By 1913 the movement for a Federal Suffrage Amendment was growing so insistent that southern women who were opposed to this method felt the necessity of organizing to combat it and to uphold the State's rights principle of the Democratic party. Through the initiative of Miss Gordon a Call for a conference was sent in August to leading women in every southern State and signed by twenty-two from almost as many States asking the Governors to meet in New Orleans for a conference. It said: We are united in the belief that suffrage is a State right and that the power to define a State's electorate should remain the exclusive right of the State. We recognize that Woman Suffrage is no longer a theory to be debated but a condition to be met. The inevitable "votes for women" is a world movement and unless the South squarely faces the issue and takes steps to preserve the State's right the force of public opinion will make it mandatory through a National Constitutional Amendment.... While as Southerners we wish to see the power of the State retained, yet as women we are equally determined to secure, as of paramount importance, the right which is the birthright of an American citizen. We, therefore, appeal to you gentlemen vested with the power largely to shape conditions to confer with us and influence public opinion to adopt woman suffrage through State action. Failing to accomplish this, the onus of responsibility will rest upon the men of the South if southern women are forced to support a National Amendment, weighted with the same objections as the Fifteenth.