Miss Anthony presided over the ten sessions of the convention and they required a firm hand, for the discussions were spirited, as the questions considered were important. Among them were the work to be done at the World's Fair; the opening of the fair on Sunday; the proposition to hold every alternate convention in some other city than Washington; the plan to carry suffrage work into the southern States; the advisability of making another campaign in Kansas; and other matters on which there was a wide difference of opinion.
John B. Allen, of Washington, had introduced in the Senate, and Halbert S. Greenleaf in the House, a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution extending the right to women to vote at all federal elections. The House Judiciary Committee, January 18, granted a hearing to such speakers as should be selected by the national convention then in session. Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Lucy Stone and Mrs. Hooker were chosen. This was the first Democratic committee before whom an appeal had been made; they listened courteously, but brought in no report on the question.
The Senate committee granted a hearing January 20, and three-minute addresses were made by eighteen women representing as many States. Before they left the room, Senator Hoar moved that the committee make a favorable report and the motion was seconded by Senator Warren, Senator Blair also voting in favor. Senators Vance, of North Carolina, and George, of Mississippi, voted in the negative. Senators Quay and Carlisle were absent.
During the convention the district suffrage society gave a reception in the parlors of the Wimodaughsis club house. Later, Mrs. Noble, wife of the Secretary of the Interior, issued cards for a reception in honor of Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone. It was attended by members of the Cabinet, Senate, House, diplomatic corps and many others prominent in official and social life.
As Miss Anthony had no longer her comfortable quarters at the Riggs House free of all expense, she did not linger in Washington, but went to Philadelphia for a week with the friends there and reached home February 6. "I send congratulations, I always wanted you to be president," wrote Mrs. Johns. "Now can't you come to our Kansas City Inter-State Convention? We do need you so and there wouldn't be standing room if you were there." And later: "Do any of my wails reach you? The Kansas City people plead for you to come if only to be looked at. Is there any hope?" Miss Anthony was perfectly willing to make a winter campaign in Kansas, but her friends insisted that there were plenty of younger women to do this work and she should wait till spring. So Anna Shaw, Mary Seymour Howell and Florence Balgarnie, of England, went to the assistance of the women there, and Rachel Foster Avery gave $1,000 to this canvass.
Every day at home was precious to Miss Anthony. Sometimes on Sunday afternoon she went to Mount Hope, on whose sloping hillsides rest the beloved dead of her own family and many of the friends of early days;[73] or she walked down to the long bridge which spans the picturesque Genesee river and commands a fine view of the beautiful Lower Falls. Occasionally a friend called with a carriage and they took the charming seven-mile drive to the shore of Lake Ontario. Sunday mornings she listened to Mr. Gannett's philosophical sermons; and through the week there were quiet little teas with old friends whom she had known since girlhood, but had seen far too seldom in all the busy years. Instead of forever giving lectures she was able to hear them from others; and she could indulge to the fullest, on the big new desk, her love of letter-writing, while the immense work of the national association was always pressing. She had a number of applications for articles from various magazines and newspapers, but her invariable reply was, "I have no literary ability; ask Mrs. Stanton;" and no argument could convince her that she could write well if she would give the time to it.
She addressed the New York Legislature in April in reference to having women sit as delegates in the approaching Constitutional Convention. In response to a request from the Rochester Union and Advertiser, she wrote an earnest letter advocating the opening of the World's Fair on Sunday, and giving many strong reasons in favor. On April 22, she joined Miss Shaw, who was lecturing at Bradford, Penn., and Sunday afternoon addressed an audience which packed the opera house. The next day she organized a suffrage club of seventy members among the influential women of that city. After leaving there Rev. Anna Shaw, herself an ordained Protestant Methodist minister, wrote her that she had been shut out of several churches because she had addressed an audience at the Lily Dale Spiritualist camp meeting. She said: "I told them that I would speak to 5,000 people on woman suffrage anywhere this or the other side of Hades if they could be got together."
The first week in May, at the urgent invitation of her good friends, Smith G. and Emily B. Ketcham, of Grand Rapids, Miss Anthony attended their silver wedding. From this pleasant affair she went to the Michigan Suffrage Convention at Battle Creek, where she visited an old schoolmate, Mrs. Sarah Hyatt Nichols. She reached Chicago in time for the biennial meeting of the General Federation of Woman's Clubs. Special trains were run from New York and Boston, Central Music Hall was crowded and numerous elegant receptions were given for the 300 delegates from all parts of the country. Many eminent women sat upon the platform, among them the president of the federation, Mrs. Charlotte Emerson Brown, Frances E. Willard, Susan B. Anthony, Julia Ward Howe, May Wright Sewall, Jenny June Croly and Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, all of whom were heard at different times during the convention. Miss Anthony was the guest of Lydia Avery Coonley, whose mother wrote to Mary Anthony:
I have been intending for several days to tell you that however your sister may have been regarded forty years ago, she is today the most popular woman in these United States. The federation closed, as you probably know, on Friday night. During the meetings she was several times asked to come forward on the platform, which she did to the manifest gratification of the people, saying something each time which "brought down the house." On the last night a note was sent to the president asking that "Susan B.," Julia Ward Howe and Ednah D. Cheney would please step forward. They came, but only your sister spoke and what she said was vociferously cheered over and over again.
The business committee of the National Council—Miss Willard, Mrs. Sewall, Mrs. Foster Avery, Miss Anthony and others—met in Chicago the same week, the principal subject of consideration being the Woman's Congress to be held the next year during the World's Fair. While in the city Miss Anthony gave a number of sittings to Lorado Taft, the sculptor. Miss Willard had asked that he might make the bust to be placed in the gallery of famous women at the World's Fair, she herself to be responsible for all expenses. "Come and spend a week with me in my home," she wrote, "while he prepares a model of that statesmanlike head, the greatest of them all." Desirous of pleasing her, Miss Anthony agreed, but at once many of the strong-minded protested that the bust must be made by a woman.