User:BeharK

In 1869, Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Women's Suffrage Association (NWSA), an organization dedicated to gaining women's suffrage. Anthony was vice-president-at-large of the NWSA from the date of its organization until 1892, when she became president. In the early years of the NWSA, Anthony made attempts to unite women in the labor movement with the suffragist cause, but with little success. She and Stanton were delegates at the 1868 convention of the National Labor Union. However, Anthony inadvertently alienated the labor movement not only because suffrage was seen as a concern for middle-class rather than working-class women, but because she openly encouraged women to achieve economic independence by entering the printing trades, where male workers were on strike at the time. Anthony was later expelled from the National Labor Union over this controversy. In 1890, Anthony orchestrated the merger of the NWSA with the more conservative American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), creating the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Prior to the controversial merge, Anthony had created a special NWSA executive committee to vote on whether they should merge with the AWSA, despite the fact that using a committee instead of an all-member vote went against the NWSA constitution. Motions to make it possible for members to vote by mail were strenuously opposed by Anthony and her adherents, and the committee was stacked with members who favored the merger. (Two members who voted against the merger were asked to resign).

Anthony's pursuit of alliances with moderate and conservative suffragists created long lasting tension between herself and more radical suffragists like Stanton. Anthony felt strongly that a moderate rather than radical approach to women's rights was more realistic, and would consequently serve to gain more for women in the long-run. Anthony's strategy was to unite the suffrage movement wherever possible and to then concentrate strictly on gaining the vote, temporarily postponing other efforts related to women's rights in order to focus attention on a singular cause. Stanton openly criticized Anthony's stance, writing that Anthony and AWSA leader Lucy Stone, "see suffrage only. They do not see woman's religious and social bondage." Anthony responded to Stanton: "We number over 10,000 women and each one has opinions...we can only hold them together to work for the ballot by letting alone their whims and prejudices on other subjects."

The creation of the NAWSA effectively marginalized the more radical elements within the women's movement, including Stanton. Anthony pushed for Stanton to be voted in as the first NAWSA president, and stood by her as Stanton was belittled by the large conservative factions within the new organization. In collaboration with Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper, Anthony published The History of Woman Suffrage (4 vols, New York, 1884–1887). Anthony also befriended Josephine Brawley Hughes, an advocate of women's rights and of alcohol abolition in Arizona, and Carrie Chapman Catt, whom Anthony endorsed for the presidency of the NAWSA when Anthony formally retired in 1900.