The birthday was celebrated by individuals and clubs in many states with luncheons, teas, receptions and literary entertainments. After all these pleasant happenings, Miss Anthony felt new courage and hope to enter upon the Twenty-second National Suffrage Convention, February 18, at Lincoln Music Hall. This was to be an important meeting, as it was to consummate the union of the National and American organizations, and she was anxious for a large attendance. "Do come," she wrote to the most influential friends, "if you stay away forever afterwards. This will be the crucial test whether our platform shall continue broad and free as it has been for forty years. Some now propose secession because it is to be narrow and bigoted; others left us twenty years ago because it was too liberal. Some of the prominent women are writing me that the union means we shall be no more than an annex to the W. C. T. U. hereafter; others declare we are going to sink our identity and become sectarian and conservative. There is not the slightest ground for any of these fears, but come and be our stay and support."
She also had the annual struggle to secure the presence of Mrs. Stanton, who was about to sail with her daughter for England, but, after the usual stormy correspondence, the day of departure was postponed and she wrote: "You will have me under your thumb the first of February." As her time was limited, Miss Anthony arranged for the hearing before the Senate committee on February 8, which was held in the new room assigned to the committee on woman suffrage. A few days later the ladies spoke before the House Judiciary Committee.
The union of the two organizations was effected before the opening of the convention and Mrs. Stanton elected president.[54] She faced a brilliant assemblage at the opening of the National-American Convention and made one of the ablest speeches of her life, stating in the first sentence that she considered it a greater honor to go to England as the president of this association than to be sent as minister plenipotentiary to any court in Europe. She closed by introducing her daughter, Mrs. Stanton Blatch, who captivated the audience.[55] Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke, ex-president of the American Association, then delivered an eloquent and scholarly address. At its close Mrs. Stanton was obliged to leave, as she sailed for Europe the next morning. When she arose to say farewell the entire audience joined in the waving of handkerchiefs, the clapping of hands, and the men in three rousing cheers.
The usual corps of National speakers received a notable addition in Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe, Henry B. Blackwell, Carrie Chapman Catt, Hon. J. A. Pickler and Alice Stone Blackwell. Lucy Stone, being detained at home by illness, sent a letter of greeting. When Miss Anthony, as vice-president-at-large, took the chair after Mrs. Stanton's departure, a great bouquet of white lilies was presented to her.
A woman suffrage amendment was pending in South Dakota, and the claims of the new State were presented by Representative and Mrs. Pickler and Alonzo Wardall, secretary of the Farmer's Alliance and vice-president of the suffrage association, all of whom felt confident that with financial help the amendment could be carried but, as the State was poor, most of this would have to come from outside. The convention became very enthusiastic and a South Dakota campaign committee was formed; Susan B. Anthony, chairman, Clara B. Colby, Alice Stone Blackwell. Rev. Anna H. Shaw made a stirring appeal for money. Miss Anthony pledged all that she could raise between then and the November election. Mrs. Clara L. McAdow, of Montana, headed the list with $250. A number of ladies followed with pledges for their respective States. In a short time it seemed evident that a large sum could be raised and, at Miss Anthony's request, the association directed all contributions to be sent to its treasurer, Mrs. Spofford, at Washington, and she herself agreed to devote a year's work to Dakota.[56]
Miss Anthony remained in Washington several weeks, looking after various matters: first of all, a representation of women in the management of the Columbian Exposition; then there were the reports of the Senate and the House committees, upon which she always brought to bear as much as possible of that "indirect influence" which women are said to possess. Just now the admission of Wyoming as a State with woman suffrage in its constitution was hanging in the balance, but on March 26 she had the inexpressible pleasure of witnessing, from her seat in the gallery of the House, the final discussion and passage of the bill.[57] She also was arranging for the incorporation of the National-American Association, the old National, which had been a corporate body for a number of years, having added American to its name. The bills of the convention were to be settled,[58] and there were still other subjects claiming her attention before she started for the far West to inaugurate the South Dakota campaign.
Miss Anthony was a welcome guest at dinners and receptions in the homes of many of the dignitaries in Washington, but accepted these invitations only when she saw an opportunity thereby to further the cause of woman suffrage. She realized fully that one important step in the work was to interest women of influence, socially and financially, and the high plane of respectability which this question had now attained was at least partly due to her winters in Washington, where, at the Riggs House and in society, she met and made friends with prominent men and women from all parts of the country and converted them to her doctrines, which they disseminated in their various localities upon returning home.
She writes her sister, in describing social events, of a dinner at the handsome home of John R. McLean, owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer, who in person brought the invitation, while his wife, the daughter of General Beale, looked after her "as if she had been the Queen of Sheba." Here she met Senator and Mrs. Payne of Ohio, Senator and Mrs. Cockrell of Missouri, Senator and Mrs. Butler of South Carolina, Speaker and Mrs. Reed of Maine, Justice and Mrs. Field and other notables. Then she speaks of a meeting of the Cobweb Club, composed of women in official life, where, at the close of her informal talk, they crowded around her and exclaimed: "Why, Miss Anthony, we never understood this question before; of course we believe in it." Mrs. Hearst, wife of the Senator, said: "Had any one ever presented this subject to me as you have done today, you should have had my help long ago." "And so you see," she writes, "that at this juncture of our movement much could be accomplished by accepting such invitations, but it costs me more courage than to face an audience of a thousand people."
While Miss Anthony was still in Washington she sat for her bust by a young sculptor, Adelaide Johnson. "So marble and canvas both are to tell the story," she wrote, "for I have sat also for a painting. The time draws near when I must start out campaigning and O, how I dread it!" During this winter she received an invitation from a State W. C. T. U. to bring a suffrage convention to their city and they would bear the expenses, stipulating only that she herself should be present, and that "no speaker should say anything which would seem like an attack on Christianity." She wrote Miss Shaw: "Won't that prevent your going, Rev. Anna? I wonder if they'll be as particular to warn all other speakers not to say anything which shall sound like an attack on liberal religion. They never seem to think we have any feelings to be hurt when we have to sit under their reiteration of orthodox cant and dogma. The boot is all on one foot with the dear religious bigots—but if they will all pull together with us for suffrage we'll continue to bear and forbear, as we have done for the past forty years."