Stanton drafted the “Declaration of Sentiments,” a document that stated “men and women are created equal.” Determined to overcome the social, civil, and religious disabilities that crippled women of their day, Stanton and Mott organized the first woman’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, on 19 July 1848. This comparison won support of greater numbers of women and men to their cause, among them were the famous suffragettes attributed with founding the woman suffrage movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.ĭedicated abolitionists, Stanton and Mott returned to the United States in June of 1840 highly indignant that they had been denied the right to participate in the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London because they were women.

With so few rights, many women drew parallels between their social and political state and that of slaves. Most women were prohibited from voting or exercising the same civil rights as men during this time based on the idea that “a married woman’s legal existence was incorporated into that of her husband”. Given the property laws and economic status of citizens at that time, these restrictions meant that most women and persons of color could not vote, and only about “half of the adult white men in the United States were eligible to vote in 1787.” Many states restricted voting rights to those who owned land or substantial taxable property.

Constitution granted each state the power to decide the voting qualifications of its residents in all elections. Written in 1787 and adopted the following year, the U.S. citizens have been uniformly endowed with the right to vote. However, just as not all people in the United States are necessarily granted the privilege of citizenship, not all U.S. Suffrage is the right or privilege of voting and is frequently incorporated among the rights of citizenship. But their work and that of many other suffragists contributed to the ultimate passage of the 19th amendment in 1920. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton devoted 50 years to the woman’s suffrage movement, neither lived to see women gain the right to vote. The early 1900s saw a successful push for the vote through a coalition of suffragists, temperance groups, reform-minded politicians, and women’s social-welfare organizations. By the late 1800s, nearly 50 years of progress afforded women advancement in property rights, employment and educational opportunities, divorce and child custody laws, and increased social freedoms. Early women’s rights leaders believed suffrage to be the most effective means to change an unjust system. The 1848 convention had challenged America to a social revolution that would touch every aspect of life.

In “ The Declaration of Sentiments,” a document based upon the Declaration of Independence, the numerous demands of these early activists were elucidated. Introduction: The resolution calling for woman suffrage had passed, after much debate, at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, convened by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Photo: Courtesy of the Adele Goodman Clark Papers, M 9 Box 233 f7, Special Collections and Archives, James Cabell Library, VCU In: Antebellum Period, Civil War, Reconstruction, and Progressivism, Eras in Social Welfare History, Woman Suffrage Woman Suffrage History and Time Line

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