It was Mrs. Davis who brought into the fold the half sister of Henry Ward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, a queenly woman, one of the elect of Hartford, Connecticut. Hoping to break down Mrs. Hooker's prejudice against Susan and Mrs. Stanton, which had been built up by New England suffragists, Mrs. Davis invited the three women to spend a few days with her. After this visit, Mrs. Hooker wrote to a friend in Boston, "I have studied Miss Anthony day and night for nearly a week.... She is a woman of incorruptible integrity and the thought of guile has no place in her heart. In unselfishness and benevolence she has scarcely an equal, and her energy and executive ability are bounded only by her physical power, which is something immense. Sometimes she fails in judgment, according to the standards of others, but in right intentions never, nor in faithfulness to her friends.... After attending a two days' convention in Newport, engineered by her in her own fashion, I am obliged to accept the most favorable interpretation of her which prevails generally, rather than that of Boston. Mrs. Stanton too is a magnificent woman.... I hand in my allegiance to both as leaders and representatives of the great movement."[239] From then on, Mrs. Hooker did her best to reconcile the Boston and New York factions, hoping to avert the formation of a second national woman suffrage organization. FOOTNOTES: [232] _The Revolution_, II, Dec. 24, 1868, p. 385. [233] George W. Julian, _Political Recollections_, 1840-1872 (Chicago, 1884), pp. 324-325. [234] _The Revolution_, III, March 11, 1869, p. 148. [235] The very proper Sorosis would not meet at the Women's Bureau while it housed the radical _Revolution_, and as women showed so little interest in her project, Mrs. Phelps gave it up after a year's trial. [236] _The Revolution_, III, May 20, 1869, pp. 305-307. [237] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 392. [238] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 327-328. [239] _Ibid._, p. 332. A HOUSE DIVIDED "I think we need two national associations for woman suffrage so that those who do not oppose the Fifteenth Amendment, nor take the tone of _The Revolution_ may yet have an organization with which they can work in harmony."[240] So wrote Lucy Stone to many of her friends during the summer of 1869, and some of these letters fell into Susan's hands. "The radical abolitionists and the Republicans could never have worked together but in separate organizations both did good service," Lucy further explained. "There are just as distinctly two parties to the woman movement.... Each organization will attract those who naturally belong to it--and there will be harmonious work." When the ground had been prepared by these letters, Lucy asked old friends and new to sign a call to a woman suffrage convention, to be held in Cleveland, Ohio, in November 1869, "to unite those who cannot use the methods which Mrs. Stanton and Susan use...."[241]