major catalyst for the women’s rights movement would come at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. With a majority vote from the male attendees, American female delegates were barred from fully partaking in the proceedings. This experience, a vivid illustration of women’s status as second-class citizens, was what motivated prominent activists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to begin advocating for women’s rights. By the time of the Seneca Falls Convention, the early women’s rights movement had already achieved several major political and legal successes. Marital legislative reforms and the repeal of coverture in several state jurisdictions such as New York was achieved through the introduction of Married Woman's Property Acts. Women’s rights and suffrage also gained exposure when it was included in the 1848 platform of Liberty Party U.S. presidential candidate Gerrit Smith, the first cousin of Elizabeth Stanton. The Seneca Falls Convention The Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 was the first women’s rights conference in the United States. Held at the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Seneca Falls, New York, it was predominantly organised by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with the assistance of Lucretia Mott and local female Quakers. Despite the relative inexperience of the organisers, the event attracted approximately 300 attendees, including around 40 men. Among the dignitaries was the legendary slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who argued eloquently for the inclusion of suffrage in the convention’s agenda.“Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.”Over two days, the attendees heard addresses from speakers including Stanton and Mott, voted on a number of resolutions and deliberated on the text of the Declaration. At the conclusion of the convention, the completed Declaration was signed by over 100 attendees, including 68 women and 32 men. Rhetoric Overview Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Declaration of Rights and Sentiments utilises similar rhetoric to the United States Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, a gesture which was neither an accident nor a submissive action. Such a purposeful mimicking of language and form meant that Stanton tied together the complaints of women in America with the Declaration of Independence, in order to ensure that in the eyes of the America people, such requests were not seen as overly radical. Using