Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott met at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, where female delegates were denied seats and forced to observe from behind a curtain. The experience radicalized both women. Over the following years, Stanton settled in Seneca Falls with her husband and children, isolated from the intellectual life she craved. On July 9, 1848, she attended a tea party where she poured out her frustrations to Mott and other Quaker women. Within days, they had placed a notice in the local newspaper announcing a convention 'to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman.' They had ten days to organize. Stanton drafted the Declaration of Sentiments in a single evening, deliberately echoing Jefferson's language to make the argument that the founders' principles applied to women as well as men.

The Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Seneca Falls was packed on July 19. Despite the convention being intended for women only on the first day, so many men appeared that the organizers admitted them. Stanton read the Declaration of Sentiments aloud. It catalogued the injuries women suffered: denial of the vote, coverture laws that gave husbands control of wives' property and earnings, exclusion from higher education and professions, double standards in morality. Each grievance was discussed and approved. The most controversial resolution was the ninth: demanding the 'elective franchise' - the right to vote. Even some supporters thought it too radical. Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist leader, spoke passionately in its favor: 'In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government.' The resolution passed narrowly.

The Seneca Falls Convention launched the organized women's rights movement in America. Newspapers mocked the 'hen convention' and its 'petticoat rebellion.' Many signers faced such pressure that they withdrew their names. But the movement grew. Susan B. Anthony joined forces with Stanton in 1851, beginning a fifty-year partnership. State by state, activists won victories: married women's property rights, access to higher education, entry into professions like medicine and law. The franchise proved hardest. After the Civil War, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments granted citizenship and voting rights to Black men while explicitly excluding women. The movement split over whether to support these amendments or oppose them for their exclusion of women. The split would not heal for decades. By the time Wyoming granted women's suffrage in 1869, Stanton and Anthony had separated from their former abolitionist allies.

The struggle for women's suffrage lasted seventy-two years. The original generation - Stanton, Mott, Anthony - died without seeing national victory. New leaders emerged: Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul, Ida B. Wells. Tactics evolved from persuasion to direct action: pickets outside the White House, hunger strikes in prison, civil disobedience. The movement was never monolithic - white suffragists often excluded Black women, class divisions persisted, strategies were contested. World War I brought opportunity as women's contributions to the war effort made denial of their citizenship untenable. The Nineteenth Amendment passed Congress on June 4, 1919, and was ratified on August 18, 1920. Only one signer of the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments - Charlotte Woodward, then nineteen years old - lived to vote legally. She was too ill to make it to the polls. But millions of other women voted that November for the first time.

Women's Rights National Historical Park preserves key sites from the 1848 convention and the broader movement. The Wesleyan Chapel, where the convention was held, survives only as a shell - most of the building was demolished or modified over the years. The remaining walls are incorporated into a visitor center with exhibits on the convention and the suffrage movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's house, a few blocks away, has been restored to its 1848 appearance and is open for tours. The park also includes the M'Clintock House in nearby Waterloo, where the Declaration of Sentiments was drafted. The National Women's Hall of Fame, in downtown Seneca Falls, honors women who have shaped American history. The town's location on the Finger Lakes makes it a scenic destination for touring the wine region. Syracuse Hancock International Airport (SYR) is 45 miles east. The annual Convention Days in mid-July commemorates the 1848 gathering.