FREDERICK DOUGLASS ET AL. TO THE AMERICAN
WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION

[n.p. November 1870].

Friends and Coworkers: We, the undersigned, a committee appointed by
the Union Woman’s Suffrage Society in New York, May, 1870, to confer
with you on the subject of merging the two organizations into one,¹In the wake of the disastrous annual proceedings of the American Equal Rights Association in May 1869, two suffrage societies were formed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony established the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in May 1869, and Lucy Stone led the formation of the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in November. The following May, members of the American Equal Rights Association agreed to officially dissolve and transfer all of its records to a new organization, the Union Woman Suffrage Society. Theodore Tilton was elected its president. Tilton then persuaded some NWSA members to join his organization in an attempt to merge permanently with the AWSA. At the first anniversary meeting of the AWSA, in November 1870, Tilton, along with Douglass, presented this letter as a final attempt to reconcile the fractured suffrage movement. In April 1871, Tilton resigned as president and the Union Woman Suffrage Society dissolved. Anthony then reorganized the NWSA with Stanton as president. New York , 15 May 1870; Milwaukee , 20 May 1870, 4 April 1871; Bellows Falls , 21 May 1870; Harper, , 1: 348–50; Lois W. Banner, (Boston, 1980), 117; Douglass, , 87–90, 153n. respectfully announce:

First, that in our judgment no difference exists between the objects
and methods of the two societies, nor any good reason for keeping them
apart;

Second, that the society we represent has invested us with full power
to arrange with you a union of both under a single constitution and
executive;

Third, that we ask you to appoint a committee of equal number and
authority with our own, to consummate, if possible, this happy result.

Yours, in the common cause of woman’s enfranchisement,

LAURA CURTIS BULLARD,²Laura Curtis Bullard (1831–1912), writer, editor, and women’s rights advocate, was born in Freedom, Maine, to Lucy Winslow Curtis and Jeremiah Curtis. Her father, a leader in the state’s Liberty party, waged unsuccessful campaigns for governor in 1841 and Congress in 1847. In 1854, she anonymously published her first novel, , and the following year she founded the , a newspaper based in New York City and published monthly from 1855 to 1861. In 1856, she finished her second novel, , and three years later she married Enoch Bullard, an executive in her father’s pharmaceutical business. While she closed her newspaper following the birth of her first child in 1861, she returned to public life in the late 1860s, devoting her time to the women’s rights movement. In 1868 she became a founding member of Sorosis, a society for professional and literary women. She served as one of the first corresponding secretaries of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869 and also represented the society at the Women’s Industrial Congress in Berlin. In 1870 she founded the Brooklyn Women’s Club with her friend Elizabeth Tilton and also began her eighteen-month tenure as editor of the , the radical newspaper and political publication of the NWSA. She spent the later years of her life immersed in the literary world. For example, she published several essays in the and an essay on Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the book. New York , 20 January 1912; Laura Curtis Bullard, , ed. Denise M. Kohn (Lincoln, Neb., 2010), x–xxviii; David S. Reynolds, (New York, 1988), 392.
GERRIT SMITH,
SARAH PUGH,³The teacher and abolitionist Sarah Pugh (1800–84) was born in Alexandria, Virginia, to Jesse Pugh and Catharine Jackson. The Quaker household moved to Pennsylvania following the death of Sarah’s father when she was two. After studying at the Friends’ Westtown Boarding School, she taught (1821–28) at the Quaker school in the Twelfth Street Meeting House in Philadelphia. In 1829 she established a school, also in Philadelphia, with her friend Rachel Pierce; she taught there until 1840. An avid abolitionist, Pugh joined and held leadership positions in several antislavery groups. She joined the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1836, was elected secretary the following year, and served as president for many years. She was also a secretary at the first Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women held in 1837 in New York City. Pugh served as a delegate to the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and as an officer of the group in 1841, and represented not only that society but also the American Free Produce Society at the 1840 World’s Anti-Slavery Convention, held in London. During the early 1850s, she traveled to Europe again, promoting abolition and women’s rights; upon returning to Philadelphia, she resumed her leadership position in the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Following the Civil War, she promoted equal rights and universal suffrage, although she was never considered a leader in the women’s rights movement. She supported the National Woman Suffrage Association and its leaders, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. In 1873, she helped found the Moral Education Society in Philadelphia. (Philadelphia, 1888); Jonathan Hart, (New York, 2005), 161; Robin Hanson, “Sarah Pugh,” in , ed. Junius Rodriguez, 3 vols. (Armonk, N.Y., 2007), 2: 436–37; (online).
FREDERICK DOUG LASS,
MATTIE GRIFFITH BROWNE,⁴Mattie Griffith Browne (c. 1825–1906), writer and women’s rights advocate, was born in Owensboro, Kentucky. Her parents died in 1830, leaving Mattie and an older sister orphaned. As a young woman, she contributed to the Louisville Courier and published a volume of poetry, , in 1852. Although she inherited a few slaves from her father, Mattie had antislavery sentiments. In an effort to raise money to free and relocate her slaves, she published in 1856. Many readers, such as William Lloyd Garrison, believed the novel was an authentic chronicle of a slave woman. A few months after its publication, Browne made her authorship known and received much criticism from proslavery Kentuckians. In 1858, the American Anti-Slavery Society awarded her one hundred dollars to emancipate her slaves and move to Ohio. From 1857 to 1860 she worked for the American Anti-Slavery Society in Boston and New York City. Browne published another antislavery novel, , serially in the from July 1859 to May 1860. During the Civil War, she became active in the Woman’s National Loyal League, concentrating on the campaign to emancipate the slaves. Browne married the abolitionist and attorney Albert Gallatin Browne in 1866 and continued to devote her energies to the women’s rights movement. The later years of her life were spent in New York City and Boston, where she participated in temperance and woman suffrage groups. Joe Lockard, afterword to Mattie Griffith Browne, (1856; Jackson, Miss., 1998), 403–18; Gordon, , 2: 537n; (online).
JAMES W. STILLMAN,⁵James Wells Stillman (1840–1912) was a lawyer, legislator, and poet. Born in Unadilla Forks, New York, he graduated from the Albany Law School and served in the Rhode Island legislature in 1868–69. During his time in the legislature, he was an advocate of suffrage for women and founded the state suffrage association in 1869. The following year, Stillman signed an appeal for a union of the two fragmented suffrage societies, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1873 he opened a law office in New York City but moved to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1880. Thomas William Herringshaw, , (Chicago, 1911), 891; Gordon, , 3: 19n.
ISABELLA B. HOOKER,⁶Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822–1907), writer, suffragist, and advocate for women’s rights, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her mother, Harriet Porter, was the second wife of the wellknown minister and evangelist Lyman Beecher. At age thirteen, she began studying at the Hartford Female Seminary, an institution founded by her half sisters Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher (Stowe). She also attended the Western Female Institute, another one of Catherine’s schools, located in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1841, Isabella married John Hooker, a lawyer, and the couple had three children. Her deep commitment to her family, especially her interest in child rearing, led her to explore the problems facing women and their varied roles in the private sphere. In 1868 she published “A Mother’s Letters to a Daughter on Women’s Suffrage,” which publicized her devotion to women’s rights, a commitment she honored until her death. Two of her most influential publications were (1873) and (1902). In the 1860s she supported Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony by joining the National Woman Suffrage Association, founding a Connecticut branch, and lobbying Congress for a national woman suffrage amendment. In 1872, the tight-knit Beecher family criticized Hooker when she openly doubted Henry Ward Beecher’s innocence after he was accused of having an affair with Elizabeth Tilton, wife of the abolitionist Theodore Tilton. Following this scandal, Isabella and John traveled to Europe for two years. After returning to the United States, she found public success after Connecticut passed the Married Women’s Property Act in 1877, which she had drafted with her husband. She continued her work on behalf of women’s rights and the quest for universal suffrage until her death. Isabella Beecher Hooker, “The Last of the Beechers: Memories on My Eighty-Third Birthday,” , 9: 286–98 (1905); Barbara A. White, (New Haven, Conn., 2003), ix, 209–14, 331, 334–35; (online).
SAMUEL J. MAY,
CHARLOTTE E. WILBOUR,⁷The women’s rights advocate Charlotte Beebe Wilbour (1830–1914) was born in Norwich, Connecticut. She received her education in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and married Charles Edwin Wilbour in 1858. She served as secretary of the Women’s Loyal National League and as an officer in the National Woman Suffrage Association. She was a founding member of the women’s club Sorosis and served as its president in 1870. She was reelected five times. Wilbour frequently lectured on women’s rights, especially on subjects such as health and dress reform. She helped form the Association for the Advancement of Women, which held an annual Women’s Congress. In 1874 she and her husband left for Europe and took up residence in Paris. Atchison (Kans.) , 26 September 1889; Phebe A. Hanaford, (Boston, 1877), 314; Gordon, , 4: 241–42; Douglass, , 153n; , 6: 503.
JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING,
THEODORE TILTON, ex-officio.

PLSr: NNE, 24 November 1870.