Taking steps to equality

The Salem Women's Rights Convention was the first where women were the speakers.
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
SALEM -- In the master bedroom of the Salem Historical Museum is a black-, gray- and peach-colored gown. It was worn by Frances Sharp Ellis to William McKinley's inaugural ball in 1896.
In an adjacent clothing room is the white wedding gown that was worn by Bessie Church Rush when she wed Herbert H. Sharp on Sept. 26, 1888.
They are among the treasures displayed at the museum that give a glimpse into the lives of 19th-century women.
But Salem women are remembered for more than their fancy dresses.
The city also was one of the first steppingstones on the trail that gave women equal rights.
It is the site of the second Women's Rights Convention held in the United States, an 1850 meeting known as the first convention west of the Allegheny Mountains and the first in Ohio.
Differences: The first Women's Rights Convention, held in Seneca Falls, N.Y., gets much of the national attention, museum curator Jean Kaufman said.
But men did all the speaking in Seneca Falls.
"When it came to Salem ... the women said, 'no men,'" Kaufman said. "Women organized it, committeed it, chaired it and ran it."
The convention also was the site of another first, Kaufman said.
"They did not ask, necessarily, for the right for women to vote. They did ask for the right for all humans to vote," Kaufman said. "In essence, they included free blacks, which had never been done before."
Lack of rights: At that time, a woman could not get a divorce. If there was a divorce, her husband kept their children. A woman could not own property or hold office.
So the women gathered April 19 and 20 of 1850 in Salem -- known as a hotbed of suffragists, abolitionists and prohibitionists -- to further their cause.
"It's hard for us in this day and age to understand what it was like," said George Hays, Salem Public Library director. "How difficult it must have been for those women to take a stand. ...
"Women had no rights. That they were willing to make a public stand like they did is just pretty incredible."
Historians for years had thought no men attended the convention until they found the diary of a man who had attended with his wife.
"We know men were there, but they had no role. They were just quiet observers," Hays said.
Exhibit: Although the display may not be as eye-catching as the satin gowns, evidence of the 1850 convention remains. The museum houses gavels, minutes from the convention and photos of women who attended the event.
John A. Campbell is also featured in the museum's suffrage display. He was 14 when he snuck into the convention. When Campbell later became governor of the territory of Wyoming, one of his first acts, in 1869, was to give women there the right to vote, Kaufman said. Women in Ohio were given the right in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Also rife with memorabilia is a publication titled "The Salem, Ohio 1850 Women's Rights Convention Proceedings." It was compiled and edited by Robert W. Audretsch and published in 1976 by the Salem Public Library. The following information is reprinted from the publication with permission.
U The convention began April 19 in the Second Baptist Church near Second and Ellsworth but was moved to the nearby Hicksite Meeting House for the next day and a half because the church could not accommodate all those who wanted to attend. Newspapers of the day reported that 400 to 500 women attended. Because of the reported size of the meeting house, historians think it is more likely there were about 200 women in attendance.
U The Women's Rights Convention was called in April 1850 because a Constitutional Convention was slated to open May 6, 1850, to consider alteration of the Ohio Constitution. After the Women's Rights Convention, more than 8,000 signatures in support of the women were delivered to the Constitutional Convention. Still, the Constitutional Convention failed to give voting rights to women or blacks.
U Announcements of, or "calls" to, the convention were printed in the Anti-Slavery Bugle and the Homestead Journal. One called women to meet "to concert measures to secure all persons the recognition of Equal Rights, and the extension of the privileges of Government without distinction of sex or color."
"Women of Ohio!" the call read, "[W]e call upon you to come up to this work in womanly strength, and with womanly energy."
Another call read: "Too long has Woman been a party to her own degradation in consenting to be the toy of the other sex, instead of asserting her equality and demanding free scope for the exercise of her noblest faculties; -- too long has she regarded as her 'lord and master' him who, by the law of Nature and of God, is only her peer."
U The women crafted a resolution and memorial at the convention. Among the issues resolved were:
"That all rights are human rights, and pertain to human beings, without distinction of sex."
"That all distinctions between men and woman in regard to social, literary, pecuniary, religious or political customs and institution, based on a distinction of sex, are contrary to the laws of Nature, are unjust, and destructive to the purity, elevation, and progress in knowledge and goodness of the great human family, and ought to be at once and forever abolished."
U Also read into the record were several letters from women's rights activists from across the state and country.
Women at the convention also heard Lucretia Mott's "Discourse on Woman" and J. Elizabeth Jones' "The Wrongs of Woman."
One letter referred to the convention as the first great meeting of "Western Rebels."
"The wrongs of Woman have too long slumbered," wrote Mott from Philadelphia. "They now begin to cry for redress. Let them be clearly pointed out in your Convention; and then, not ask as favor, but demand as right, that every civil and ecclesiastical obstacle be removed out of the way."
Another letter came from Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls, N.Y.: "It is fitting that, at such a time, woman, who has so long been the victim of ignorance and injustice, should at length throw off the trammels of a false education, stand upright, and with dignity and earnestness manifest a deep and serious interest in the laws which are to govern her and her country."