The association was organized May 15, and on the 17th Mrs. Livermore wrote Miss Anthony from Boston:  “I hope you are rested somewhat.  I am very sorry for you, that you are carrying such heavy burdens.  If you and I lived in the same city, I would relieve you of some of them, for I believe we might work together, with perhaps an occasional collision.  Now I want you to answer these two questions:  1st.—­Did you do anything in the way of organizing at the Saturday evening reunion, and if so, what?  That Equal Rights Association is an awful humbug.  I would not have come on to the anniversary, nor would any of us, if we had known what it was.  We supposed we were coming to a woman suffrage convention. 2d.—­If Mrs. Stanton will not go West to a series of meetings this fall and winter, would you dare undertake it with me alone?  We must have strong people of established reputations.  ’Only the Stanton, the Anthony, and the Livermore,’ that is what the Chicago Tribune says....”  Later, while still in Boston, she wrote again: 

You are mistaken in thinking I exhorted the formation of a national suffrage association the Saturday night after the New York convention; I only advised talking it up.  All agreed that it ought to be formed but that a preliminary call should be issued first.  I am for a national organization with Mrs. Stanton, president, and with you as one of the executive committee, but I want it arrived at compatibly with parliamentary rules....  And now having asserted myself, let me say that I sympathize more with your energy and earnestness which lead you to override forms and rules than I do with the awfully proper and correct spirit that waits till everybody consents before it does anything.  I have no doubt but we all shall join the National Association, each State by its elected members, when we hold our great Western Woman Suffrage Convention in Chicago next fall.  Mrs. Stanton and you must both be present; we probably shall all vote together then to go into the National Association.  Remember you are to make that series of conventions with me.  I am depending on you.

The next November, in answer to a circular signed by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, Caroline M. Severance, T.W.  Higginson and George H. Vibbert, a call was issued resulting in a convention at Cleveland, O., to form another national suffrage association on the following basis of representation:  “The delegates appointed by existing State organizations shall be admitted, provided their number does not exceed, in each case, that of the congressional delegation of the State.  Should it fall short of that number, additional delegates may be admitted from local organizations, or from no organization whatever, provided the applicants be actual residents of the State they claim to represent.”  The American Suffrage Association was thus formed, with twenty-one States represented; Henry Ward Beecher, president; Henry B. Blackwell, Amanda Way, recording secretaries; Lucy Stone, chairman executive committee.