The acknowledged formal beginning of the feminist movement took place in the summer of 1848 at a gathering of women’s rights advocates in Seneca Falls, New York. It was at this convention that the Declaration of Sentiments, written by the activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, was first presented. The motivation behind the writing of the document, which is modeled on the Declaration of Independence, was Mott’s being refused permission to speak at the world antislavery convention in London, England, despite the fact that she was an official delegate to the convention. Sixty-eight women and thirty-two men signed the document, which stated that women, as human beings with the same “unalienable rights” as men and as citizens of the United States of America, should have those rights recognized and respected.