On June 29, 1848 in Rochester, New York Gerrit Smith was nominated as the Liberty Party's presidential candidate. At the National Liberty Convention, held June 14–15 in Buffalo, New York, Smith gave the keynote address, including in his speech a demand for "universal suffrage in its broadest sense, females as well as males being entitled to vote."
The delegates approved a passage in their party platform addressing votes for women: "Neither here, nor in any other part of the world, is the right of suffrage allowed to extend beyond one of the sexes. This universal exclusion of woman... argues, conclusively, that, not as yet, is there one nation so far emerged from barbarism, and so far practically Christian, as to permit woman to rise up to the one level of the human family." At this convention, five votes were placed calling for Lucretia Mott to be Smith's vice-president—the first time in the United States that a woman was nominated for federal executive office.
On July 19–20, 1848, in New York, the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights was hosted by Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann M'Clintock, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Over three hundred people attended, including Frederick Douglass, who stood up to speak in favor of women's suffrage. The convention also adopted a Declaration of Sentiments, demanding rights for women so they could properly protect their homes and families.
It's a shame that such a hard-won privilege is treated so lightly now.
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