Declaration of Sentiments

For much of history, the society of men and women was marked by a single unquestioned fact, that men controlled events and women merely obeyed. This practice, and men’s accompanying attitude of superiority over their female counterparts, was deeply ingrained, its premise reinforced—often in anger—by the taller, stronger, and more aggressive men, while male leaders, including religious authorities, explained at length why it was the duty of women to accept this and serve their men.

Though these arguments were hypocritical—men enforced the rules, often through brute strength, and then explained after the fact why their suzerainty was justified—women usually had little choice but to acquiesce. Over countless generations, these attitudes sank deeply into the minds of both men and women.

This began to change during the 1800s in America and elsewhere. Though preachers had long argued that women were little more than men’s “helpmeets”—helpmates, but in fact servants—the opening of political liberty in the United States also awakened women’s hearts and minds to the possibility that they, too, had the right to freedom as human beings. As the labor-saving devices of the burgeoning industrial revolution freed up some of their time and energy, women also wondered why they couldn’t attend college or strive to acquire professional credentials.

Men replied that women belonged at home, raising children. Indeed, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a founding voice of the women’s movement and principal author of the Declaration of Sentiments, found herself embargoed for several years during the 1850s as she cared for the seven children from her marriage to Henry Stanton. She, if anyone, understood the difficulties and costs of child-rearing. Still, the idea that a woman’s opportunities were limited to child care seemed patently unfair.

It wasn’t until her offspring had grown that Stanton could resume in person her campaign for equal rights. That crusade began in July 1848, when Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and a group of like-minded Quaker ladies living in Seneca Falls, New York, organized a convention whose purpose was to present to the public a proposal for the emancipation of women. The Seneca Falls Convention was attended by only 300 people, but it proved a resounding success, and its principal document, the Declaration of Sentiments, became a rallying point for the women’s movement, which flooded across the United States during the late 1800s and crested in 1920 with the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution that granted women the unrestricted right to vote.

The convention also caused more immediate results: Later that year, Pennsylvania enacted a law that greatly improved women’s abilities to control their own property and conduct business; within a few years, several other states did the same. This trend had begun some years earlier, but the convention accelerated the process. The gathering also inspired other women to take up the cause, and by the early 1850s women were meeting in national conventions.

Like the US Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of Sentiments has more than one author. The original document of the American Revolution is widely credited to Thomas Jefferson, but some of the credit also goes to Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, who helped Jefferson with the wording. The 1848 Declaration also had other contributors: One editor was Lucretia Mott, who also presided over the convention; others were the conventioneers themselves, who listened to Stanton’s draft and argued, paragraph by paragraph, over its content.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton believed the right to vote was important enough to include in the Declaration, this despite opposition from many Seneca Falls conventioneers, including her friend and cochair Lucretia Mott, who worried such a demand would make the conference look “ridiculous.” Abolitionist Frederick Douglass backed Stanton and spoke eloquently on behalf of women’s right to vote; this swayed the conference, and voting rights were included in the Declaration. (Mott’s fears proved unjustified, as voting rights quickly became a major theme of the American women’s movement.)

Many signatories were some combination of budding women’s rights activist, abolitionist, and Quaker. Quakers, or the Religious Society of Friends, were a Protestant religious sect that famously opposed war, slavery, and alcohol; they also strove to uphold the dignity of women. Many early Quaker preachers were women, including Lucretia Mott.

The second document released at the convention was a series of “Resolutions” that set forth much of the philosophy of the dawning women’s rights movement. This document argued that God’s law creates natural rights that apply to women as well as men, and that legal or social restrictions to the contrary are therefore false and nonbinding. The convention approved 11 Resolutions, including:

That women are entitled to happiness, and that human laws which contradict this are contrary to Natural Law;

That laws which restrict women’s achievements are similarly contrary;

That women must be recognized as equal to men;

That they should be educated as to their true rights;

That they have the right to teach in religious settings;

That women and men should be subject to the same social standards of behavior;

That it is no more improper for women to speak in public as it is for them to appear in performing arts;

That women should no longer be restricted in their behavior by distorted interpretations of scripture;

That they have a duty to secure for themselves the right to vote;

That women are as capable and responsible as men;

And that women and men should work together to remove male monopolies on work and business.

The ninth Resolution, on the right to vote, was the only one not accepted unanimously. As it turned out, the vote became the chief cause of the women’s rights movement, and much of that work is now termed the “women’s suffrage movement”—suffrage meaning the right to vote.

Strangely, the original version of the Declaration is lost; current copies are based on the version produced for public dispersal at Frederick Douglass’s print shop. The three-legged tea table on which the Declaration was written, however, became an icon of the women’s movement, and it is on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. The church where the convention took place, alongside the Stantons’ 1848 house, are part of the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls.