eled throughout the state, organizing temperance societies,
getting subscriptions for Amelia Bloomer's temperance paper, _The
Lily_, and attending temperance conventions in spite of the fact that
she met determined opposition to the participation of women. Impressed
by the success of political action in Maine, where in 1851 the first
prohibition law in the country had been passed, she now signed her
letters, "Yours for Temperance Politics."[35] She appealed to women to
petition for a Maine law for New York and brought a group of women
before the legislature for the first time for a hearing on this
prohibition bill. Realizing then that women's indirect influence could
be of little help in political action, she saw clearly that women
needed the vote.

However, it was the woman's rights convention in Syracuse, New York,
in September 1852, which turned her thoughts definitely in the
direction of votes for women. It was the first woman's rights
gathering she had ever attended and she was enthusiastic over the
people she met. She talked eagerly with the courageous Jewish
lecturer, Ernestine Rose; with Dr. Harriot K. Hunt of Boston, one of
the first women physicians, who was waging a battle against taxation
without representation; with Clarina Nichols of Vermont, editor of
the _Windham County Democrat_, and with Matilda Joslyn Gage, the
youngest member of the convention. All of these became valuable, loyal
friends in the years ahead. Susan renewed her acquaintance with Lucy
Stone, and met Antoinette Brown who had also studied at Oberlin
College and was now the first woman ordained as a minister. With real
pleasure she greeted Mrs. Stanton's cousin, Gerrit Smith, now
Congressman from New York, and his daughter, Elizabeth Smith Miller,
the originator of the much-discussed bloomer. Best of all was her
long-hoped-for meeting with James and Lucretia Mott and Lucretia's
sister, Martha C. Wright. Only Paulina Wright Davis of Providence and
Elizabeth Oakes Smith of Boston were disappointing, for they appeared
at the meetings in short-sleeved, low-necked dresses with
loose-fitting jackets of pink and blue wool, shocking her deeply
intrenched Quaker instincts. Although she realized that they wore
ultrafashionable clothes to show the world that not all woman's rights
advocates were frumps wearing the hideous bloomer, she could not
forgive them for what to her seemed bad taste. How could such women,
she asked herself, hope to represent t