“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, . . . when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolution despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.” - Declaration of Sentiments, 1848
In 1840, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. As women, they soon discovered they were not entitled to speak, or even to be on the floor of the hall. Confined to the balcony and silenced, they decided then and there to hold a convention on the rights of women. Eight years later, on July 19th and 20th, 1848, the first Woman’s Rights Convention was held near Stanton’s home in Seneca Falls, New York. The one hundred women and men gathered there debated, voted on, and signed the Declaration of Sentiments, a manifesto on the rights of women. Taking the 1776 Declaration of Independence as a model, they rewrote paragraphs to state their case as women, substituted “all men” for “King George,” and added the key phrase, “all men and women are created equal.”
Since the time, most of the eighteen grievances and twelve resolutions have been addressed, at least legally. Women in the US now have the right to vote, to an education, to all professions and employments. Married women have the right to their earnings and to own property, to divorce, and to sign contracts. Husbands are no longer permitted to deprive their wives of liberty or to beat them, though the legacy of those previously sanctioned acts continues. In many religious sects, with some considerable exceptions, women are permitted to act as ministers and rabbis and in other positions of authority.
Nevertheless, the most recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade has made some of these 1848 grievances and resolutions pertinent once again:
“He [meaning men - or in this case the Justices] has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.
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.
. . . because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States. . . .
Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way, with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of nature and of no validity. . . .
Resolved, That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority.
Resolved, That woman is man’s equal -- was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such. . . .
Resolved, That the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities” (Rossi, 416-419).
Many had prepared the way for the crafting of the Declaration. Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman written in 1792 had inspired many who were there. So had the speeches of 1820s feminist and labor organizer Frances Wright; the editorials and book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, of transcendentalist author and editor Margaret Fuller; and the series of newspaper articles that became Letters on the Equality of the Sexes by feminist and abolitionist Sarah M. Grimké. However, the main inspirations were three: the continual denial of rights of religious freedom, freedom of expression, education, employment, and participation in government to women; the work of so many of the participants in the abolitionist movement, where they also were fighting for the recognition of the liberty and equality of enslaved women and men; and the example of the Haudenosaunee women with whom many of the women and men at the convention were friends.[i] The last was particularly important, as the women living in upstate New York, where the convention was held, through their frequent interaction with the Haudenosaunee people, whose land they occupied, became well acquainted with a different reality for women. Haudenosaunee women were treated with deep respect; they had an equal voice in their government; violence of any kind against Haudenosaunee women was strictly forbidden and they could walk alone at night in complete safety; they wore comfortable clothing (later adopted by Amelia Bloomer and others as a few settler women wore pantaloons); and they knew ways to ease the pain of childbirth. True equality, respect, and freedom of women was in evidence around the settler women — a freedom and equality they had never known but now knew was indeed possible. Tragically, this equality, freedom, and respect of the Haudenosaunee would be horrifically quashed through the conquest of European settlers -- the same settlers who would write and sign the Declaration that we celebrate to this day on the 4th of July. Would that it had been written to include all peoples.
When I was growing up, my mother would commemorate the 4th of July by reading the Declaration of Independence. She was proud of this heritage of liberty and equality for all, and also was a nascent feminist — telling me often that she refused to include the word “obey” in her marriage vows, and the only one among her group of friends to support the Equal Rights Amendment. In her later years, she developed a presentation based on Judith Nies’ Seven Women, in which she and six others enacted the lives and words of these women,[ii] with herself taking on the role of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I suspect that on this 4th of July, she would gladly reprise her role and read this alternative -- the Declaration of Sentiments -- in all its passion and fury, instead.
Notes
Nies, Judith. Seven Women: Portraits from the American Radical Tradition. New York: Vintage, 1977.
Stanton, Elizabeth C., Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda J. Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage. Rochester: NY, Charles Mann, 1881). In Rossi, Alice S., ed. The Feminist Papers: From Adams to de Beauvoir. New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1973. 413-470.
Wagner, Sally Roesch. “The Indigenous Roots of United States Feminism.” In Ricciutelli, Luciana, Angela Miles and Margaret H. McFadden, eds. Feminist Politics, Activism, and Vision: Local and Global Challenges. Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2004. 267-283.
[i] I am indebted to Sally Roesch Wagner for her work researching and writing about the influence of the Haudenosaunee on the women who organized the Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls.
[ii] The seven women profiled in Nies’ book are Sarah M. Grimké, Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mother Jones, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anna Louise Strong, and Dorothy Day.