"Our claims are based on that great and immutable truth, the rights of all humanity. For is woman not included in that phrase, 'all men are created...equal'?....Tell us, ye men of the nation...whether woman is not included in that great Declaration of Independence?"
Ernestine L. Rose to the Fifth National Woman's Rights Convention

With Ernestine L. Rose as president, the convention heard reports from various states where petition campaigns were underway. Susan B. Anthony urged fellow activists to petition their legislatures for changed laws. Rejecting a proposal to create a national women's rights newspaper as potentially divisive and expensive, the convention appointed a committee including Elizabeth Cady Stanton to publish tracts and place articles in national newspapers. Debates about tactics reaffirmed the decision of the 1852 Syracuse convention to coordinate local work through a central committee headed by Paulina Wright Davis.

Lucretia Mott and Martha Wright served as officers of the convention; James Mott served on the finance committee. Lucretia Mott's most important role was to debate a friend of William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Grew, whose daughter Mary was on the committee to propose resolutions for the convention's adoption. Their debate over scriptural injunctions against women's rights raged, until Garrison also responded, with a resolution passed by the convention that "whatever any book may teach, the rights of no human being are dependent upon or modified thereby, but are equal, absolute, essential, inalienable in the person of every member of the human family..."

National Women's Rights Conventions                                                    1855 Convention