July 18, 2023: Seneca Falls Studying: The Declaration

[July19-20 marks the 175thanniversary of the SenecaFalls Women’s Rights Convention. Although, as I argued in thisweeklong series, our focus on Seneca Falls has overshadowed other important earlyconventions, it’s still a milestone moment, and this week I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of contexts. Leading up to a weekend post on our 21stcentury movement!]

On oneobviously important choice in a historic document, and one subtler one.

I’m quitesure that the Seneca Falls Convention would have had a lasting impact no matterwhat, not least because (as I’ll write about later in the week) it immediatelyspawned other such gatherings both near and far. But ElizabethCady Stanton, who as I wrote yesterday was one of the convention’s initialoriginators and organizers, took an extra step to make sure its defining ideasand conversations would endure, drafting a “Declarationof Sentiments” (also known as the “Declaration of Rights and Sentiments”)that would be endorsed and signed by 100convention attendees (roughly a third of the group). As Frederick Douglass,who signed and also helped garner that widespread convention support for theDeclaration (and about whom I’ll write in tomorrow’s post), wrotein his North Star newspaper acouple weeks after the convention’s close, this document would become “thegrand movement for attaining the civil, social, political, and religious rightsof women.”

Stanton’smost famous choice and strategy in the Declaration is implied in its title: shemodeledher text quite closely on the U.S. Declaration of Independence. That’sespecially true in her opening paragraphs, which include such overtly parallel butimportantly revised lines as “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that allmen and women are created equal.” But the “Sentiments” section, for anotherexample, likewise closely parallels the list of “oppressions” with which theDeclaration of Independence charges the King of England, in Stanton’s textdescribing what “he” has done to “her.” This choice of Stanton’s is one of themost impressive in that long list of American texts and voices that havereused  and yet revised the works andideas of the Founding, and I would argue that it was particularly important asa way to link this 1848 Convention to the 1776 Continental Congress thatproduced the Declaration of Independence. I’ve written of AbigailAdams and other late 18th century American women writers thatthey were truly Revolutionary, but it’s fair to say that they often operatedindividually; the 1848 Convention was an overtly communal effort and Stantonhelped put it in direct conversation with the similarly communal framing of theAmerican Revolution and Founding.

Yet ifStanton’s Declaration were simply a parallel to the original, I don’t know thatit would have had that staying power that it did and has. It had to and didstand on its own as well, and the place it does that most powerfully is in the conclusionwhere she lays out “the great work before us…We shall use every instrumentalitywithin our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulatetracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlistthe pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will befollowed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.” I’mnot sure I’ve ever seen a statement of principles that includes such anextended and comprehensive (and quite practical) plan for how to achieve thosegoals, and again the immediate and consistent existence of additional suchConventions (for example) suggests that the practicality did indeed help putthe principles into practice. Inspired by the past but directly imagining andhelping produce the future—sounds like a recipe for a great text to me!

NextSeneca context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?