Declaration of Sentiments Table, 1848

Table on which Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted the Declaration of Sentiments.

In July, 1848, several days before the first woman’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, a group of five women that included Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott drafted a declaration of rights for women on this table as a statement of purpose for the convention. Now known as the Declaration of Sentiments, the document was based on the Declaration of Independence. It proclaimed that “all men and women are created equal” and resolved that women would take action to claim the rights of citizenship denied to them by men. The Declaration of Sentiments was adopted officially at the Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848 and signed by sixty-eight women and thirty-two men. The convention and Declaration mark the start of the formal women’s rights movement in the United States.