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Matilda Joslyn Gage Website
SYRACUSE MADE WOMAN’S RIGHTS HISTORY 150 YEARS AGO

On September 8-10, 1852 Syracuse, New York hosted the third national woman’s rights convention held in the country (the first two were in Worcester, Massachusetts). The convention put Syracuse on the map as a major woman’s rights center.

This was the first convention Matilda Joslyn Gage and Susan B. Anthony attended. The third member of what came to be called "the woman suffrage triumvirate, " Elizabeth Cady Stanton was unable to attend, but she wrote a long letter which was read to the convention.

Other notable Convention participants included Rev. Samuel J. May, Lucy Stone, Ernestine Rose, Lucretia Mott, Antoinette Brown, Gerrit and Ann Fitzhugh Smith, Clarina Howard Nichols, Sarah Miller, Martha Coffin Wright, Paulina Wright Davis, Abby Price, and many more.

The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation invites all interested individuals and groups to contact Loretta Zolkowski, Planning Coordinator, at: mjgagefoundation@aol.com

Gage described her participation:
          When I saw the reports of the first [national, in 1850] convention in the New York Tribune, I knew my place; and when I read the notice of a convention to be held in Syracuse, in 1852, I at once decided to publicly join the ranks of those who spoke against wrong.
          I prepared my speech and going to the convention, sat near the front and, with a palpitating heart, waited until I obtained courage to go upon the platform - probably to the interference of arrangements, for I knew nothing about the proper course for me to take.
          I was so sweetly welcomed by the sainted Lucretia Mott, who gave me a place, and, when I had finished speaking, referred so pleasantly to what I had said, to her my heart turned always with truest affection.
Gage ended her speech with these words:
          We need not expect the concessions demanded by women will be peaceably granted; there will be a long moral warfare before the citadel yields. In the meantime, let us take possession of the outposts...All great reforms are gradual. Fear not any attempt to frown down the revolution already commenced; nothing is more fertile aid of reform, than any attempt to check it; work on!