Doctor Curmudgeon® A Declaration of Sentiments
By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP Doctor Eisman is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist
It happened at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York.
It was just a little while ago-July 29 and July 20. But the year was 1848.
This was the first gathering in the United States of a women’s rights convention.
About three hundred people were there, mostly women, of course! The two days of the conference centered on speeches and discussion. About forty men did attend, but they were to remain silent during the first day.
Wikipedia notes that the convention was advertised as “a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an advocate for women’s rights and several Quaker women were the organizers.
On the first day, Stanton presented a document she had written, a Declaration of Sentiments.
It began: “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.”
There were fifteen facts in the declaration: One statement concerned the fact that women were held to laws without a voice in election .Another covered the denial of facilities for a comprehensive education. The Declaration stated that colleges were closed to women and admission to the professions, such as law and medicine were allowed only for men.
The Declaration further asserted that when a woman married, she became “civilly dead,” as far as the Law was concerned, especially having no rights to property.
And it ended with a resolution: “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 the United States.”
The morning of July 19 was sunny, but very hot. By accident, the doors of the church were still locked. Stanton was resourceful and lifted her small nephew through an open window, so that he could remove the bars from the inside.
On that day, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s declaration was read, re-read and each item discussed. The women also debated whether men’s signatures should be there. .
It was on July 20, 1848, the second day of the Seneca Falls convention that a larger crowd was in attendance with more men than on the first day.
It was then that the women decided men’s signatures could be helpful. It was further agreed that there should be two sections of signatures: one for woman and one for men.
There had been a great debate concerning a resolution about suffrage. Many women felt that adding women’s’ right to vote could be detrimental to the other resolutions
Frederick Douglass, the orator, writer and statesman was the only African American attending the conference
Douglass spoke so eloquently that the women voted to retain the resolution: BlackPast quotes from his speech: “All good causes are mutually helpful. The benefits accruing from this movement for the equal rights of woman are not confined or limited to woman only. They will be shared by every effort to promote the progress and welfare of mankind everywhere e and in all ages.”
And on Jul 20, 1848, the Declaration of Sentiments was signed by sixty eight women and thirty two men.
Dr. Curmudgeon suggests “Bitter Medicine”, Dr. Eugene Eisman’s story of his experiences–from the humorous to the intense—as a young army doctor serving in the Vietnam War.
Bitter Medicine by Eugene H. Eisman, M.D. –on Amazon
Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.
SERMO www.sermo.com
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