In 1869 Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker came actively into the suffrage work and proved a valuable ally.  She had been much prejudiced against Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton by newspaper reports and by the misrepresentations of some of her acquaintances, and in order to overcome this feeling Paulina Wright Davis arranged that the three should visit her for several days at her home in Providence, R.I., saying in her invitation:  “I once had a prejudice against Susan B. Anthony but am ashamed of it.  I investigated carefully every charge made against her, and I now know her to be honest, honorable, generous and above all petty spites and jealousies.”  Mrs. Hooker was so delightfully disappointed in the two ladies that she became at once and forever their staunchest friend and advocate.  To Caroline M. Severance she wrote: 

I have studied Miss Anthony day and night for nearly a week, and I have taken the testimony of those who have known her intimately for twenty years, and all are united in this resume of her character:  She is a woman of incorruptible integrity and the thought of guile has no place in her heart.  In unselfishness and benevolence she has scarcely an equal, and her energy and executive ability are bounded only by her physical power, which is something immense.  Sometimes she fails in judgment, according to the standard of others, but in right intentions never, nor in faithfulness to her friends.  I confess that after studying her carefully for days, and under the shadow of ——­’s letters against her, and after attending a two-days’ convention in Newport engineered by her in her own fashion, I am obliged to accept the most favorable interpretation of her which prevails generally, rather than that of Boston.  Mrs. Stanton, too, is a magnificent woman, and the truest, womanliest one of us all.  I have spent three days in her company, in the most intense, heart-searching debate I ever undertook in my life.  I have handled what seemed to me to be her errors without gloves, and the result is that I love her as well as I do Miss Anthony.  I hand in my allegiance to both as the leaders and representatives of the great movement.

Mrs. Hooker set about arranging a mass convention at her home in Hartford, Conn., and upon Miss Anthony’s expressing some doubt as to being present, she wrote:  “Here I am at work on a convention intended chiefly to honor Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, and behold the Quakeress says maybe she can not come!  I won’t have the meeting if you are going to flunk.  It has been a real consolation to me in this wearisome business to think you would for once be relieved from all responsibility and come as orator and guest.  Don’t fail me.”

The convention, which closed October 29, was a great success and a State society was formed with a distinguished list of officers.  The Hartford Post gave considerable space to Miss Anthony’s address, saying: