Mrs. Mary Lowe Dickinson, President of the National Council of Women, assumed the financial responsibility and the extensive correspondence involved, and with rare tact, perseverance, and executive ability made the celebration a complete success.  In describing this occasion I cannot do better than to reproduce, in part, Mrs. Dickinson’s account, published in The Arena: 

“In the month of June, 1895, the National Council of Women issued the following invitation: 

“’Believing that the progress made by women in the last half century may be promoted by a more general notice of their achievements, we propose to hold, in New York city, a convention for this purpose.  As an appropriate time for such a celebration, the eightieth birthday of Elizabeth Cady Stanton has been chosen.  Her half century of pioneer work for the rights of women makes her name an inspiration for such an occasion and her life a fitting object for the homage of all women.

“’This National Council is composed of twenty organizations; these and all other societies interested are invited to co-operate in grateful recognition of the debt the present generation owes to the pioneers of the past.  From their interest in the enfranchisement of women, the influence of Mrs. Stanton and her coadjutor, Miss Anthony, has permeated all departments of progress and made them a common center round which all interested in woman’s higher development may gather.’

“To this invitation came responses, from the Old World and the New, expressing sympathy with the proposed celebration, which was intended to emphasize a great principle by showing the loftiness of character that had resulted from its embodiment in a unique personality.  The world naturally thinks of the personality before it thinks of the principle.  It has, at least, so much unconscious courtesy left as to honor a noble woman, even when failing to rightly apprehend a noble cause.  To afford this feeling its proper expression, to render more tangible all vague sympathy, to crystallize the growing sentiment in favor of human freedom, to give youth the opportunity to reverence the glory of age, to give hearts their utterances in word and song was perhaps the most popular purpose of the reunion.  In other words, it gave an opportunity for those who revered Mrs. Stanton as a queen among women to show their reverence, and to recognize the work her life had wrought, and to see in it an epitome of the progress of a century.

“The celebration was also an illustration of the distinctive idea of the National Council of Women, which aims to give recognition to all human effort without demanding uniformity of opinion as a basis of co-operation.  It claims to act upon a unity of service, notwithstanding differences of creed and methods.  The things that separate, shrank back into the shadows where they belong, and all hearts brave enough to think, and tender enough to feel, found it easy to unite in homage to a life which had known a half century of struggle to lift humanity from bondage and womanhood from shame.