World Anti‐Slavery Convention, L ondon

Abstract

The World Anti‐Slavery Convention met in June 1840 in London. It brought together European and American abolitionist societies to discuss the issue of slavery. As its name suggests, this convention had the potential of influencing an international movement on the issue of abolition. However, what the convention is most remembered for is its influence on the rise of American women's rights. The convention is connected to women's rights because of two major events that occurred: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, two of the most important women in the early American women's rights movement, met for the first time and came together in friendship and protest; and the “woman question” that had plagued the American abolitionist movement since the late 1830s was openly discussed on an international stage, prompting American women to equate their own secondary status with that of slaves and begin their own revolution for women's rights.