[July 19-20 marks the 175th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention. Although, as I argued in this weeklong series, our focus on Seneca Falls has overshadowed other important early conventions, it’s still a milestone moment, and this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of contexts. Leading up to a weekend post on our 21st century movement!]
On one
obviously important choice in a historic document, and one subtler one.
I’m quite
sure that the Seneca Falls Convention would have had a lasting impact no matter
what, not least because (as I’ll write about later in the week) it immediately
spawned other such gatherings both near and far. But Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, who as I wrote yesterday was one of the convention’s initial
originators and organizers, took an extra step to make sure its defining ideas
and conversations would endure, drafting a “Declaration
of Sentiments” (also known as the “Declaration of Rights and Sentiments”)
that would be endorsed and signed by 100
convention attendees (roughly a third of the group). As Frederick Douglass,
who signed and also helped garner that widespread convention support for the
Declaration (and about whom I’ll write in tomorrow’s post), wrote
in his North Star newspaper a
couple weeks after the convention’s close, this document would become “the
grand movement for attaining the civil, social, political, and religious rights
of women.”
Stanton’s
most famous choice and strategy in the Declaration is implied in its title: she
modeled
her text quite closely on the U.S. Declaration of Independence. That’s
especially true in her opening paragraphs, which include such overtly parallel but
importantly revised lines as “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all
men and women are created equal.” But the “Sentiments” section, for another
example, likewise closely parallels the list of “oppressions” with which the
Declaration of Independence charges the King of England, in Stanton’s text
describing what “he” has done to “her.” This choice of Stanton’s is one of the
most impressive in that long list of American texts and voices that have
reused and yet revised the works and
ideas of the Founding, and I would argue that it was particularly important as
a way to link this 1848 Convention to the 1776 Continental Congress that
produced the Declaration of Independence. I’ve written of Abigail
Adams and other late 18th century American women writers that
they were truly Revolutionary, but it’s fair to say that they often operated
individually; the 1848 Convention was an overtly communal effort and Stanton
helped put it in direct conversation with the similarly communal framing of the
American Revolution and Founding.
Yet if
Stanton’s Declaration were simply a parallel to the original, I don’t know that
it would have had that staying power that it did and has. It had to and did
stand on its own as well, and the place it does that most powerfully is in the conclusion
where she lays out “the great work before us…We shall use every instrumentality
within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate
tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist
the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be
followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.” I’m
not sure I’ve ever seen a statement of principles that includes such an
extended and comprehensive (and quite practical) plan for how to achieve those
goals, and again the immediate and consistent existence of additional such
Conventions (for example) suggests that the practicality did indeed help put
the principles into practice. Inspired by the past but directly imagining and
helping produce the future—sounds like a recipe for a great text to me!
Next
Seneca context tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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