our (HER)story
the SENECA FALLS CONVENTION
In July 1848, at Seneca Falls, 300 women and men sign the Declaration of Sentiments, a plea for the end of discrimination against women in all spheres of society.
Summer 2008 will mark the 160th anniversary of a movement to ensure full citizenship rights for all women in the United States. The staggering changes for women that have come about over those seven generations in family life, in religion, in government, in employment, in education - these changes did not just happen spontaneously. Women themselves made those changes happen. They have worked deliberately to create a better world. Like many amazing stories, the history of the Women's Rights Movement began with a small group of people questioning why human lives were being unfairly constricted.
A Tea Launches a Revolution The Women's Rights Movement marks July 13, 1848 as its beginning. On that sweltering summer day in upstate New York, a young housewife and mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was invited to tea with four women friends. When the course of their conversation turned to the situation of women, Stanton poured out her discontent with the limitations placed on her own situation under America's new democracy. Hadn't the American Revolution had been fought just 70 years earlier to win the patriots freedom from tyranny? But women had not gained freedom even though they'd taken equally tremendous risks through those dangerous years. Surely the new republic would benefit from having its women play more active roles throughout society. Stanton's friends agreed with her, passionately. This was definitely not the first small group of women to have such a conversation, but it was the first to plan and carry out a specific, large-scale program. Within two days of their afternoon tea together, this small group had picked a date for their convention, found a suitable location, and placed a small announcement in the Seneca County Courier. They called "A convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman." In the history of western civilization, no similar public meeting had ever been called. Today, we are celebrating the 160th anniversary of the beginning of the Women’s Rights Movement, by commemorating the massive changes that these women and men set into motion, as we continue on in the footsteps of those leaders who have paved the way.
A "Declaration of Sentiments" is Drafted As the women set about preparing for the event, Elizabeth Cady Stanton used the Declaration of Independence as the framework for writing what she titled a "Declaration of Sentiments." In what proved to be a brilliant move, Stanton connected the nascent campaign for women's rights directly to that powerful American symbol of liberty. In this Declaration of Sentiments, Stanton carefully enumerated areas of life where women were treated unjustly. Eighteen was precisely the number of grievances America's revolutionary forefathers had listed in their Declaration of Independence from England.
The First Women's Rights Convention The convention was convened as planned, and over the two-days of discussion, the Declaration of Sentiments and 12 resolutions received unanimous endorsement, one by one, with a few amendments. The only resolution that did not pass unanimously was the call for women's enfranchisement. That women should be allowed to vote in elections was almost inconceivable to many. Lucretia Mott, Stanton's longtime friend, had been shocked when Stanton had first suggested such an idea. And at the convention, heated debate over the woman's vote filled the air. Even the heartfelt pleas of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a refined and educated woman of the time, did not move the assembly. Not until Frederick Douglass, the noted Black abolitionist and rich orator, started to speak, did the uproar subside. Woman, like the slave, he argued, had the right to liberty. "Suffrage," he asserted, "is the power to choose rulers and make laws, and the right by which all others are secured." In the end, the resolution won enough votes to carry, but by a bare majority. The Declaration of Sentiments ended on a note of complete realism: "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."
The Movement Expands Though Stanton was correct in her assertion that there would be much misconception and misrepresentation and backlash in the media, it only added to the expansion of the movement. The women's rights movement of the late 19th century went on to address the wide range of issues spelled out at the Seneca Falls Convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and women like Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Sojourner Truth traveled the country lecturing and organizing for the next forty years. Eventually, winning the right to vote emerged as the central issue, since the vote would provide the means to achieve the other reforms. All told, the campaign for woman suffrage met such staunch opposition that it took 72 years for the women and their male supporters to be successful.After the vote was finally won in 1920, the organized Women's Rights Movement continued on in several directions. While the majority of women who had marched, petitioned and lobbied for woman suffrage looked no further, a minority - like Alice Paul - understood that the quest for women's rights would be an ongoing struggle that was only advanced, not satisfied, by the vote. In 1923, Alice Paul, drafted an Equal Rights Amendment for the United States Constitution. Such a federal law, it was argued, would ensure that "Men and women have equal rights throughout the United States." A constitutional amendment would apply uniformly, regardless of where a person lived. The movement expanded moved in directions that the founders of the Seneca Falls Convention never imagined. Including the birth control movement started by public health nurse Margaret Sanger to the second wave of feminism in the 1960’s, to the now movement of the 21st century where women are addressing even more controversial issues facing women. And now new women are standing up and declaring themselves the third wave feminists, continuing the fight for equality that began with the Seneca Falls Convention.