Elizabeth Cady Stanton

            DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS AND RESOULTIONS (12-6).
             Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (DSR) in 1848 for the firsts women's rights convention at Seneca Falls in New York. Stanton used one of the most popular documents in American history, the Declaration of Independence as the model for this controversial (at the time) document that called for women's equal rights. Stanton used this model for a few different reasons. For instance the ideology of the Declaration of Independence (DOI) was geared towards rejecting the power of King George III over the colonies and it's citizens. The DSR was rejecting the power of the man over the women and more specifically the husband over his wife. The way in which the two documents are structured brings the ideology to life. Nearly every new paragraph in the DOI started with the phrase "he has" which is followed up by a claim of some wrong doing on the part of the King. Likewise the DSR starts nearly every new paragraph with the same phrase "he has" which is followed by an offense of man against women. This gives a real powerful message to an educated reader because it's a low key way of saying "men are as bad to women, as the King was to the colonies, and it has required women to lash out against men like the colonists lashed out against the King." The self-evident truth that Jefferson spoke of in the DOI shows up in this text as well, but includes women in the phrase "all men and women are created equal." This was important because it refuted the idea that men were better than women, and that men had a higher purpose, or a higher authority. This also led Stanton to state that women also had the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of their own happiness.
             Women abolitionists were not met with open arms however. Male abolitionists did not see these "self-evident" truths. Some of these men felt that these actions would offend many of the American people, and would take focus away from, and damage the anti-slavery movement that was in full swing.