Seneca Falls Convention Declaration of Sentiments

Context

The United States in the 1840s seethed with a variety of reform movements, inspired by the religious upheaval known as the Second Great Awakening as well as the rise of transcendentalism. (Transcendentalism was a new way of looking at life, spirituality, and religion that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. Transcendentalists, among them Ralph Waldo Emerson, generally believed that they could gain knowledge of spiritual reality through the use of intuition rather than through established religion.) The men and women reformers thought they could improve American society by changing some of the ills they perceived as plagues upon the nation. Some of the reformers' causes included better treatment of the mentally ill, opposition to capital punishment and war, temperance, and most notably, abolitionism. The first publication of William Lloyd Garrison's antislavery newspaper the Liberator on January 1, 1831, traditionally marks the beginning of the American abolitionist movement. Garrison's newspaper proclaimed on its masthead that there should “no union with slaveholders” and demanded the end of slavery immediately. This call for immediate abolition set the abolitionists apart from antislavery advocates who were more moderate and willing to accept the gradual dismantling of the slave system. The formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 created an organization committed to the immediate abolition of slavery. Throughout the North activists formed antislavery organizations loosely affiliated with the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Men of conscience, however, were not the only ones who wanted to free the enslaved. Organized antislavery encouraged women to participate in the movement, although the more conservative preferred that women form auxiliary organizations rather than joining with the men in the same group. Others, like Garrison and his friend Stephen S. Foster, believed that women should participate in the same organizations alongside the men. The role of women in the American Anti-Slavery Society became one of several issues that finally split the organization in 1840. Those who supported full participation of women stayed in the American Anti-Slavery Society, while the dissenters formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Those who stayed in the American Anti-Slavery Society also viewed the U.S. Constitution as a proslavery document and eschewed involvement with political parties.

Female abolitionists played a number of roles in the fight to end slavery, circulating petitions to Congress, holding antislavery fairs, contributing articles to antislavery publications, and organizing antislavery societies. Some even took the daring step of speaking out publicly against slavery. The sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké were among the first women who gave public orations to mixed-gender audiences on the issue of abolition. This was considered so outrageous that they were often on the receiving end of abuse, both verbal and physical. The Grimkés paved the way for other women orators such as Abby Kelley Foster. The abolitionist movement, as well as other contemporary reform movements such as temperance and anti-capital punishment, was fertile ground for inspiring women's activity beyond the home. Their work in reform motivated many women to question their role in society and begin to work to improve their own lot. It was in this atmosphere that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Jane Hunt, Mary Ann McClintock, and Martha Wright called for a convention to discuss the issue of women's rights.

The seed for what became the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 was actually planted several years earlier at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Mott and Stanton met for the first time at the London convention. Stanton was accompanying her husband, Henry, who was a delegate to the convention. Mott was actually a delegate herself but, because of her gender, was denied a seat at the convention. This blatant discrimination forced the women to rethink their treatment in American society and call for their rights as free citizens of the United States.

The immediate impetus for the Seneca Falls Convention was the impending passage of a married women's property law in New York State. Traditionally women had no legal rights to property; once married, everything from the clothes on their backs to their children belonged to the husband. The New York legislature was considering legislation to give married women some property rights. The convention's organizers hoped that by meeting they would bring awareness to the inequitable treatment of women and gain support for passage of the law. Mott's husband, James, chaired the convention; the participants feared that having a woman preside would only increase hostility toward their cause. Seneca Falls was the last time that a male presided over a women's rights convention. The Declaration of Sentiments was one of two documents produced at the convention. The other was a preamble followed by a series of eleven resolutions making various demands for women's rights. Resolution number nine was the most radical—it called for the right of women to vote. All eleven resolutions passed, ten of them unanimously. Only the demand for the vote was not passed unanimously. Indeed, even Lucretia Mott felt that asking for votes for women would harm their cause.