Hillary Clinton Tells Women to Stop Silencing Themselves

Invoking the names of suffragist heroes, Hillary Rodham Clinton urged American women on Thursday to finish, for their daughters’ sake, the march toward equality begun by those who gathered here 150 years ago.

The first lady addressed a ceremony marking the anniversary of the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention, where Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and others appropriated the Declaration of Independence to assert their grievances about the inferior status of women in American society.

She asked the crowd of 18,000 to imagine how the women behind the “Declaration of Sentiments” would react if they knew that millions of women today do not vote, even though they still are paid less than men, suffer through domestic abuse and must juggle the heavy responsibilities of work and home.

“They would be alarmed and outraged,” Mrs. Clinton said. “The women of Seneca Falls were silenced by someone else. Today, women, we silence ourselves. Take seriously the power of the vote, and use it to make our voices heard.”

Mrs. Clinton spoke on the football field of a local high school. The crowd was overwhelmingly female: little girls frolicking in bathing suits and teenagers in denim cutoffs, mothers wearing festive straw hats and grandmothers relaxing under umbrellas.

Mary Grace, a 47-year-old social worker, said she does not take lightly what Clinton referred to as the “most fundamental political right.”

“A lot of women and men struggled to get us the rights we have today, and now many are not taking advantage of those rights,” Grace said.