Letters both encouraging and discouraging were received.  Robert Purvis, one of the most elegant and scholarly colored men our country has known, whose father was a Scotchman and mother a West Indian with no slave blood, sent this noble response:  “....I can not agree that this or any hour is ‘especially the negro’s.’  I am an anti-slavery man because I hate tyranny and in my nature revolt against oppression, whatever its form or character.  As an Abolitionist, therefore, I am for the equal rights movement, and as one of the confessedly oppressed race, how could I be otherwise?  With what grace could I ask the women of this country to labor for my enfranchisement, and at the same time be unwilling to put forth a hand to remove the tyranny, in some respects greater, to which they are subjected?  Again wishing you a successful meeting, I am very gratefully yours.”

[Autograph:  Robert Purvis]

Anna Dickinson, who had come upon the scene of action since the last woman’s rights convention five years before, wrote Miss Anthony that she should be present but was not sure that she was yet ready to speak:  “I’m a great deal of a Quaker—­I don’t like to take up any work till I feel called to it.  My personal interest is perhaps stronger in that of which thee writes me than in any other, but my hands are so full just now.  I see what I shall do in the future, and I hope the near future.  Wait for me a little—­forbear, and I honestly believe I’ll do thee some good and faithful service; I don’t mean wait for me, but be patient with me.  I write this out of my large love for and confidence in thee.  I will talk to thee more of it by end of the month when I see thee in Boston and put my mite in thy hands; till then believe me, dear friend, affectionately and truly thine.”

At the business meeting of the anti-slavery convention the proposition was made by the National Woman’s Rights Committee that, as all there was left for the society to do was to secure suffrage for the negro, and as the woman’s society also was working for universal suffrage, they should merge the two into one, and in that way the same conventions, appeals, petitions, etc., would answer for both.  To this Mr. Phillips vigorously objected because the necessary three months’ notice had not been given!  As Mr. Powell had been delegated the previous January to give this, there could be no other conclusion than that he had refrained from doing so.  There was considerable discussion on the question but, as president of the Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Phillips’ influence was supreme and the coalition was declined.

The Woman’s Rights Convention met in Dr. Cheever’s church, May 10, 1866, with a large audience present.  It was their first meeting since before the war, and while it had many elements of gladness, yet it was not unmixed with sorrow.  Mr. Garrison was absent, the first rift had been made in the love and gratitude in which for many years Mr. Phillips had been held, and a vague feeling of distrust and alarm was beginning to creep over the women, lest, after all these years of patient work, they were again to be sacrificed.