Declaration of Sentiments, 1848

1
Declaration of Sentiments, 1848

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton Lucretia Mott
• Seneca Falls Convention

2
Social Snapshot

• Women, as members of mixed-sex societies, fought
  against injustices of
• The need for free public education for all
  children
• The abuse and neglect of criminals and mental
  patients
• Slavery
• The evils of drink (for Prohibition)
• Womens legal position
• Since the Revolutionary period, population and
  geographic boundaries of the United States had
  doubled and shifted westward.
• Economy was shifting away from farming towards
  manufactured goods, banks and cash crops.
• Changes left some feeling isolated, or without a
  sense of community.

3
Audience

• a candid world
• Other women
• The Seneca Falls Convention served as a pep rally
  for womens rights activists.
• Encourages women not in the movement to join, or
  just think about their positions.
• Men (Politicians, husbands, fathers, brothers,
  bosses, clergy, etc.)

4
Main Points

• Women declared their independence and inalienable
  Rights Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
  Happiness.
• We insist that women have immediate admission
  to the rights and privileges which belong to them
  as citizens of the United States.
• 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.

5
Main Points

• Men have created a social and political tyranny
  over women by not recognizing their civil
  liberties.
• 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.
• He has made her, if married, in the eye of the
  law, civilly dead.
• He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the
  formation of which she had no voice.
• He has withheld from her rights which are given
  the most ignorant and degraded men- both natives
  and foreigners.
• He has never permitted her to exercise her
  inalienable right to the elective franchise.
• He has taken from her all right in property,
  even to the wages she earns.
• In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to
  promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to
  all intents and purposes, her master.
• 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. 1

6
Social Impact

• After the convention, some parties removed their
  names due to societal pressures.
• The Convention was said to have mocked, not
  utilized, the Declaration of Independence.
• This stand put the womens movement back a few
  steps. Feminism today has a negative connotation.

7
Questions to consider

• How could an Abolitionist consistently oppose
  slavery but favor the continuation of womens
  inferior status?
• Why were so many of their contemporaries, even
  among the Abolitionists, deeply disturbed by the
  Declaration?
• What contemporary groups, if any, could utilize
  Jeffersons language in the Declaration of
  Independence for their own purposes?