Women's Rights In The Declaration Of Independence

Through the publication of the Declaration of Independence, the American colonists began to be viewed as creating revolutionary ideals that all countries and empires should embody. They believed in the equality of all people and a government where the people decide their own rulers. All of these ideas seemed well and good, until the colonists actually began to create their country. Their promises did not adequately and perfectly describe what would truly happen when their independent rule began. By saying all men were created equal, what they really meant were those people of male gender, white race, and who were wealthy property owners. They excluded both women and African Americans from their new reforms and ideas. Therefore, the thesis stating
They had little to no rights, as their husband or father did everything for them. A woman’s husband owned everything that she owned and everything that she earned belonged to him. This is similar to how the colonists were treated by England. Everything that the colonists worked for was taken by England, who took it as their own. Similarly, the husband took everything that the wife earned as his own. Women could not vote or engage in legal activities, including obtaining a divorce from her husband. All of these restrictions go against the ideas stated in the Declaration, that all men are created equal and that all citizens should have a say in their government. Even people in other countries denied the credibility of anything that women did. An English artist submitted an engraving known as “A Society of Patriotic Ladies,” which undermined that women could get anything done in terms of politics. Social and political restrictions had always been placed on women, even before the Declaration was published, as this engraving suggests. The Declaration simply furthered those restrictions, even when it technically promised the abolishment of those restrictions. The wife of John Adams, Abigail Adams, even pleaded for her husband to include the rights of women in the new government, however women were still overlooked. John Adams does, however, argue for these rights. He makes a statement in a letter to James Sullivan which shows the reasoning from men behind women having little liberty in the new country, “because their Delicacy renders them unfit for Practice and Experience, in the great Business of Life, and the hardy Enterprizes of War, as well as the arduous Cares of State… their attention is So much engaged with the necessary Nurture of their