Seneca Falls and the Declaration of Sentiments

In July 1848 about 300 people gathered in Seneca Falls, New York, for the first women's rights convention in the United States. Its organizers, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, had met as abolitionists and were angered when women delegates were barred from participating fully at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London.

Stanton modelled the convention's Declaration of Sentiments on the Declaration of Independence, stating that all men and women are created equal and listing grievances: married women could not own property, women were excluded from most professions and higher education, and they could not vote.

The demand for the vote was so controversial that it was the only resolution not passed unanimously; Frederick Douglass spoke in its favour. One hundred people signed the Declaration, and some later withdrew their names after public ridicule. Seneca Falls launched an organized movement that would take seventy-two years to win the national vote.