Introduction

The year 1848 was a year of innovative ideas and radical change.  Revolutions were erupting across Europe, industry was thriving, Switzerland became a federal union, Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto, the Irish were fleeing the devastating Irish potato famine and women were fighting for equal social and civil rights around the world.

In the United States, women made huge strides in 1848 towards realizing dreams of equal rights.  It was that year that two women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Coffin Mott, decided to call together women and men from across the country to meet in the tiny upstate New York enclave of Seneca Falls in order to discuss and commit to creating a truly American society.  They believed firmly in the principles set forth by their country’s forefathers as well as those established across the Atlantic during the era of Enlightenment.  They knew all people possessed the natural rights to life, liberty and happiness.  There was no stopping these dedicated women and men in their goal of seeing these ideals realized, and in the process they would launch an equal rights movement that continues to this day in the United States and around the world. 

Your assignment is to discover the characteristics of the prebellum struggles women faced in social and civil rights, as illustrated by the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention.  Specifically, you will investigate the attitudes and expectations of the era, as well as the goals of the convention.  Ultimately you will discuss the resolutions of the Declaration of Sentiments and consider whether you would have supported them or not.  Finally, you will be asked to consider the impact that this convention and its declaration had on the development of all people’s struggle for natural rights recognition.