The Seneca Falls Convention launched a major U.S. women’s rights campaign in 1848.
Held in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19 and 20, 1848, the convention is widely regarded as the first women’s rights convention in the United States. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were among its leading organizers, and approximately 300 people attended the meeting.
The convention issued a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled in structure and language on the Declaration of Independence. It listed grievances against legal and social restrictions on women and called for equality in education, employment, property rights, and participation in public life.
The document’s demand for women’s suffrage was especially controversial, even among some attendees. Frederick Douglass argued publicly in favor of the resolution, helping it pass. The meeting did not immediately create voting rights, but it supplied an organizing statement and public platform for the long campaign that eventually produced the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.