NEW YORK (AP) – A rare copy of Declaration of Sentiments, feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s speech that launched the women’s suffrage movement in 1848, failed to sell at auction on Wednesday, Sotheby’s said.

Bidding for the speech, which was modeled on the Declaration of Independence, stopped at $250,000, Sotheby’s spokesman Matthew Weigman said. The bidding failed to reach its reserve, or the minimum selling price, Weigman said.

Sotheby’s did not identify the seller. It said earlier in November it estimated the speech would sell for $300,000 to $500,000.

The Declaration of Sentiments, signed by 68 women and 32 men at a Seneca Falls, N.Y., convention, is considered the founding document of the suffrage movement, which gave American women the right to vote in 1920.


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