- On a cold, spring day in 1848,
the town of Seneca Falls, New York,
watched as wagons, filled
with men and women,
rolled to a stop before the
local congregational church.
The people in those wagons
had come to a meeting,
a meeting called by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
and Lucretia Mott,
as well as a few of their
neighbors and friends.
Some 300 women and men traveled
long distances to attend.
Before they left, 100 of
them, 68 women and 32 men,
would sign what became known
as the Declaration of Sentiments.
This astonishing moment
for women grew directly out
of the abolitionist movement.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and
Lucretia Mott met each other
in London at an anti-slavery convention,
where both were horrified
because women were
consigned to separate seats
in the balcony.
Stanton and Mott agreed then
and there to call a convention
in which women's rights
and women's freedoms
would be discussed.
It took them another seven
years to fulfill their promise.
But when they at last had a date,
they distributed fliers,
wrote to friends and acquaintances,
and knocked on doors to get the word out.
When 300 people showed up,
they were surprised and gratified.
At the first meeting,
attendees could not agree
on who should chair the convention,
because they didn't think it appropriate
for a woman to do so.
In the end, they invited James Mott,
the husband of Lucretia,
and Frederick Douglass to
act as chairs and conveners.
The Declaration of
Sentiments copied the form
and the structure of the
Declaration of Independence.
This was a deliberate strategy adopted
by the small group of female leaders.
Their aim was to suggest
what might have been included
in the Declaration of Independence,
had women been involved
in writing that document.
Like the Declaration of Independence,
the Declaration of
Sentiments had 16 grievances,
each a statement of what women suffered.
We notice, we take a look
at this Declaration of Sentiments,
how much a distance had been covered
in the half century since
the Revolutionary period.
But we also note what
has happened in the years
between the two Declarations.
Men, the Declaration of
Sentiments proclaimed,
had systematically deprived
women of rights due
to every human being.
He, the universal he, had
"compelled her to submit to laws,
"in the formation of
which she had no voice."
He, again, the universal he, had
"withheld from her rights
"which are given to the most
ignorant and degraded men,
"both natives and foreigners."
Note the women are
conscious of the fact that,
no matter who well-educated
or how wealthy,
they could not exercise the right to vote.
Propertied immigrants, in contrast,
many of whom could neither
read nor write in English,
could quickly acquire the vote.
Their grievances included
complaints about the many forms
of economic discrimination
that women suffered.
For example, the women wrote,
"He has taken from her
"all right in property,
"even to the wages that she earns.
"He has monopolized nearly all
"of the profitable employments,
"and from those she is
permitted to follow,
"she receives but a scanty remuneration."
She was deprived of the right
to a good education,
and a good job.
As one grievance noted,
"He closes against her all the avenues
"of wealth and distinction,
"which he considers most
honorable to himself.
"As a teacher of theology,
medicine, or law,
"she is not known."
Women also complained that
they didn't have rights
even within their own families.
They wrote,
"He has so framed the laws of divorce
"as to what shall be the
proper causes of divorce
"in case of separation
and the guardianship
"of the children goes to him, not to her."
Perhaps most damning of all,
the women complained that men
had undermined their claims
to moral guardianship
and her faith in herself.
"Even that's fear which
is assigned to women,
"moral virtue, the spiritual
well-being of the family,"
wrote the women,
"he has denied her,
"by failing to acknowledge
"that she can effectively participate
"in the church and church worship."
He had, in short,
"made her, morally, an
irresponsible being,"
so "she can commit many
crimes with impunity,
"provided they be done in
the presence of her husband.
"He" the universal he,
had "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
"from society, are not only tolerated
"but deemed of little account in man.
"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."
In other words, the consciousness of women
were so imbued with the
ideas of domesticity,
that there wasn't any way, really,
for her to move out of it,
short of the kind of protest out
of which the Declaration came.
The very first grievance,
and the one that most of
us ultimately remember,
stimulated an active women's movement.
The complaint read,
"He has never permitted her
"to exercise her inalienable right
"to the elective franchise."
Virtually all the others
passed unanimously,
but the idea that women
should have the right to vote,
although it did pass,
was itself an extraordinarily
controversial feature in 1848.
Signatories to the
Declaration of Sentiments came
from a variety of walks of life.
Many of them had been people involved
in the abolitionist movement,
and not a few of them were women
who had either become widows
or evaded the constraints
of coverture in one way or the other.
But note,
the emphasis within the
Declaration of Sentiments
was not on equality for women,
but on enabling women to
exercise the kinds of rights
that would enable them to
contribute to their families,
and become independent
actors and recognized voices.
Women wanted what we would
now call human rights.
