Reference no: EM133685183

Assignment:

Read the Petition for Woman's Rights (1846)

This is the Petition for Woman's Rights (1864)

To the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York:

Your Memorialists, inhabitants of Jefferson county, believing that civil government has its foundation in the laws of our existence, as moral and social beings, that the specific object and end of civil government is to protect all in the exercise of all their natural rights, by combining the strength of society for the defense of the individual-believing that the province of civil government is not to create new rights, but to declare and enforce those which originally existed. Believing likewise that aii governments must derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, "from the great body of society, and not from a favored class, although that favorite class may be even a majority of the inhabitants," therefore respectfully represent: That the present government of this state has widely departed from the true democratic principles upon which all just governments must be based by denying to the female portion of the community the right of suffrage and any participation in forming the government and laws under which they live, and to which they are amenable, and by imposing upon them burdens of taxation, both directly and indirectly, without admitting them the right of representation, thereby striking down the only safeguards of their individual and personal liberties.

Your Memorialists therefore ask your honorable body, to remove this just cause of complaint, by modifying the present Constitution of this state, so as to extend to women equal, and civil and political rights with men. In proposing this change, your petitioners ask you to confer upon them no new right but only to declare and enforce those which they originally inherited, but which have ungenerously been withheld from them, rights, which they as citizens of the state of New York may reasonably and rightfully claim. We might adduce arguments both numerous and decisive in support of our position, but believing that a self evident truth is sufficiently plain without argument, and in view of our necessarily limited space, we forbear offering any and respectfully submit it for consideration.

Aug. 8th, 1846

Signatories: Eleanor Vincent, Susan Ormsby, Lydia Williams, Amy Ormsby, Lydia Osborn, and Anna Bishop.

Questions

• According to these women, what is the purpose of government?
• What rights do these women want?
• What arguments do they present to support their claim to these rights?