d 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