The women’s suffrage movement began in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention, where attendees discussed women’s rights. Charlotte Woodward Pierce signed the Declaration of Sentiments, which included a demand for voting rights. The 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote in 1920, but Pierce was unable to cast her vote.
In July 1848, the women’s suffrage movement began at the Seneca Falls Convention in upstate New York. More than 300 men and women, including reformers such as Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, gathered there to “discuss the social, civil and religious conditions of women’s rights.” However, only one attendee lived long enough to see women gain the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920. As a teenager, Charlotte Woodward Pierce had signed the Declaration of Sentiments at the Seneca Falls Convention claiming the right to vote. Unfortunately, when women’s suffrage occurred more than seventy years later, the elderly Pierce was bedridden and unable to cast her vote.
The long battle for women’s rights:
The Declaration of Sentiments was modeled on the Declaration of Independence. She outlined the injustices women faced and introduced 11 resolutions needed for women to achieve equality in the United States.
Most famous was the ninth resolution, which declared that women deserved the right to vote. Sixty-eight people, including Charlotte Woodward Pierce, dedicated their names to the Declaration of Sentiments, compared to 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence.
Social reformer Lucretia Mott objected to including the demand for voting rights. You said you were going too far, but after much debate the resolution was adopted.
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