(1848, National Women'S Party Convention)

Young American abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) and Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793–1880) met in 1840 at the World Anti-Slavery convention held in London. When the women found themselves barred from the proceedings, they vowed to form a woman's rights movement. Eight years later, the women called a "convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman." The first women's rights convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. In anticipation of the event, Stanton and Mott crafted a "Declaration of Rights and Sentiments" which they modeled after the Declaration of Independence. Their Declaration demanded (among other things): equal treatment under the law; equal education and access to employment; the right to hold property, sue, and hold guardianship of children; and, most contentiously, the right to vote. Though many of the women in attendance feared demands for suffrage, believing this would turn men's opinion against them forever, the resolution was eventually passed. Unfortunately for these pioneering champions of equality, few if any would live the more than seventy years before their resolution would be made into law with the passage, in 1920, of the Nineteenth Amendment which gave women the right to vote.