Image Credit: National American Woman Suffrage Association, Courtesy National Museum of American History
A MOVEMENT BEGINS: In July 1848, several days before the first woman's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, a group of five women, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, drafted a declaration of rights for women on this table. Now known as the Declaration of Sentiments, the document was based on the Declaration of Independence. It proclaimed that "all men and women are created equal" and resolved that women would take action to claim the rights of citizenship denied to them by men.
The Declaration of Sentiments was adopted officially at the Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848 and signed by 68 women and 32 men. The convention and declaration mark the start of the formal women's rights movement in the United States.
This month, we mark the 170th anniversary of the Declaration of Sentiments.