Miss Anthony presented a ringing set of resolutions, and splendid addresses were given by Mrs. Stanton, Theodore Tilton and Henry Ward Beecher.  Mr. Phillips then made a long and eloquent speech which was rapturously received by the audience, but which filled the leaders with sadness, because of the skillful evasion of the disputed question which they never had expected from this staunch friend.  Miss Anthony read an address to Congress[36] which was adopted with unanimous approval.  At the close of the convention a business session was held, at which she offered a resolution declaring that, since by the act of emancipation and the Civil Rights Bill, the negro and woman now had the same civil and political status, alike needing only the ballot, therefore the time had come for an organization which should demand universal suffrage; and that hereafter their society should be known as the American Equal Rights Association.  She supported this by an able speech in which she said: 

For twenty years we have pressed the claims of woman to the right of representation in the government.  Each successive year after 1848, conventions were held in different States, until the beginning of the war.  Up to this hour we have looked only to State action for the recognition of our rights; but now, by the results of the war, the whole question of suffrage reverts back to the United States Constitution.  The duty of Congress at this moment is to declare what shall be the basis of representation in a republican form of government.  There is, there can be, but one true basis, viz.:  that taxation and representation must be inseparable; hence our demand must now go beyond woman—­it must extend to the farthest limit of the principle of the “consent of the governed,” as the only authorized or just government.  We therefore wish to broaden our woman’s rights platform and make it in name what it ever has been in spirit, a human rights platform.  As women we can no longer claim for ourselves what we do not for others, nor can we work in two separate movements to get the ballot for the two disfranchised classes, negroes and women, since to do so must be at double cost of time, energy and money....  Therefore, that we may henceforth concentrate all our forces for the practical application of our one grand, distinctive, national idea—­universal suffrage—­I hope we will unanimously adopt the resolution before us, thus resolving ourselves into the American Equal Eights Association.

Notwithstanding the rebuff they had received from the Anti-Slavery Society, this resolution was unanimously adopted and the Woman’s Rights Society which had existed practically for sixteen years was merged into the American Equal Rights Association to work for universal suffrage.  A constitution was adopted and officers chosen.[37] Mrs. Stanton thus describes the last moments of the convention:  “As Lucretia Mott uttered her few parting words of benediction, the fading sunlight through the stained windows falling upon her pure face, a celestial glory seemed about her, a sweet and peaceful influence pervaded every heart, and all responded to Theodore Tilton when he said this closing meeting was one of the most beautiful, delightful and memorable which any of its participants ever enjoyed.”