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WOMEN'S
RIGHTS DECLARATIONS AND CONVENTION RESOLUTIONS:
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TENTH NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION RESOLUTIONS, COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YORK, MAY 10-11, 1860. RESOLVED, That inasmuch as man, in the progress of his development, found that at each advancing step new wants demanded new rights, and naturally walked out of those places, customs, creeds, and laws that in any way crippled and trammeled his freedom of thought, word, or action, it is his duty to stand aside and leave to woman the same rights -- to grow up into whatever the laws of her being demand. RESOLVED, That inasmuch as on woman are imposed by her Creator the duties of self-support and self-defense, and by government the responsibilities of taxation and penalties of violated law, she should be protected in her natural, inalienable rights, and secured in all the privileges of citizenship. RESOLVED, That we demand a full recognition of our equal rights, civil and political -- no special legislation can satisfy us -- the enjoyment of a right to-day is no security that it will be continue to-morrow, so long as it is granted to us by a privileged class, and not secured to us as a sacred right. WHEREAS, the essence of republican liberty is the principle that no class shall depend for its rights on the mercy or justice of any other class, therefore, RESOLVED, That woman demands her right to the jury-box and the ballot, that she may have, as man has, the means of her own protection in her own hands. RESOLVED, That woman, in consenting to remain in any organization or church where she has no voice in the choice of officers, trustees, or pastor -- no right of protest against false doctrines or action -- is wanting in a proper self-respect, in that dignity which, as a philanthropist and a Christian, she should ever manifest. RESOLVED, That we from this platform instruct our legal representatives to make no more appropriations to colleges for boys exclusively. Now that we are large property holders and tax-payers, we protest against the injustice of being compelled to build and endow colleges into which we are forbidden to enter. RESOLVED, That we advise women to apply to the trustees and heads of public libraries, galleries of art, and similar institutions, for employment ..., thus securing to themselves ... a more liberal means of support, and furnishing a stepping-stone to other occupations. RESOLVED, That we return thanks to the Legislature of New York for its acts of justice to woman during the last session. But the work is not yet done. We still claim the ballot, the right of trial by a jury of our own peers, the control and custody of our persons in marriage, and an equal right to the joint earnings of the co-partnership ...
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