Organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and a circle of Quaker women, the two-day meeting reserved its first day for women. Stanton and her colleagues presented the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, and a list of resolutions for debate. On the second day about 300 attendees debated those resolutions, including a contested demand for the vote, and 100 of them signed the declaration.
The convention opened July 19, 1848, drawing roughly 300 people, including about 40 men, to the small Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Seneca Falls. Elizabeth Cady Stanton had drafted a Declaration of Sentiments deliberately echoing Thomas Jefferson's language, listing eighteen grievances against the treatment of women — from denial of property rights to exclusion from higher education and the ballot.
On the second day, July 20, attendees debated and voted on resolutions one by one. Most passed easily, but the ninth — demanding women's suffrage — proved contentious even among supporters, who worried it would make the whole movement look ridiculous. Frederick Douglass, the only African American present, rose to argue passionately that the vote was foundational to all other rights, and the resolution narrowly passed.
Only one signer of the Declaration of Sentiments, Charlotte Woodward, lived to see the Nineteenth Amendment ratified in 1920. Newspapers at the time mocked the convention mercilessly, but Stanton kept a scrapbook of the ridicule, correctly betting that the attention would spread the cause further than praise ever could.
Key people: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass