-The First Annual
Meeting held in Cleveland--Mrs. Tracy Cutler, President--Mass
meeting in Steinway Hall, New York, 1871--State Action
Recommended--Moses Coit Tyler Speaks--Mass Meetings in 1871 in
Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Pittsburgh--Memorial to
Congress--Letters from William Lloyd Garrison and others--Hon. G.
F. Hoar Advocates Woman Suffrage--Anniversary celebrated at St.
Louis--Dr. Stone, of Michigan--Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
President, 1872--Convention in Cooper Institute, New York--Two
Hundred Young Women march in. Meeting in Plymouth Church--Letters
from Louise May Alcott and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps--The Annual
Meeting in Detroit--Julia Ward Howe, President--Letter from James
T. Field--Mary F. Eastman Addresses the Convention. Bishop
Gilbert Haven President for 1875--Convention Steinway Hall, New
York--Hon. Charles Bradlaugh Speaks--Centennial Celebration, July
3d--Petition to Congress for a XVI. Amendment--Conventions in
Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Washington, and Louisville.

It was during the summer of 1869 that the initiative steps in the
formation of the American Woman Suffrage Association[179] were taken,
and the following letter circulated:

BOSTON, August 5, 1869.

Many friends of the cause of woman suffrage desire that its
interests may be promoted by the assembling and action of a
convention devised on a truly National and representative basis
for the organization of an American Woman Suffrage Association.

Without depreciating the value of Associations already existing,
it is yet deemed that an organization at once more comprehensive
and more widely representative than any of these is urgently
called for. In this view, the Executive Committee of the New
England Woman Suffrage Association has appointed the undersigned
a Committee of Correspondence to confer by letter with the
friends of woman suffrage throughout the country on the subject
of the proposed convention.

We ask to hear from you in reply, at your earliest convenience.
Our present plan is that the authority of the convention shall be
vested in delegates, to be chosen and accredited by the Woman
Suffrage Associations existing, or about to be formed, in the
several States of the Union. The number of delegates to be