Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Speech Date 19 January 1848)

SOURCE: Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. "Address: First Women's Rights Convention." In Elizabeth Cady Stanton Unpublished Manuscript Collection. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1848.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a speech before the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls on July 19, 1848, Stanton demands freedom and political representation of women. Stanton calls women to the task of fighting for equality and to protest unjust laws.

We have met here today to discuss our rights and wrongs, civil and political, and not, as some have supposed, to go into the detail of social life alone. We do not propose to petition the legislature to make our husbands just, generous, and courteous, to seat every man at the head of a cradle, and to clothe every woman in male attire. None of these points, however important they may be considered by leading...