What was a main demand of the seneca falls declaration of sentiments and resolutions?

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...

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men—both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women—the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.

He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

He allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.

He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.

He 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.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and 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.

In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national [sic] Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions embracing every part of the country.
 

Planning a lesson or unit on rights? Try grouping this text with An Excerpt from the United States Declaration of Independence.

Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.

—Susan B. Anthony, The Revolution, 1869

Notions of equality that inspired America’s war for independence from Great Britain brought only modest and fleeting change to the status of women, most of whom remained “civilly dead.” Women had no legal identity separate from their husbands and were unable to sign contracts, own property, obtain access to education, obtain divorces easily, and gain custody of their children after divorce well into the nineteenth century. The desire to address this inequality and challenge the country to live up to its revolutionary promise led to a two-day convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, where 300 women and men gathered to debate Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments. Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, it outlined women’s inferior status and included a radical demand for suffrage.

After Seneca Falls, women’s rights conventions became annual events, where women met to discuss educational opportunities, divorce reform, property rights, and sometimes labor issues. Women lent their support to abolishing slavery believing universal suffrage would follow, but both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments ignored their demand for suffrage. National leaders responded differently, leading to a split in the movement and contrasting campaigns for voting rights at the local, state, and national levels. In 1878 the first federal women’s suffrage amendment was introduced but was soundly defeated later in the first full Senate vote in 1887. As the nineteenth century neared an end, competing national suffrage groups reunited as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and groundwork was laid for a national movement.

What was a main demand of the seneca falls declaration of sentiments and resolutions?
A statue of the people present at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention can be seen at the Women's Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls. Keith Ewing (Flickr/Creative Commons)

Editor’s Note, July 20, 2020: This article has been updated in anticipation of the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which granted women suffrage. Read more about the the Seneca Falls Convention here.

In June 2016, as Hillary Clinton became the first woman from a major party to win enough delegates to secure the nomination, the former Secretary of State made mention of another consequential moment in women's political history: the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments. “A small but determined group of women, and men, came together with the idea that women deserved equal rights,” she said. “It was the first time in human history that that kind of declaration occurred."

Why would a potential President name-drop a 168-year-old document? Here’s what you should know about the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions that was passed at the Seneca Falls Convention on women’s rights:

It has its roots in a dispute over seating

Strangely enough, the struggle for women’s rights and, eventually, women’s suffrage in America began with a blowup over seating. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott met when they were whisked off to a roped-off, women’s-only seating section at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention. The convention had been thrown into chaos at the news that American women intended to vote, serve on committees and even speak at the convention, and in response they were shunted off to a section that was out of the view of men. Irate at their treatment, Stanton and Mott began to plot a convention of their own—this time, to address the state of women.

It turns out that seating is still a hotly contested issue in politics. Each year, the State of the Union address leads to disputes and strange customs over who sits where—and all eyes are on who the current First Lady chooses to sit in her special viewing box. Both political conventions also generate plenty of press on their seating chart each year; in 2008, for example, the Democratic Party drew attention for giving swing state delegates the best seats at the Denver convention.

It was based on the Declaration of Independence...

The convention that followed was groundbreaking. More than 300 women and men from abolitionist, Quaker and reform circles attended the two-day Seneca Falls Convention, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton read a document that set out the group’s agenda. It was directly based on the Declaration of Independence—a convenient format and a bold statement on the equality of women.

The Declaration wasn’t the first document on women’s rights to model itself on the Declaration; as Judith Wellman writes for The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, arguments based on the Declaration had been used to argue for property rights for married women in New York for several years before the convention. Swayed by the familiar language of America’s founding document—and with the help of many of the women present at the convention—New York passed its first law granting married women the right to own property in 1848.

…and wasn’t only signed by women.

Women drafted the Declaration, but they weren’t the only one to argue on its merits and eventually sign it. The final copy was signed by 68 women and 32 men, many of whom were the husbands or family members of women present. Frederick Douglass, however, was not; the famous, once-enslaved abolitionist was involved in the women’s rights movement until the movement nearly fell apart over questions about whether African-American men should have the right to vote.

In 1867, Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth and some other women opposed the 15th Amendment, claiming that women should take precedence over formerly enslaved people. They went in one direction; Douglass and women like Lucy Stone went another. Ironically, even when women did gain the right to vote in 1920, women of color were largely precluded from voting by racist local laws until enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Not everyone present thought the Declaration should include a call for suffrage

The Declaration of Sentiments and the resolutions adopted by the Seneca Falls Convention is hailed for its groundbreaking demands—like insisting that men be held to the same moral standards as women and holding that anti-woman laws have no authority. But it’s just as noteworthy for what it almost didn’t demand: voting rights for women. Though a resolution for suffrage was eventually adopted, it was not unanimously supported. Only after an impassioned speech by Frederick Douglass did attendees decide to go for it, giving the document its most incendiary demand. That insistence on suffrage was not popular: Convention attendees were mocked and harassed and the Declaration was called ludicrous. Though only one of its signers was alive when the 19th Amendment was signed, it set the wheels of women’s suffrage in motion.

Bad news: Nobody can find the original

Given everything the document sparked—and its importance to women’s history in the United States, you’d think that the convention’s Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions would be safe in the National Archives. You’d be wrong: The document has somehow gone missing.

As Megan Smith writes for the White House's official blog, the closest thing to an original in the National Archives is a printed copy made by Frederick Douglass in his print shop after the convention. The notes that he used to make his copy—minutes from the meeting that would constitute the original—are gone. Do you know where the document could be? You can use the hashtag #FindTheSentiments to help with the hunt for one of America’s most important documents.