Declaration of Sentiments

The Seneca Falls Convention was organized in a matter of days during the summer of 1848; it was attended by 300 people, nearly 100 of whom signed the Declaration. The purpose of the convention was to set forth a manifesto of women’s rights and to encourage further gatherings across the United States. This effort succeeded, and within a few years national women’s conventions became annual events. The Seneca Falls Convention thus served as a formal launch of a movement that, over many decades, won for women the rights to vote, control property, attend college, practice professions, and upend other inequalities between the sexes.

A franchise is a privilege or right extended to one or more people by a government or other organization. In the Declaration it refers specifically to the right to vote—the “elective franchise”—and more generally to privileges enjoyed by men but not by women, as in the phrase “this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country” (Paragraph 20).

The term “inalienable right” is used twice: The first time is in the preamble, which refers—using wording identical to that of the Declaration of Independence—to “certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (Paragraph 2).