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WOMEN'S
RIGHTS DECLARATIONS AND CONVENTION RESOLUTIONS:
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RESOLUTIONS, ROCHESTER, NEW YORK CONVENTION, 1848
RESOLVED, That we petition our State Legislature for our right to the elective franchise, every year, until our prayer be granted. RESOLVED, That it is an admitted principle of the American Republic, that the only just power of the Government is derived from the consent of the governed; and that taxation and representation are inseparable; and, therefore, woman being taxed equally with man, ought not to be deprived of an equal representation in the Government. RESOLVED, That we deplore the apathy and indifference of woman in regard to her rights, thus restricting her to an inferior position in social, religious, and political life, and we urge her to claim an equal right to act on all subjects that interest the human family. RESOLVED, That the assumption of law to settle estates of men who die without wills, having widows, is an insult to woman, and ought to be regarded as such by every lover of right and equality. WHEREAS, The husband has the legal right to hire out his wife in service, collect her wages, and appropriate it to his own exclusive and independent benefit; and, WHEREAS, This has contributed to establish that hideous custom, the promise of obedience in the marriage contract, effectually, though insidiously, reducing her almost to the condition of a slave, whatever freedom she may have in these respects being granted as a privilege, not as a right; therefore, RESOLVED, That the universal doctrine of the inferiority of woman has ever caused her to distrust her own powers, and paralyzed her energies, and placed her in that degraded position from which the most strenuous and unremitting effort can alone redeem her. Only by faithful perseverance in the practical exercise of those talents, so long "wrapped in a napkin and buried under the earth," she will regain her long-lost equality with man. RESOLVED, That in the persevering and independent course of Miss [Elizabeth] Blackwell, who recently attended a series of medical lectures in Geneva, and has now gone to Europe to graduate as a physician, we see a harbinger of the day when woman shall stand forth "redeemed and disenthralled," and perform those important duties ... truly within her sphere. RESOLVED, That those who believe the laboring classes of woman are oppressed, ought to do all in their power to raise their wages, beginning with their own household servants. RESOLVED, That it is the duty of woman, whatever her complexion, to assume, as soon as possible, her true position of equality in the social circle, the Church, and the State....
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