in a graceful speech, and the subject was dropped.
At each recurring anniversary the conviction had been growing that the term "equal rights" was too comprehensive, permitting entirely too much latitude as to speakers and subjects. Ever themselves having been repressed and silenced, when at last women made a platform on which they had a right to stand, they declared first of all for "free speech." They would not refuse to any human being what so long had been denied to them and, as a result, fanatics, visionaries and advocates of all reforms flocked to this platform, delighted to find such audiences. According to the tenets of the association, all speakers must have equal rights on their platform and there was no escape. Sometimes it was nothing more harmful than a man with a map to explain how the national debt could be paid without money, or a woman with a system of celestial kites by which she proposed to communicate with the other world. Occasionally the advocates of various political theories would secure possession, consuming the time and diverting attention from the main issue. At the convention just closed, the hobby-riders were present in greater force than ever before and it seemed imperative that some means should be adopted to shut them out thereafter. It was proposed to change the name to Woman Suffrage Association, which would bar all discussion of a miscellaneous character. There was a strong objection to this, however, because such action required three months' notice.
At the close of the convention a reception was held at the Woman's Bureau, Saturday evening, May 15, 1869, and attended by women from nineteen States who had come as representatives to the Equal Rights Association.3 At their earnest request, it was decided to form a new organization to be called the National Woman Suffrage Association, whose especial object should be a Sixteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, securing the ballot to the women of the nation on equal terms with men. A convention of officially appointed delegates was at that time impracticable, as there were but few local suffrage societies and still fewer State organizations. It was thought that although it might not be formed by delegates elected for this specific object, it would be sufficient for working purposes until the next spring when, the required three months' notice having been given, a permanent organization might be effected. Accordingly, a constitution was adopted and officers elected.4 The following week at Cooper Institute Anna Dickinson made her great speech for the rights of women, entitled "Nothing Unreasonable," to inaugurate the new National Woman Suffrage Association, and before an immense audience she pleaded for woman with the same beauty and eloquence as in days past she had pictured the wrongs of the slave and urged his emancipation.
The association was organized May 15, and on the 17th Mrs. Livermore wrote Miss Anthony from Boston: "I hope you are rested somewhat. I am very sorry for you, that you are carrying such heavy burdens. If you and I lived in the same city, I would relieve you of some of them, for I believe we might work together, with perhaps an occasional collision. Now I want you to answer these two questions: 1st.—Did you do anything in the way of organizing at the Saturday evening reunion, and if so, what? That Equal Rights Association is an awful humbug. I would not have come on to the anniversary, nor would any of us, if we had known what it was. We supposed we were coming to a woman suffrage convention. 2d.—If Mrs. Stanton will not go West to a series of meetings this fall and winter, would you dare undertake it with me alone? We must have strong people of established reputations. 'Only the Stanton, the Anthony, and the Livermore,' that is what the Chicago Tribune says...." Later, while still in Boston, she wrote again:
You are mistaken in thinking I exhorted the formation of a national suffrage association the Saturday night after the New York convention; I only advised talking it up. All agreed that it ought to be formed but that a preliminary call should be issued first. I am for a national organization with Mrs. Stanton, president, and with you as one of the executive committee, but I want it arrived at compatibly with parliamentary rules.... And now having asserted myself, let me say that I sympathize more with your energy and earnestness which lead you to override forms and rules than I do with the awfully proper and correct spirit that waits till everybody consents before it does anything. I have no doubt but we all shall join the National Association, each State by its elected members, when we hold our great Western Woman Suffrage Convention in Chicago next fall. Mrs. Stanton and you must both be present; we probably shall all vote together then to go into the National Association. Remember you are to make that series of conventions with me. I am depending on you.
The next November, in answer to a circular signed by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, Caroline M. Severance, T.W. Higginson and George H. Vibbert, a call was issued resulting in a convention at Cleveland, O., to form another national suffrage association on the following basis of representation: "The delegates appointed by existing State organizations shall be admitted, provided their number does not exceed, in each case, that of the congressional delegation of the State. Should it fall short of that number, additional delegates may be admitted from local organizations, or from no organization whatever, provided the applicants be actual residents of the State they claim to represent." The American Suffrage Association was thus formed, with twenty-one States represented; Henry Ward Beecher, president; Henry B. Blackwell, Amanda Way, recording secretaries; Lucy Stone, chairman executive committee.
In the midst of her exacting duties and many annoyances, Miss Anthony found time to write numerous letters and obtain a testimonial for Ernestine L. Rose, who was about to return with her husband to England, after having given many years of valuable service to the women of America. She secured a handsome sum of money and a number of presents for her, and Mrs. Rose went on board ship laden with flowers and very happy and grateful. Miss Anthony wrote to Lucretia Mott: "Was it not a little funny that this unsentimental personage should have suggested the thing and stirred so many to do the sentimental, and yet could not even take the time to go to the wharf and say good-by? I spent Sunday evening with her and it is a great comfort to me that I helped others contribute to her pleasure." On the back of this letter, which was sent to her sister, Martha Wright, Mrs. Mott penned: "Think of the complaints made of Susan when she does so much and puts others up to doing, and always keeps herself in the background."
In the summer of 1869, under the auspices of the National Association, large and successful conventions were held at Saratoga and Newport in the height of the season. Of the former The Revolution said: "That a woman suffrage convention should have been allowed to organize in the parlors of Congress Hall, that those parlors should have been filled to their utmost capacity by the habitual guests of the place, that such men as ex-President Fillmore, Thurlow Weed, George Opdyke and any number of clergymen from different parts of the country, should have been interested lookers-on, are significant facts which may well carry dismay to the enemies of the cause. That the whole convention was conducted by women in a dignified, orderly and business-like manner, is a strong intimation that in spite of all which has been said to the contrary, women are capable of learning how to manage public affairs."
The following comment was made by Mrs. Stanton on the Newport convention: "So, obeying orders, we sailed across the Sound one bright moonlight night with a gay party of the 'disfranchised,' and found ourselves quartered on the enemy the next morning as the sun rose in all its resplendent glory. Although trunk after trunk—not of gossamers, laces and flowers, but of suffrage ammunition, speeches, petitions, resolutions, tracts, and folios of The Revolution—had been slowly carried up the winding stairs of the Atlantic, the brave men and fair women, who had tripped the light fantastic toe until the midnight hour, slept heedlessly on, wholly unaware that twelve apartments were already filled with the strong-minded invaders.... The audience throughout the convention was large, fashionable and as enthusiastic as the state of the weather would permit."
The Fourth of July was celebrated by the association in a beautiful grove in Westchester county, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Judge E.D. Culver and others making addresses. Weekly meetings of as many of its members as were in New York were held at the Woman's Bureau, a large number of practical questions relating to women were brought forward, and there was constant agitation and discussion. A note from the tax collector called forth this indignant answer from Miss Anthony:
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