The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848: A Pivotal Moment in Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

�� ��� Sally G. McMillen. Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Woman’s Rights Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. x + 310 pp. Halftones, appendixes, notes, and index. $28.00. This book is part of the “Pivotal Moments in American History” series edited by David Hackett Fischer and James M. McPherson, published by Oxford University Press. The first nine books in the series did not have an explicit focus on women or gender and were all published by men. Sally McMillen astutely suggested that women contributed some pivotal moments in American history; she proposed and wrote a volume on the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and the first wave of the women’s rights movement in American history. Another volume in Oxford’s series of “pivotal moments” might profitably focus on the Nineteenth Amendment and women’s subsequent struggles to serve on juries and to pass an Equal Rights Amendment in the 1920s all the way through to the second wave of the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s.