Myth of Seneca Falls

The story of how the womens rights movement began at the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 is a cherished American myth. The standard account credits founders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott with defining and then leading the campaign for womens suffrage. In her provocative new history, Lisa Tetrault demonstrates that Stanton, Anthony, and their peers gradually created and popularized this origins story during the second half of the nineteenth century in response to internal movement dynamics as well as the racial politics of memory after the Civil War. The founding mythology that coalesced in their speeches and writings most notably Stanton and Anthonys History of Woman Suffrage provided younger activists with the vital resource of a usable past for the ongoing struggle, and it helped consolidate Stanton and Anthonys leadership against challenges from the grassroots and rival suffragists.As Tetrault shows, while this mythology has narrowed our understanding of the early efforts to champion womens rights, the myth of Seneca Falls itself became an influential factor in the suffrage movement. And along the way, its authors amassed the first archive of feminism and literally invented the modern discipline of womens history.2015 Mary Jurich Nickliss Prize, Organization of American Historians