It had long been the dream of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton to form an International Suffrage Association for purposes of mutual helpfulness and the strength of co-operation. During 1883, when in Great Britain, they discussed this subject with the women there and, as a result, a large committee of correspondence had been established to promote the forming of such an association. After a time it was judged expedient to enlarge its scope and make it an International Council, which should represent every department of woman's work. This was called to meet at Washington in 1888, the fortieth anniversary of the first organized demand for the rights of women, the convention at Seneca Falls, and active preparations had been in progress for more than a year. It was decided at the suffrage convention held the previous winter that the National Association should assume the entire responsibility for this International Council and should invite the participation of all organizations of women in the trades, professions, reforms, etc.
Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Spofford were in Europe and this herculean task was borne principally by Miss Anthony, May Wright Sewall and Rachel Foster.[39] Miss Anthony stayed in Washington for two months preceding the council, perfecting the last arrangements. The amount of labor, time, thought and anxiety involved in this year of preparation can not be estimated. Nothing to compare with it ever had been attempted by women. Not the least part of the undertaking was the raising of the $13,000 which were needed to defray expenses, all secured by personal letters of appeal and admission fees, and disbursed with careful economy and judgment. The intention was to give the suffrage association the same prominence as other organizations and no more. An entry in Miss Anthony's diary says: "I have just received proof of the 'call' for the council and struck out the paragraph saying, 'no one would be committed to suffrage who should attend.' I can't allow any such apologetic invitation as that! There is no need to say anything about it." To her old friend Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who asked if only those women ministers who had been regularly ordained were to be heard, Miss Anthony wrote:
I have felt all along that we ought to give a chance for the expression of the highest and deepest religious thought of those not ordained of men. Your wish to give the result of your research opens the way for us to make the last day—Easter Sunday—voice the new, the purer, the better worship of the living God. We'll have a real symposium of woman's gospel. It is not fair to give only the church-ordained women an opportunity to present their religious thoughts, and now it shall be fixed so that the laity may have the same. I don't want a controversy or a lot of negations, but shall tell each one to give her strongest affirmation. This forever saying a thing is false and failing to present the truth, is to me a foolish waste of time, when almost everybody feels the old forms, creeds and rituals to be only the mint, anise and cumin.
So, my dear, I am very, very glad that you and Lucy are both to be on our platform, and we are to stand together again after these twenty years. But none of the past! Let us rejoice in the good of the present, and hope for more and more in the future.
In response to her letter asking him to take part on Pioneer Day, Frederick Douglass wrote:
I certainly shall, if I live and am well. The cause of woman suffrage has under it a truth as eternal as the universe of thought, and must triumph if this planet endures. I have been calling up to my mind's eye that first convention in the small Wesleyan Methodist church at Seneca Falls, where Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Mott and those other brave souls began a systematic and determined agitation for a larger measure of liberty for woman, and how great that little meeting now appears! It seems only yesterday since it took place, and yet forty years have passed away and what a revolution on this subject have we seen in the sentiment of the American people and, in fact, of the civilized world! Who could have thought that humble, modest, maiden convention, holding its little white apron up to its face and wiping away the tear of sympathy with woman in her hardships and the sigh of her soul for a larger measure of freedom, would have become the mother of an International Council of Women, right here in the capital of this nation?
Maria Mitchell, who was in feeble health (and died the next year) in expressing her regrets said: "I am taking a rest. I have worked more than a half-century and, like stronger people, have become tired. I am meaning to build my small observatory and keep up a sort of apology for study—because I am too old to dare do nothing. I wish I felt able to take the journey and hear what others have to say and are ready to do. The world moves, and I have full faith it will continue to move and to move, for better and better, even when we have put aside the armor."
During the winter, Mrs. Stanton had written Miss Anthony: "We have jogged along pretty well for forty years or more. Perhaps mid the wreck of thrones and the undoing of so many friendships, sects, parties and families, you and I deserve some credit for sticking together through all adverse winds, with so few ripples on the surface. When I get back to America I intend to cling to you closer than ever. I am thoroughly rested now and full of fight and fire, ready to travel and speak from Maine to Florida. Tell our suffrage daughters to brace up and get ready for a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together when I come back."
What then were her amazement, anger and grief to receive another letter from Mrs. Stanton a short time before the council, saying that a voyage across the Atlantic so filled her with dread that she had about decided not to undertake it! A fortieth anniversary of the Seneca Falls convention without the woman who called it! And this when she had counted on Mrs. Stanton to make the greatest speech of the whole meeting and cover the National Association with immortal glory! She says in her journal: "I am ablaze and dare not write tonight." The next entry: "I wrote the most terrific letter to Mrs. Stanton; it will start every white hair on her head." And then the following day the little book records: "Well, I made my own heart ache all night, awake or asleep, by my terrible arraignment, whether it touches her feelings or not." Ten days later she writes: "Received a cablegram from Mrs. Stanton, 'I am coming,' so she has my letter. My mind is so relieved, I feel as if I were treading on air."