On a summer day in 1846--two years before the Seneca Falls
convention that launched the movement for woman's rights in the
United States--six women in rural upstate New York sat down to
write a petition to their state's constitutional convention,
demanding "equal, and civil and political rights with men."
Refusing to invoke the traditional language of deference,
motherhood, or Christianity as they made their claim, the women
even declined to defend their position, asserting that "a self
evident truth is sufficiently plain without argument." Who were
these women, Lori Ginzberg asks, and how might their story change
the collective memory of the struggle for woman's rights?
Very few clues remain about the petitioners, but Ginzberg pieces
together information from census records, deeds, wills, and
newspapers to explore why, at a time when the notion of women as
full citizens was declared unthinkable and considered too dangerous
to discuss, six ordinary women embraced it as common sense. By
weaving their radical local action into the broader narrative of
antebellum intellectual life and political identity, Ginzberg
brings new light to the story of woman's rights and of some women's
sense of themselves as full members of the nation.