“Spirit of 1776” was theme of national suffrage movement in US

The “Spirit of 1776” is the name of a suffrage campaign wagon that’s part of New York State history. In 1913 it started its journey in Manhattan and headed to Long Island for a month of grassroots campaigning for women to win the right to vote. With the ceremonies covered by New York and Long Island papers, the horse-drawn wagon carried forward the theme of the “Spirit of 1776” that began with the Declaration of Sentiments at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Because social movements don’t always have artifacts and memorabilia that lend themselves to exhibition, this suffrage wagon has come to represent a national theme of the movement, the “Spirit of 1776” that was repeated in suffrage speeches, events, literature, and visual rhetoric.