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:
I have your polite note informing me that as publisher of The Revolution, I am indebted to the United States in the sum of $14.10 for the tax on monthly sales of that journal. Enclosed you will find the amount, but you will please understand that I pay it under protest. The Revolution, you are aware, is a journal the main object of which is to apply to these degenerate times the great principle for which our ancestors fought, that taxation and representation should go together. I am not represented in the United States government, and yet it taxes me; and it taxes me, too, for publishing a paper the chief purpose of which is to rebuke the glaring inconsistency between its professions and its practices. Under the circumstances, the federal government ought to be ashamed to exact this tax of me....
On September 10 Miss Anthony attended the Great Western Woman Suffrage Convention at Chicago, where she spoke several times and was cordially received. She was the guest of Mrs. Kate N. Doggett, founder of the Fortnightly Club. From here she went to the St. Louis convention, October 6 and 7, which was especially distinguished because of the resolutions presented by Francis Minor, a prominent lawyer of that city, with an argument to prove that, under the Fourteenth Amendment, women already had a legal right to vote. These were supported by his wife, Virginia L. Minor, in a strong speech. They were the first thus to interpret this amendment. Ten thousand extra copies of The Revolution containing the resolutions and this speech were published, laid on the desk of every member of Congress, sent to the leading newspapers and circulated throughout the country. For a number of years the National Suffrage Association held to this construction of the amendment, until it was decided to the contrary by the Supreme Court of the United States.
Conventions were held in Cincinnati and Dayton, O. At the latter Miss Anthony gave a scathing review of the laws affecting married women, the control which they allowed the husband over the wife, children and property, making, however, no attack upon men but only upon laws. Each of the other speakers, all of whom were married, in turn took up the cudgel, and proceeded to tell how good her own husband was, and to say that if Miss Anthony only had a good husband she never would have made that speech, but each admitted that the men were better than the laws. In her closing remarks Miss Anthony used their own testimony against them and created great merriment in the audience. Whenever she commented on existing conditions or on general principles, individual men and women were sure to rush into the fray, making a personal application and waxing highly indignant. The Dayton Herald said of her evening address: "She made a clear, logical and lawyerlike argument, in sprightly language, that women being persons are citizens, and as citizens, voters. We think that none who examine her authorities and line of discussion can avoid her conclusions, and we are certain that many of the ablest jurists of the land have the honor (logically and legally) to coincide in her argument."
In 1869 Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker came actively into the suffrage work and proved a valuable ally. She had been much prejudiced against Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton by newspaper reports and by the misrepresentations of some of her acquaintances, and in order to overcome this feeling Paulina Wright Davis arranged that the three should visit her for several days at her home in Providence, R.I., saying in her invitation: "I once had a prejudice against Susan B. Anthony but am ashamed of it. I investigated carefully every charge made against her, and I now know her to be honest, honorable, generous and above all petty spites and jealousies." Mrs. Hooker was so delightfully disappointed in the two ladies that she became at once and forever their staunchest friend and advocate. To Caroline M. Severance she wrote:
I have studied Miss Anthony day and night for nearly a week, and I have taken the testimony of those who have known her intimately for twenty years, and all are united in this resume of her character: She is a woman of incorruptible integrity and the thought of guile has no place in her heart. In unselfishness and benevolence she has scarcely an equal, and her energy and executive ability are bounded only by her physical power, which is something immense. Sometimes she fails in judgment, according to the standard of others, but in right intentions never, nor in faithfulness to her friends. I confess that after studying her carefully for days, and under the shadow of ——'s letters against her, and after attending a two-days' convention in Newport engineered by her in her own fashion, I am obliged to accept the most favorable interpretation of her which prevails generally, rather than that of Boston. Mrs. Stanton, too, is a magnificent woman, and the truest, womanliest one of us all. I have spent three days in her company, in the most intense, heart-searching debate I ever undertook in my life. I have handled what seemed to me to be her errors without gloves, and the result is that I love her