Francis Mayen+

HIST 007A

Professor Lee

August 01, 2017

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments

Why would the authors of the Declaration parallel the Declaration of Independence?

What is their major demand?

Why would people reject and actively fight against the ideas of this document?

The Declaration of Sentiments is a primary source document written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848 presented at the Seneca Falls Conference. (3)During the Cult of Domesticity, women were the moral center of the “separate spheres”, this recruited many women to take part in the abolitionist movement, children’s rights, and fighting intemperance, however “In 1840, Garrison’s American followers withdrew from the first World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London because the sponsors refused to seat the women in their delegation” (American Stories, 284). “… [W]hile fighting for change and justice for others, American women discovered that the prisoners, children, and slaves they were fighting for weren’t the only people being oppressed and marginalized in the American democracy” (Green, US#16). During this time, “Legally, the husband was the unchallenged head of the household” (PowerPoint, Ch.12)

This document was presented to other women in upstate New York, in which “they demanded that all women be given the right to vote and (2)that married women be freed from unjust laws giving husbands control of their property, persons, and children” (American Stories, 284). The document resembled the Declaration of Independence (1)to reminding them that all people are created equal, that they all have God-given rights such as liberty, pursuit of happiness, and makes points of how women are taxed without representation.

Misogyny wasn’t something new to Americans; this mindset was brought over from Britain which was a status oriented society. Americans were also racist, and white men thought of themselves as superior to African Americans, and Native Americans, to give women an equal voice would put them on the same status as men since they share the same skin-color. “…note that the United States ended slavery more than 50 years before it granted women the right to vote and that although much of the march towards equality between the sexes has been slow and steady, the Equal Rights Amendment, despite being passed by Congress, was never ratified” (Green, US#16). This document allows us to understand the struggle for women in the 1840s to be allowed to have their voices heard, and though treated better than people of color, were not seen as complete human beings deserving of rights.

Francis Mayen

2017-08-02