Many women first spoke in public in the abolition movement, and some found that men wanted them silent. In 1840 Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton traveled to a world antislavery meeting in London, where women delegates were not allowed to take part. Eight years later they called a meeting of their own.
Key idea
On July 19 and 20, 1848, about 300 people met at Seneca Falls, New York. They adopted the Declaration of Sentiments, written mainly by Stanton and modeled on the Declaration of Independence: "all men and women are created equal." It listed wrongs done to women and demanded their rights, including the vote. About 100 people signed it: 68 women and 32 men.
Why it works
Why copy the Declaration of Independence? Every American knew it and honored it. By using its words, the women argued that they were asking for nothing new, only for the country to live up to its own founding promise. Where 1776 listed the King's wrongs against the colonies, 1848 listed men's legal wrongs against women: no vote, no right to their own wages once married, no say in laws they had to obey.
Worked example: The one close vote
All but one of the convention's resolutions passed without opposition. Which one was debated, and how did it pass?
- The ninth resolution said it was women's duty to secure for themselves the "sacred right to the elective franchise," the vote.
- Some supporters, Mott among them, feared asking for the vote would make the whole cause look ridiculous.
- Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist editor from nearby Rochester, spoke strongly for it.
- It passed, but narrowly: it was the only resolution not adopted unanimously.
Answer: The resolution for women's right to vote, carried after Frederick Douglass spoke for it.
Common mistake
Women did not win the vote soon after Seneca Falls. The Nineteenth Amendment came in 1920, 72 years later, when nearly all of the 1848 signers had died. Some states and territories, starting with Wyoming in 1869, let women vote earlier. Check the math: 1920 − 1848 = 72.