Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions Introduction:



The birth of the women's rights movement in America and in the world is commonly acknowledged to have occurred in
the small town of Seneca Falls, New York during a two day meeting in July 1848.

The time and place are directly related to the fact that Seneca Falls was home to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who with
Lucretia Mott had been ejected from the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London because they were women.
The experience had been a traumatic one to young Stanton; she wrote much later of its demonstration to her "that it is
almost impossible for the most liberal of men to understand what liberty means for women." Mott and Stanton had
talked then of a follow-up meeting in America, but eight years went by before Philadelphian Mott, her husband and her
sister, Martha C. Wright visited central New York State. During this visit, the three women, along with two other
Quaker woman friends, decided to call a "convention" to discuss the issues that troubled them. They wrote the call that
same evening and published it in the Seneca County Courier the next day, July 14, 1848, giving only five days notice.
The three sentence announcement described a meeting to discuss the "social, civil, and religious rights of women."
Women were "earnestly invited to attend," and because of presumed female timidity, they were assured that the first
day's session would be "held exclusively for women", while the second day's proceedings were to be open to "the
public generally". Inexperienced in Parliamentary procedure and unsure of themselves, the leaders readily agreed that
Lucretia's husband, James Mott, should preside over the meeting.

Though the announcement ran only once, the response was amazing. Women throughout this agricultural area left their
summertime chores and drove teams of horses as far as fifty miles for the ten o'clock meeting at the Wesleyan Chapel.
Over three hundred people appeared, including so many men that the leaders overcame their trepidation and allowed
them to join the women. 

The Declaration of Sentiments and the accompanying resolutions covering the aims and demands that the convention
debated were drafted primarily by Stanton. All passed with large majorities except for the resolution on suffrage for
women for which Stanton was wholly responsible. Stanton recalls this as "the contentious plank of our platform." Her
husband usually very supportive of woman rights, refused to attend the convention; Lucretia Mott advised against
fearing the resolution that it would make the women look ridiculous. But Stanton persisted because "I saw clearly that
the power to make the laws was the right through which all other rights could be secured." The resolution passed by a
narrow margin only after Frederick Douglass vigorously defended it from the floor. The document was signed by
sixty-eight women and thirty-two men after the group voted to allow the men to join in the signing.

Stanton chose the 1776 Declaration of Independence as the model for the Declaration of Sentiments keeping close to the
original phraseology of the eighteenth-century document but substituting the word "male" for the name of "King
George". Her use of the Declaration of Independence was a brilliant propagandistic stroke. She thereby connected her
cause to a powerful American symbol of liberty. Moreover, her manifesto was in tune with the popular, democratic
revolutions against monarchical rule which were sweeping European countries in 1848. Finding that the Declaration of
Independence included eighteen grievances, the five women planning the convention spent most of one day combing the
law books and other documents to find eighteen injustices of their own.

The struggle for woman suffrage that began in Seneca Falls was so long that only one woman who attended the
convention lived to vote in a national election. Charlotte Woodward Pierce, who was nineteen in 1848, voted in the
presidential election in 1920. 

Seneca Falls continued to be the center of the women's rights movement until the Civil War because it was the home of
Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Because she was a married woman who would bear seven children, Susan Anthony and other
leaders tended to come to Seneca Falls, where the busy young mother was often confined with pregnancies or nursing
babies. One result was that she learned to use her pen instead of her presence and developed into a fine writer. She
became the Thomas Jefferson of the nineteenth-century woman's movement; its chief thinker and strategist as Anthony
would become its chief organizer. Stanton made the thunderbolts and Anthony threw them. Her success at the 1848
convention would also shape the strategic approach she used the rest of her long life, for Stanton consistently pushed
just a little beyond what others, be they Mott, Anthony, her husband or the National American Woman Suffrage
Association, thought public opinion would permit.



Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions: 
The First Woman's Rights Convention 
Presented at Seneca Falls, New York, July 19 - 20, 1848 

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the
people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature
and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the
causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights
governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of
government becomes destructive of these ends, it is right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to
insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing it powers in
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that
governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath
shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the
forms to which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same
object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to
provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government,
and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in
direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. 

       He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. 
       He has compelled her to submit laws, in the formation of which she had no voice. 
       He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men - both natives and
       foreigners. 
       Having deprived her of the first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without
       representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides. 
       He has made her, if married in the eye of the law, civilly dead. 
       He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns. 
       He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided
       they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise
       obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master - the law giving him power to
       deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement. 
       He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and in case of separation, to whom
       the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women - the law,
       in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands. 
       After depriving her of all rights as a married woman if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to
       support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it. 
       He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she
       receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he
       considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known. 
       He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her. 
       He allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her
       exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the
       Church. 
       He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women,
       by which moral delinquencies which exclude women form society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little
       account in man. 
       He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action,
       when that belongs to her conscience and to her God. 
       He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her
       self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life. 

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious
degradation - in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved,
oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the
rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and
ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate
tracts, petition the State and National legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope
this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions embracing every part of the country.

Resolutions Adopted:

WHEREAS, the great precept of nature is conceded to be, that "man shall pursue his own true and substantial
happiness." Blackstone in his Commentaries remarks, that this law of Nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated
by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding all over the globe, in all countries and at
all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this, and such of them as are valid, derive all their force, and
all their validity, and all their authority, mediately and immediately, from this original; therefore,

Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way, with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the
great precept of nature and of no validity, for this is "superior in obligation to any other."

Resolved, That all laws which prevent women from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate,
or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no
force or authority. 

Resolved, That woman is man's equal - was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands
that she should be recognized as such.

Resolved, That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they
may no longer publish her degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, not their ignorance,
by asserting that they have all the rights they want.

Resolved, That inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual superiority, does accord to woman moral
superiority, it is pre-eminently his duty to encourage her to speak and teach, as she has an opportunity, in all religious
assemblies. 

Resolved, That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior that is required of women in the social
state, should also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man
and woman.

Resolved, That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against woman when she
addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill-grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her appearance
on the stage, in the concert, or in feats of the circus.

Resolved, That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted
application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which
her great Creator has assigned her.

Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective
franchise. 

Resolved, That the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and
responsibilities. 

Resolved, That the speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous and untiring efforts of both men and women,
for the overthrow of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to woman an equal participation with men in the
various trades, professions, and commerce.

Resolved, therefore, That, being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities, and the same consciousness of
responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every
righteous cause by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is
self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by
speaking, by any instrumentalities proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be held; and this being a
self-evident truth growing out of the divinely implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to
it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be regarded as a self-evident falsehood, and at war
with mankind.