page_title: National American Woman Suffrage Association
section_title: Stanton and Anthony presidencies
hierarchical_section_title: National American Woman Suffrage Association / Stanton and Anthony presidencies
caption_attribution_description: English: National American Woman Suffrage Association check, hand-written by Harriet Taylor Upton as the Association's treasurer and counter-signed by Susan B. Anthony as president, and Alice Stone Blackwell as recording secretary. Payee is Rachel Foster Avery.
context_page_description: The National American Woman Suffrage Association was an organization formed on February 18, 1890, to advocate in favor of women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. Its membership, which was about seven thousand at the time it was formed, eventually increased to two million, making it the largest voluntary organization in the nation. It played a pivotal role in the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which in 1920 guaranteed women's right to vote.
  Susan B. Anthony, a long-time leader in the suffrage movement, was the dominant figure in the newly formed NAWSA. Carrie Chapman Catt, who became president after Anthony retired in 1900, implemented a strategy of recruiting wealthy members of the rapidly growing women's club movement, whose time, money and experience could help build the suffrage movement. Anna Howard Shaw's term in office, which began in 1904, saw strong growth in the organization's membership and public approval.
context_section_description: Stanton's election as president was largely symbolic. Before the convention was over, she left for another extended stay with her daughter in England, leaving Anthony in charge.
  Stanton retired from the presidency in 1892, after which Anthony was elected to the position that she had in practice been occupying all along.
  Stone, who died in 1893, did not play a major role in the NAWSA.
  The movement's vigor declined in the years immediately after the merger.
  The new organization was small, having only about 7000 dues-paying members in 1893.
  It also suffered from organizational problems, not having a clear idea of, for example, how many local suffrage clubs there were or who their officers were.
  In 1893, NAWSA members May Wright Sewall, former chair of NWSA's executive committee, and Rachel Foster Avery, NAWSA's  corresponding secretary, played key roles in the World's Congress of Representative Women at the World's Columbian Exposition, which was also known as the Chicago World's Fair.  Sewall served as chair and Avery as secretary of the organizing committee for the women's congress.
  In 1893, the NAWSA voted over Anthony's objection to alternate the site of its annual conventions between Washington and other parts of the country. Anthony's pre-merger NWSA had always held its conventions in Washington to help maintain focus on a national suffrage amendment. Anthony said she feared, accurately as it turned out, that the NAWSA would engage in suffrage work at the state level at the expense of national work.
  The NAWSA routinely allocated no funding at all for congressional work, which at this stage consisted only of one day of testimony before Congress each year.
caption: Susan B. Anthony & Alice Stone Blackwell signed NAWSA check, written by the group's treasurer Harriet Taylor Upton, payable to Rachel Foster Avery.
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