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Women in the 19th Century - Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Speech Date 1848)

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON (SPEECH DATE 1848)

SOURCE: Cady Stanton, Elizabeth. "Elizabeth Cady Stanton's 1848 Seneca Falls Woman's Rights Convention Speech (abridged)." In Returning to Seneca Falls: The First Woman's Rights Convention & Its Meaning for Men & Women Today, edited by Bradford Miller, pp. 172-77. Hudson, N.Y.: Lindisfarne Press, 1995.

In the following speech, delivered at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, Cady Stanton argues that there is no biblical or natural justification for the subjugation of women, and that women must organize to overturn unjust laws and customs that leave them without legal rights or political representation.

I should feel exceedingly diffident to appear before you at this time, having never before spoken in public, were I not nerved by a sense of right and duty, did I not feel the time had fully come for the question of woman's wrongs to be laid before the public,...

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