This year, in the death of Wendell Phillips, the cause of equal rights lost one of its earliest and noblest supporters. On February 28 an impressive memorial service was held in Boston. Mrs. Howe presided and the other speakers were William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore D. Weld, Judge Thomas Russell, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, Elizur Wright, the Rev. Samuel May, George W. Lowther, Mrs. Lucy Stone and Mr. Blackwell. John Boyle O'Reilly and William P. Liscomb read memorial poems.
Fifty-seven meetings were held this year in different parts of the State, arranged by Arthur P. Ford and Miss Cora Scott Pond. The speakers were the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, Miss Matilda Hindman, Miss Pond and Miss Ida M. Buxton, and at some of the meetings Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell and Mrs. Adelaide A. Claflin. In addition six conventions were held and a large number of local leagues were formed. Suffrage sociables were given monthly in Boston. Leaflets were printed, including Wendell Phillips' great speech at the Worcester Convention in 1850, which were sent out by tens of thousands, and 50,000 special copies of the Woman's Journal were distributed gratuitously. Mrs. H. M. Tracy Cutler was employed for a month in Worcester to enlist interest in the churches, and Miss Pond for two months in Boston. Letters were sent to every town, with postal cards inclosed for reply, to find who were friends of suffrage, and to those so found a letter was sent asking co-operation. This constitutes an average twelve months' work for the past thirty years.
The sixteenth annual meeting of the New England Association took place May 26, 27, Lucy Stone presiding. The Rev. Minot J. Savage and Edward M. Winston of Harvard University were among the speakers. The two associations united as usual in the May Festival. Letters of greeting were read from the Hons. George F. Hoar, John D. Long and John E. Fitzgerald, Postmaster Edward S. Tobey, Col. Albert Clarke and Chancellor William G. Eliot, of Washington University, St. Louis. The Rev. Robert Collyer, Mr. Garrison and the Rev. Miss Shaw made addresses.
At the State convention, Jan. 27, 28, 1885, addresses were made by Mrs. Margaret Moore of Ireland, A. S. Root of Boston University, and the usual brilliant galaxy, while letters expressing sympathy with the cause were read from John G. Whittier, the Rev. Samuel Longfellow, the Rev. Samuel J. Barrows and many others. An appeal to the Legislature, written by Lucy Stone, was unanimously adopted.
An Anti-Woman Suffrage Association formed in Massachusetts the previous year, had devoted itself chiefly to securing signatures of women to a protest against the franchise. In 1885 Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells and her associates obtained the signatures of about 140 influential men to a remonstrance against "any further extension of suffrage to women," and published it as an advertisement in the Boston Herald of Sunday, February 15. The list included President Eliot of Harvard, a number of college professors, one or two literary men, several ex-members of the Legislature, and a number of clergymen of conservative churches; but it was made up largely of those prominent chiefly on account of their wealth.
An average of ten suffrage meetings and conventions a month were held in various cities throughout the year. The Rev. Miss Shaw and Miss Pond attended nearly all, and Mrs. Stone, Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Claflin, Mr. Garrison, Miss Eastman and Mr. Bowditch addressed some of them, besides local speakers. Two thousand persons gathered in Tremont Temple on the opening night of the May anniversary, Lucy Stone presiding. Senator Hoar, Mrs. Livermore and others made short speeches and later responded to toasts at the Festival.
Mr. Blackwell presided over the State convention Jan. 26, 1886. At the New England meeting this year Frederick Douglass delivered an oration and spoke also at the Festival, over which Miss Eastman presided. The association kept Miss Shaw in the field for six months and Miss Pond throughout the year and held summer conventions in Cottage City and Nantucket, besides ten county conventions in the fall. There were 123,014 pages of literature sent out and agents visited seventy-five towns. A suffrage bazar was held in December with Mrs. Livermore as president and Mrs. Howe as editor of the Bazar Journal. The list of vice-presidents included Phillips Brooks and many other distinguished persons. The brunt of the work, however, was borne by Miss Pond and Miss Shaw, and the bazar cleared $6,000.
Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Stone, Mr. Garrison, Mrs. Cheney, State Senator Elijah A. Morse and others addressed the annual convention of 1887. Petitions were circulated for Municipal and Presidential Suffrage and a constitutional amendment; also for police matrons, the raising of the age of protection for girls, improvements in the property rights of married women, a bill enabling husbands and wives to make legal contracts with each other, and one making women eligible to all offices from which they are not debarred by the constitution. In March the association gave $1,000 to the constitutional amendment campaign in Rhode Island, and a number of the officers contributed their services.
Mrs. Howe presided at the May Festival, and among the speakers were Mrs. Helen M. Gougar of Indiana, Mrs. J. Ellen Foster of Iowa, the Revs. Henry Blanchard of Maine and Frederick A. Hinckley of Rhode Island. Mr. Garrison read an original poem rejoicing over the granting of Municipal Suffrage in Kansas. At the New England Convention which followed, these speakers were reinforced by the Rev. Jenkyn Lloyd Jones of Chicago. On October 19 the State Association gave a reception to Miss Frances E. Willard, president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, at the Hotel Brunswick.
In December a great bazar was held in Boston for the joint benefit of the American Suffrage Association and various States which took part. The gross receipts were nearly $8,000. This year the association moved into larger offices at No. 3 Park street; held fifty-one public meetings and four county conventions and organized twenty-one new leagues. The Woman's Journal was sent for three months to all the members of the Legislature; 378,000 pages of suffrage literature were sold and many thousands more given away.