Declaration of Sentiments for 160 Years

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) addresses the first woman's rights convention, held in the Wesleyan Methodist chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, July 19, 1848.
Courtesy Corbis-Bettman.

This Sunday, July 20, will mark the 160th anniversary of the signing [and reading] of the Declaration of Sentiments at the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Most historians choose to mark the beginning of the organized American feminist movement from this moment, which had its antecedents in the abolitionist and temperance struggles that had begun earlier in the nineteenth century.