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20 “DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS” (1848) elizabeth cady stanton (1815–1902), frederick douglass (circa 1818–1895), and others Drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton,“The Declaration of Sentiments” took as its frame “The Declaration of Independence,” asserting, in essence, that the nation imagined and instantiated by America’s most cherished text had not fully realized one of its noblest ideals: human equality. Yet this declaration, presented at the first U.S. woman’s rights convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848, is as inventive as it is derivative.20 Naming as the first of its grievances against man that “He has never permitted [woman] to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise,”the Declaration casts suffrage as the sine qua non not only of woman’s rights but also of her contentment. The“abuses and usurpations ”produced by the delimitation of woman’s political identity shaped her personal life—marriage, motherhood, and vocation—and quashed her confidence, capacity,and well-being.The resolutions and concluding lines of the Declaration map the terrain of the fight to come for those seeking the overthrow of patriarchal tyranny. Opponents’ weapons, like ridicule and misrepresentation, will be met by more words: by tracts and petitions, in the press and the pulpit. R When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course. 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; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled. 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 bring, 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...

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