[2] In 1851, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed a decades-long partnership that became important to the women's rights movement and to the future National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA).

One wing, whose leading figure was Lucy Stone, was willing for black men to achieve suffrage first, as the abolitionist movement insisted, and wanted to maintain close ties with the Republican Party.

[5] In 1868, Anthony and Stanton began publishing The Revolution, a weekly women's rights newspaper in New York City that became an important tool for supporting their wing of the movement.

The dispute became increasingly bitter after the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was introduced, which would in effect enfranchise black men by prohibiting the denial of suffrage because of race.

Stanton wrote, "American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood to make laws for you and your daughters, to be your rulers, judges, and jurors---to dictate not only the civil, but moral codes by which you shall be governed, awake to the dangers of your present position, and demand, too, that women too shall be represented in government!

In 1868, for instance, she argued that "there is only one safe, sure way to build a government, and that is on the equality of all its citizens, male and female, black and white...Just so if woman finds it hard to bear the oppressive laws of a few Saxon Fathers, of the best orders of manhood, what may she not be called to endure when all the lower orders, natives and foreigners, Dutch, Irish, Chinese and African, legislate for her and her daughters?

"[11] Ellen DuBois referred to this particularly litany of "lower orders" as "betraying her underlying elitism",[12] whereas Sue Davis renounced her question as one in a series that "included racist and nativist comments.

Stanton then objected to laws being made for women by "Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung who do not know the difference between a Monarchy and a Republic, and who never read the Declaration of Independence or Webster's spelling book.

The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was created on May 15, 1869, two days after what turned out to be the AERA's last convention, with Anthony and Stanton as its primary leaders.

The AWSA was initially larger and better funded,[16] but Stanton and Anthony were more widely known as leaders of the women's suffrage movement and were more influential in setting its direction.

She periodically "appealed to racial and ethnic prejudices, arguing that native-born white women deserved the vote more than non-whites and immigrants.

Theodore Tilton, a newspaper editor and women's rights advocate, initiated a petition drive calling for an end to the split.

Those remaining, including some non-affiliated activists, formed a new organization, the Union Woman Suffrage Association (UWSA) with Tilton as president and a Sixteenth Amendment as its central goal.

[28] The NWSA benefited from the extensive lecture tours that Stanton and Anthony undertook, which brought new recruits into the organization and strengthened it at the local, state and national levels.

[34] In 1869, Virginia Minor, a member of the NWSA,[35] and her husband Francis developed the idea that achieving women's suffrage did not require a Sixteenth Amendment.

In January 1871, the UWSA delayed the opening session of its annual convention in Washington so its members could hear the historic address to the House Judiciary Committee by Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to speak before a Congressional body.

At the UWSA's 1872 convention, Woodhull attempted to commandeer the organization, urging its delegates to meet the next day in a different hall to form a new political party with herself as its candidate for president of the United States.

In 1871 the NWSA officially adopted the New Departure strategy, encouraging women to attempt to vote and to file lawsuits if denied that right.

Following a rule of common law at that time which prevented criminal defendants in federal courts from testifying, Hunt refused to allow Anthony to speak until the verdict had been delivered.

[42] When he asked Anthony if she had anything to say, she responded with "the most famous speech in the history of the agitation for woman suffrage", according to Ann D. Gordon, a historian of the women's movement.

In preparation for the event, the NWSA established headquarters nearby and began drawing up "articles of impeachment" against the country's male "Political Sovereigns".

Despite the lack of permission, five women, headed by Anthony, walked onto the platform during the ceremony and handed their Declaration to Senator Thomas Ferry who was the acting Vice President of the United States, and the official in charge of the celebration.

Stepping onto an unoccupied bandstand outside the hall, Anthony read the Declaration to a large crowd and invited everyone to a NWSA convention at the nearby Unitarian church to hear Stanton, Lucretia Mott and other speakers.

[49][50] The Declaration was signed by Susan B. Anthony and these other leading members of the NWSA: Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Paulina Wright Davis, Ernestine L. Rose, Clarina I. H. Nichols, Mary Ann McClintock, Amy Post, Sarah Pugh, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier, Olympia Brown, Mathilde Franziska Anneke, Mathilde F. Wendt, Adelaide Thomson, Laura de Force Gordon, Ellen Clark Sargent, Virginia L. Minor, Sara Andrews Spencer, Lillie Devereux Blake, Phoebe Couzins, Jane Graham Jones, Abigail Scott Duniway, Belva A. Lockwood.

Matilda Joslyn Gage, another leading member of the NWSA, wrote three chapters of the first volume[52] but was forced to abandon the project afterwards because of the illness of her husband.

Stanton and Anthony had encouraged their rival Lucy Stone to assist with the work, or at least to send material that could be used by someone else to write the history of her wing of the movement, but she refused to cooperate in any way.

The delegates represented various organizations, including suffrage associations, professional groups, literary clubs, temperance unions, labor leagues and missionary societies.

The ICW convention brought increased publicity and respectability to the women's movement, especially when President Grover Cleveland honored the delegates by inviting them to a reception at the White House.

[64] The NWSA and the AWSA met in a joint convention in Washington and formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) on February 18, 1890.

This was largely a symbolic move; the day after she was elected president, Stanton sailed to her daughter's home in England, where she stayed for eighteen months, leaving Anthony effectively in charge.