made for his or her exclusive use and benefit, and that said entry [onto public land] is made for the purpose of actual settlement and cultivation, and not either directly or indirectly for the use or benefit of any other person or persons whomsoever". The acquired land would not be liable for any debts incurred prior to the issuance of the patent for it.

The time requirement for residence or cultivation was set at 5 years; if it was proven "after due notice" that they moved residence or abandoned the land for more than six months at a time, then the land reverted to the government. A homesteader could also pay the $1.25 (or the current rate) per acre price after proof of the less-stringent requirements set in the Preemption Act.

After filing an affidavit with the government's agent, and paying him a $10 fee, the homesteader could begin occupying their claim. The government agent received the same fee for homestead land as he would have received if that land was sold for cash, 1/2 from the homesteader's filing fee and the other half from the patent (certificate) fee. The homesteader did not get a certificate or patent until they or their heirs filed, after 5 years (but before 7 years), further affidavits from two neighbors or "credible witnesses" and an additional $8 fee. Those affidavits affirmed the 5 years of residence or cultivation and that "no part of said land has been alienated [transferred or mortgaged], and that he [the homesteader] has borne true allegiance to the Government of the United States".

If both parents died and all the children were under 21, an executor under state law could sell (for the benefit of the children, and not the estate) an absolute title to the land within two years of the parent's death. The purchaser would pay office fees for a patent to the land.

Southern Homestead Act of 1866
The act was enacted to allow poor tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the South to become landowners in the Southern United States during Reconstruction. In the South, poor farmers and sharecroppers made up the majority of the population so the act sold land at a lower price to decrease poverty among the working class.

It was not very successful, as even the low prices and fees were often too much for the applicants to afford. The land made available was also mostly undeveloped forestry, and only white people had the means to make them productive.

Timber Culture Act of 1873
The Timber Culture Act granted up to 160 acres of land to a homesteader who would plant at least 40 acres (revised to 10) of trees over a period of several years. This quarter-section could be added to an existing homestead claim, offering a total of 320 acres to a settler.

Indian Homestead Act of 1875
The 1862 Homestead Act did not include indigenous peoples, so Congress passed the Indian Homestead Act to give Native family heads the opportunity to purchase homesteads from unclaimed public lands. This was under the condition that the individual relinquished their tribal identity and relations, along with the land improvement requirements. The federal land title was not officially granted to Native Americans until a period of five years had passed.

Because the US government did not issue fee waivers, many poor non-reservation Natives were unable to pay filing fees to claim homesteads. Access to such homesteads was further complicated by delays in resolving border disputes due to distance and discord between the US Land Office and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This made white settlements easier to finalize.

Kinkaid Amendment of 1904
Recognizing that the Sandhills of north-central Nebraska required more than 160 acres for a claimant to support a family, Congress passed the Kinkaid Act, which granted larger homestead tracts, up to 640 acres, to homesteaders in Nebraska.

Forest Homestead Act of 1906
This act allowed homesteads within Forest Reserves (created from 1891 on) and National Forests (from 1905? on), responding to opponents of the nation's Forest Reserves who felt land suited for agriculture was being withheld from private development. Homestead applications were reviewed by the U.S. Forest Service (created in 1905). While at first five years residency was required (per the 1862 Act), in 1913 this act was amended to allow proving up in just three years.

Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909
Because by the early 1900s much of the prime low-lying alluvial land along rivers had been homesteaded, the Enlarged Homestead Act was passed in 1909. To enable dryland farming, it increased the number of acres for a homestead to 320 acre given to farmers who accepted more marginal lands (especially in the Great Plains), which could not be easily irrigated.

A massive influx of these new farmers, combined with inappropriate cultivation techniques and misunderstanding of the ecology, led to immense land erosion and eventually the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916
In 1916, the Stock-Raising Homestead Act was passed for settlers seeking 640 acre of public land for ranching purposes.

Subsistence Homesteads provisions under the New Deal – 1930s

Renewed interest in homesteading was brought about by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's program of Subsistence Homesteading implemented in the 1930s under the New Deal.

Small Tracts Act
In 1938 Congress passed a law, called the Small Tract Act (STA) of 1938, by which it is possible for any citizen to obtain certain lands from the Federal Government for residence, recreation, or business purposes. These tracts may not usually be larger than 5 acres. A 5-acre tract would be one which is 660 feet long and 330 feet wide, or its equivalent. The property was to be improved with a building. Starting July 1955, improvement was required to be minimum of 400 sq. feet of space. 4,000 previously classified Small Tracts were offered at public auction at fair market value, circa 1958, by the Los Angeles Office of BLM.

In practice
Settlers found land and filed their claims at the regional land office, usually in individual family units, although others formed closer-knit communities. Often, the homestead consisted of several buildings or structures besides the main house.

The Homestead Act of 1862 gave rise later to a new phenomenon, large land rushes, such as the Oklahoma Land Runs of the 1880s and '90s.

End of homesteading
The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 ended homesteading; by that time, federal government policy had shifted to retaining control of western public lands. The only exception to this new policy was in Alaska, for which the law allowed homesteading until 1986.

The last claim under this Act was made by Ken Deardorff for 80 acre of land on the Stony River in southwestern Alaska. He fulfilled all requirements of the homestead act in 1979 but did not receive his deed until May 1988. He is the last person to receive a title to land claimed under the Homestead Acts.

Issues and concerns
The Homestead Acts were sometimes abused, but historians continue to debate the extent. In the 1950s and 1960s, historians Fred Shannon, Roy Robbins, and Paul Wallace Gates emphasized fraudulent episodes, and historians largely turned away from the issue. In recent decades, however, the argument has mostly been that on the whole fraud was a relatively minor element and that strongly positive impacts regarding women and the family have only recently been appreciated. Robert Higgs argues that the Homestead Act induced no long-term misallocation of resources. In 1995, a random survey of 178 members of the Economic History Association found that 70 percent of economists and 84 percent of economic historians disagreed with the statement "Nineteenth-century U.S. land policy, which attempted to give away free land, probably represented a net drain on the productive capacity of the country."

Some scholars believe the acreage limits were reasonable when the act was written but argue that no one understood the physical conditions of the plains. After a few generations, a family could build up a sizable estate.

According to Hugh Nibley, much of the rainforest west of Portland, Oregon, was acquired by the Oregon Lumber Company by illegal claims under the Act.

Canada
Similar laws were passed in Canada:

The Legislative Assembly of Ontario passed The Free Grants and Homestead Act in 1868, which introduced a conditional scheme to an existing free grant plan previously authorized by the Province of Canada in The Public Lands Act of 1860. It was extended to include settlement in the Rainy River District under The Rainy River Free Grants and Homestead Act, 1886, These Acts were consolidated in 1913 in The Public Lands Act, which was further extended in 1948 to provide for free grants to former members of the Canadian Forces. The original free grant provisions for settlers were repealed in 1951, and the remaining provisions were repealed in 1961.

The Parliament of Canada passed the Dominion Lands Act in 1872 in order to encourage settlement in the Northwest Territories. Its application was restricted after the passage of the Natural Resources Acts in 1930, and it was finally repealed in 1950.

The Legislative Assembly of Quebec did not expand the scope of the 1860 Province of Canada Act (which modern day Quebec was part of in 1860), but did provide in 1868 that such lands were exempt from seizure, and chattels thereon were also exempt for the first ten years of occupation. Later known as the Settlers Protection Act, it was repealed in 1984.

Newfoundland and Labrador provided for free grants of land upon proof of possession for twenty years prior to 1977, with continuous use for agricultural, business or residential purposes during that time. Similar programs continued to operate in Alberta and British Columbia until 1970. In the early 21st century, some land is still being granted in the Yukon Territory under its Agricultural Lands Program.

New Zealand
Despite the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi provisions for sale of land, the Māori Land Court decided that all land not cultivated by Māori was 'waste land' and belonged to the Crown without purchase. Most provinces in colonial New Zealand had Waste Lands Acts enacted between 1854 and 1877. The 1874 Waste Lands Act in Auckland Province used the term Homestead, with allocation administered by a Crown Lands Board. There was similar legislation in Westland. It gave up to 75 acre, with settlers just paying the cost of a survey. They had to live there for five years, build a house and cultivate a third of the land, if already open, or a fifth if bush had to be cleared. The land was forfeited if they didn't clear enough bush. Further amendments were made in 1877, 1882 and 1885, adding details such as pastoral and perpetual leases and village and special settlements. This contributed to rapid deforestation.

In popular culture

 * Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series describes her father and family claiming a homestead in Kansas, and later Dakota Territory. Wilder's daughter Rose Wilder Lane published a novel, Free Land, which describes the trials of homesteaders in what is now South Dakota.
 * Willa Cather's novels O Pioneers! and My Ántonia feature families homesteading on the Great Plains.
 * Oscar Micheaux's novel The Homesteader: a Novel (1917) is a semi-autobiographical story of an African American homesteader in South Dakota shortly after the turn of the 20th century.
 * The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! is based in the Oklahoma land rush.
 * The 1962 Elvis Presley musical film Follow That Dream, adapted from Pioneer, Go Home! (1959), features a family that homesteads in Florida.
 * The movie Far and Away, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, centers on the main characters' struggle to "obtain their 160 acres."
 * The miniseries Centennial depicts the homestead development of an eastern Colorado town.
 * The 1953 movie Shane depicts some early homesteaders in Wyoming opposed by a cattle baron who abuses, threatens and terrorizes them, calling them "pig farmers," "sod-busters," "squatters" and other taunts and insults. When the rancher gets violent, the homesteaders are divided over whether to leave or to hold onto their claims. A drifter working on one of the homesteads reluctantly tries to take action.
 * The 2016 film The Magnificent Seven, loosely adapted from the 1960 film of the same name, features Sam Chisolm, an African American U.S. Marshal raised on a homestead in Lincoln, Kansas. His family had been lynched in 1867 by former Confederate Army soldiers, hired by a robber baron to drive off settlers and free up real estate on the American frontier.

title: Homestead Acts


text:
Morrill Land-Grant Acts

The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are United States statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states using the proceeds from sales of federally owned land, often obtained from Native American tribes through treaty, cession, or seizure. The Morrill Act of 1862 (12 Stat. 503 (1862) later codified as et seq.) was enacted during the American Civil War, and the Morrill Act of 1890 (the Agricultural College Act of 1890 (, later codified as  et seq.)) expanded this model.

Passage of original bill

For 20 years prior to the first introduction of the bill in 1857, there was a political movement calling for the creation of agriculture colleges. The movement was led by Professor Jonathan Baldwin Turner of Illinois College. For example, the Michigan Constitution of 1850 called for the creation of an "agricultural school", though it was not until February 12, 1855, that Michigan Governor Kinsley S. Bingham signed a bill establishing the United States' first agriculture college, the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, known today as Michigan State University, which served as a model for the Morrill Act.

On February 8, 1853, the Illinois Legislature adopted a resolution, drafted by Turner, calling for the Illinois congressional delegation to work to enact a land-grant bill to fund a system of industrial colleges, one in each state. Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois believed it was advisable that the bill should be introduced by an eastern congressman, and two months later Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont introduced his bill.

Unlike the Turner Plan, which provided an equal grant to each state, the Morrill bill allocated land based on the number of senators and representatives each state had in Congress. This was more advantageous to the more populous eastern states.

The Morrill Act was first proposed in 1857, and was passed by Congress in 1859, but it was vetoed by President James Buchanan. In 1861, Morrill resubmitted the act with the amendment that the proposed institutions would teach military tactics as well as engineering and agriculture. Aided by the secession of many states that did not support the plans, the reconfigured Morrill Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862.

Land-grant colleges

The purpose of the land-grant colleges was: "without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life."

From the early to mid-19th century the federal government, through 162 violence-backed cessions, expropriated approximately 10.7 million acres of land from 245 tribal nations and divided it into roughly 80,000 parcels for redistribution. Under the act, each eligible state received 30000 acre of federal land, either within or contiguous to its boundaries, for each member of congress the state had as of the census of 1860. This land, or the proceeds from its sale, was to be used toward establishing and funding the educational institutions described above. Under provision six of the Act, "No State while in a condition of rebellion or insurrection against the government of the United States shall be entitled to the benefit of this act," in reference to the recent secession of several Southern states and the contemporaneously raging American Civil War. However, after the war, in the 1870s, Mississippi, Virginia, and South Carolina each assigned one African American college land grant status; these were, respectively, Alcorn University, Hampton Institute, and Claflin University.

In 1890 the 1862 Act was extended to the former Confederate states (see below for more detailed information), and it was eventually extended to every state and territory, including those created after 1862. If the federal land within a state was insufficient to meet that state's land grant, the state was issued scrip which authorized the state to select federal lands in other states to fund its institution. For example, New York carefully selected valuable timber land in Wisconsin to fund Cornell University. The resulting management of this scrip by the university yielded one third of the total grant revenues generated by all the states, even though New York received only one-tenth of the 1862 land grant. Overall, the 1862 Morrill Act allocated 17400000 acre of land, which when sold yielded a collective endowment of $7.55 million.

On September 12, 1862, the state of Iowa was the first to accept the terms of the Morrill Act which provided the funding boost needed for the fledgling State Agricultural College and Model Farm (eventually renamed Iowa State University of Science and Technology). The first land-grant institution actually created under the Act was Kansas State University, which was established on February 16, 1863, and opened on September 2, 1863.

The land grant colleges transformed engineering education in America and boosted the United States into a position of leader in technical education. Before the Civil War, American colleges primarily trained students in classical studies and the liberal arts. For the most part, only the relatively affluent could afford higher education, and entrance requirements often required proficiency in the dead languages of Latin and Ancient Greek. The first Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degrees, which typically required no Latin, came into being around 1850. American engineers were mostly educated at the United States Military Academy, on fortress construction, and their instructors were the authors of most engineering texts of the day. The Morrill Act changed all of that. Though the Congressional debates about the Act were largely focused on benefits to agriculture, the mechanic arts were specifically included in the Act's language, meaning applied sciences and engineering. The Act prohibited spending the endowment on constructing buildings as expensive and unnecessary, so instead the tools for engineering education increased, such as textbooks, laboratories and equipment. The number of engineers skyrocketed. Whereas in 1866 there were around 300 American men who had graduated with engineering degrees and only six reputable colleges granting them, just four years later there were 21 colleges offering engineering degrees and the total number of engineers graduated had tripled to 866. The following decade added another 2,249 engineers, and by 1911 the United States was graduating 3,000 engineers a year, with a total of 38,000 in the work force. At the time, Germany was graduating 1,800 engineers per year. The US had become the leader in technical education just 50 years after passage of the Morrill Act.

With a few exceptions (including Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), nearly all of the land-grant colleges are public. (Cornell University, while private, administers several state-supported statutory colleges that fulfill its public land-grant mission to the state of New York.)

To maintain their status as land-grant colleges, a number of programs are required to be maintained by the college. These include programs in agriculture and engineering, as well as a Reserve Officers' Training Corps program.

Expansion
The second Morrill Act (1890) was also aimed at the former Confederate states. This act required each state to show that race was not an admissions criterion, or else to designate a separate land-grant institution for African Americans. Thus, the second Morrill Act facilitated segregated education, although it also provided higher educational opportunities for African Americans who otherwise would not have had them. Among the seventy colleges and universities which eventually evolved from the Morrill Acts are several of today's historically Black colleges and universities. Though the 1890 Act granted cash instead of land, it granted colleges under that act the same legal standing as the 1862 Act colleges; hence the term "land-grant college" properly applies to both groups.

Later on, other colleges such as the University of the District of Columbia and the "1994 land-grant colleges" for Native Americans were also awarded cash by Congress in lieu of land to achieve "land-grant" status.

In imitation of the land-grant colleges' focus on agricultural and mechanical research, Congress later established programs of sea grant colleges (aquatic research, in 1966), urban grant colleges (urban research, in 1985), space grant colleges (space research, in 1988), and sun grant colleges (sustainable energy research, in 2003).

Agricultural experiment stations and cooperative extension service
Starting in 1887, Congress also funded agricultural experiment stations and various categories of agricultural and veterinary research "under direction of" the land-grant universities. Congress later recognized the need to disseminate the knowledge gained at the land-grant colleges to farmers and homemakers. The Smith–Lever Act of 1914 started federal funding of cooperative extension, with the land-grant universities' agents being sent to virtually every county of every state. In some states, the annual federal appropriations to the land-grant college under these laws exceed the current income from the investment of the sales proceeds of the original land grants. In the fiscal year 2006 USDA budget, $1.033 billion went to research and cooperative extension activities nationwide. For this purpose, then President George W. Bush proposed a $1.035 billion appropriation for fiscal year 2008.

title: Morrill Land-Grant Acts