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The Declaration of Sentiments

By Elizabeth Cady Stanton



Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) and Lucretia Mott (1793–1880), American activists for the abolition of slavery and early activists for women’s rights, convened the first major conference on women’s issues in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. The Declaration of Sentiments (also known as the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments), written by Stanton and Mott, was presented at the Seneca Falls convention, where it was signed by 68 women and 32 men. Modeled on the structure and language of the Declaration of Independence, it seeks to prove, from the “history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman,” that man has “in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.” Addressed, like the Declaration of Independence, to a “candid world,” it submits 15 facts to support this conclusion.

Comparing the original Declaration with this one, do you think Stanton and Mott were wise to use the first as their model? What is the difference between a Declaration of Independence and a Declaration of Sentiments, and what difference—if any—should such a difference make? The Declaration of Independence opens by speaking about the political right of a people to “assume among the powers of the earth, the Separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” What is the comparable opening claim in the Declaration of Sentiments? To what exactly are women (as women, not as human beings) entitled by “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”? The paragraph about the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence issues in a defense of the right (and duty) of political revolution. What is the conclusion of the comparable paragraph of the Declaration of Sentiments?

The first of the 15 grievances listed against man is the denial of woman’s “inalienable right to the elective franchise.” Why is this mentioned first? How does it inform or ground the other grievances? Is the right to vote an “inalienable right,” on a par with the Creator-endowed rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? How are the personal, social, and cultural grievances listed related to the religious grievances? Are all of these things necessarily connected? How important is the right to vote to you, and why? What sort of equality between women and men is crucial to the perfecting of our union?














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






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  1. […] the Fourth of July?” Langston Hughes, “Freedom’s Plow” Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, The Declaration of Sentiments Anna Howard Shaw, “The Fundamental Principle of a Republic” Martin Luther King Jr.,  “The […]

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