The CU shared the same goal with NAWSA, to gain an amendment to the United States Constitution giving all women the right to vote.

[5] The Congressional Union's headquarters were located on F Street in Washington, D.C., near the Willard Hotel in a highly visible office which they paid for themselves.

[5] The CU published a newspaper called The Suffragist, featuring articles by prominent members including Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and Inez Milholland.

The newspaper employed Nina Allender as its main cartoonist, and also published cartoons by artists such as Cornelia Barns, Boardman Robinson and Marietta Minnigerode Andrews.

Following the methods used by suffragettes in Britain, the CU fully blamed the majority party for failure to advance the Federal Suffrage Amendment.

[8] In 1981, a group of women including Mary Ann Beall and notable feminist Sonia Johnson formed an organization they called Congressional Union in New York City to continue to struggle for the ERA.

[9] The women were inspired by the suffragists as Johnson noted in her book, Going Out of Our Minds: The Metaphysics of Liberation, "...we called ourselves the Congressional Union, taking the name and philosophy from the women's suffrage group created in 1914 by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns..."[9] At the end of June in 1982, the Congressional Union organized a "ritual of mourning" as well as a "celebration of rebirth" for the ERA at the National Archives.