nizing force to move forward and take action. It was chosen because of the concentration of reformers and abolitionists in the area. They joined forces in calling together this convention and creating a list of grievances towards women’s’ rights for property, education, employment, marriage and suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton told over three hundred women and men who gathered together on July 19th and 20th that it was time to put the question of the subjugation of women before the public. She announced that “woman herself must do this work, for woman alone can understand the height, the depth, the length and breadth of her degradation.” (Komisar, 83) The Seneca Falls declaration, entitled the “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” was a stirring statement of the deepest feelings of women and a list of the grievances that women suffered in every area of life. It was modeled after the Declaration of Independence and began “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal..”. The Declaration of Sentiments ended on a note of complete realism: “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.” At the end of the two-day convention, 100 people, 32 men and 68 women, including future feminist leaders Matilda Josyln Gage and Susan B. Anthony, signed the declaration. The “misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule” that Elizabeth Cady Stanton was talking about wasted no time. Newspaper editors were shocked by the audacity of the Declaration’s resolution demanding voting rights for women. The convention received an enormous amount of negative press which helped to spread word of the movement throughout the United States. From the convention, a revolution would take...
