 With the fissure, the Congressional Union began a reorganization to push for campaigns against Democratic candidates because they had not supported suffrage while they were in control of the legislature. Paul established an all-woman advisory council of suffrage workers and prominent women which included Bertha Fowler, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Helen Keller, Belle Case La Follette, May Wright Sewall and educators such as Emma Gillett, Maria Montessori, and Clara Louise Thompson, a Latin Professor at Rockford College, among others, to lend credibility to the new organization. Stevens became the national organizer, charged with organizing women in states in which they were able to vote to use their ballots and oppose any candidate not in favor of full enfranchisement of women. One of the first places Stevens traveled to was Colorado, where CUWS was successful in attaining commitment from one congressman to support the women's cause. Returning from that success in January 1915, she went to New York and Newport, Rhode Island to campaign before heading west. She campaigned in Kansas, hoping to secure delegates for a convention planned in San Francisco for September.
