Seneca Falls Convention Declaration of Sentiments (1848) Commentary by Donna M. DeBlasio, Youngstown State University

The Declaration of Sentiments was written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and was presented to the participants at a convention in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19–20, 1848. Modeling her work on the Declaration of Independence, the author sought to address the wrongs perpetrated against womankind and called for redress of those wrongs. The Seneca Falls meeting was the first convention specifically devoted to the issue of women's rights. Organized by Stanton, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Mary Ann McClintock, Martha Wright, and Jane Hunt, the convention's goal was to address “the social, civil and religious rights of women,” according to the Seneca County Courier of July 14, 1848. The Declaration of Sentiments summed up the current state of women's rights in the United States and served notice that women would no longer stand for being treated inequitably.

While antebellum reformers, many of whom were abolitionists, connected the situation of women with that of slaves, in that neither...