ITHACA, N.Y. — The women who were trailblazers in fighting for suffrage were remembered Wednesday with a reading of the “Declaration of Sentiments” during a flash mob in the Tompkins County Public Library.
At noon, about 20 people gathered in the library to read from lavender pages with the text of the declaration, which was signed at the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls on July 19 and 20, 1848.
Wednesday marked the 169th anniversary of the convention, which was attended by about 300 people in Seneca Falls, New York, and organized by abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.
Reading the Declaration of Sentiments was a way to remember the women who were seeking inclusion in their democracy who signed the “radical document,” County Historian Carol Kammen said.
“What they were really seeking was perfecting our democracy,” Kammen said. “When we started out only wealthy men in New York could vote and then in 1821 all white men could vote, and then black men could vote as of 1870 with the 15th Amendment, and finally women could vote in 1917. But it took a long time. I think it’s important to remember that because our democracy is really the thing that sets us apart from everyone else and our belief in freedom and equality.”
The declaration was signed by 68 women and 32 men, including Frederick Douglass. It took more than 70 years after the convention for women to gain the right to vote.
“Only one woman lived long enough to cast a vote,” Kammen said. “So all of these women we think of who fought for it did not cast a vote.”
The Declaration of Sentiments was so important in its time because there was nothing like it, Kammen said.
“It’s the push for equal participation in our government for fairness and for what we consider to be liberty,” Kammen said.
Tompkins County Legislature has declared 2017 “The Year of the Woman in Tompkins County,” since the year marks 100 years since women gained the right to vote in New York. Three years later in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.
Related: Tompkins Leg. declares 2017 ‘Year of the Woman’
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the principal author of the declaration, modeled it after the Declaration of Independence. In one paragraph, the declaration states: “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.” The document then goes on to list the ways women were disenfranchised.
An Ithaca resident and descendant of one of the original signers also read passages from the declaration Wednesday.
Lydia Pettis said she learned recently she is descended from Charles L. Hoskins, one of the 32 men to sign the document.
“These women were so radical in what they were signing and they were just putting their lives out there,” Pettis said.
Hoskins was Pettis’ great-great-great grandfather who lived from 1799 to 1897. Hoskins moved to Seneca Falls in 1821 and was an avid gardener his whole life who always wore a “stovepipe hat.” Figuratively, he wore many hats too. Though he spent most of his life in the dry goods business, he also at one time or another was a postmaster, Justice of the Peace, president of the local gas company among other things.
Read the Declaration of Sentiments below:
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.
He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men—both natives and foreigners.
Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.
He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women—the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.
After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.
He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.
He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education—all colleges being closed against her.
He allows her in Church as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.
He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.
He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.
He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation,—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.
In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf.We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.
Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this declaration.
The text of the declaration is from by Rutgers University.
Featured image: Participants of a flash mob Wednesday read the Declaration of Sentiments at the Tompkins County Public Library. Kelsey O’Connor/Ithaca Voice