[p. 97]
This action in excluding women caused general indignation. William Lloyd Garrison and party, who also were delegates, in protest refused to take part in the convention, as did many others, among them Wendell Phillips and his new-made wife.
It was in London that she made the acquaintance of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and formed a life-long friendship. Their exclusion from the convention on account of sex brought her for the first time face to face with the reality of the subjection of woman. In the Society of Friends she had been accustomed to see members valued more for their individual merit than for the accident of sex, and this indignity sinking deep into her heart, she resolved to do her best to right this arrogant wrong. As she and Mrs. Stanton walked home together at the close of the first day's session, they agreed to call a Woman's Rights Convention on their return to America. Eight years after, around the tea-table of a mutual friend, they discussed the question in all its bearings and decided that the time had come. That same evening, July 14, 1848, the call appeared and the meeting was held, James Mott in the chair. This was the famous Seneca Falls Convention, the beginning of a movement now worldwide. It led Mrs. Mott into even greater publicity than had the hated anti-slavery cause. Her correspondence became voluminous and her calls to address public meetings incessant. As a speaker she was in demand, partly because she was almost the only woman then who was able to address with ease a public audience, but also because of her eloquence, her beautiful voice, her winning manner and her fearless advocacy of truth.
Meantime her children had grown beyond the needs of childhood, and her well-ordered household gave her frequent opportunities for absence. This was not, however, by the neglect of home duties, rather by habits of careful economy of time and strength. It is recorded that she thought herself ‘pretty smart to get her currants squeezed and jelly made before meeting time,’ ten
