officeholding but ultimately the language was omitted. During this time, women continued to advocate for their own rights, holding conventions and passing resolutions demanding the right to vote and hold office. Some preliminary versions of the amendment even included women. However, the final version omitted references to sex, further splintering the women's suffrage movement. After an acrimonious debate, the American Equal Rights Association, the nation's leading suffragist group, split into two rival organizations: the National Woman Suffrage Association of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who opposed the amendment, and the American Woman Suffrage Association of Lucy Stone and Henry Browne Blackwell, who supported it. The two groups remained divided until the 1890s. Nevada was the first state to ratify the amendment, on March 1, 1869. The New England states and most Midwest states also ratified the amendment soon after its proposal. Southern states still controlled by Radical reconstruction governments, such as North Carolina, also swiftly ratified. Newly elected President Ulysses S. Grant strongly endorsed the amendment, calling it "a measure of grander importance than any other one act of the kind from the foundation of our free government to the present day." He privately asked Nebraska's governor to call a special legislative session to speed the process, securing the state's ratification. In April and December 1869, Congress passed Reconstruction bills mandating that Virginia, Mississippi, Texas and Georgia ratify the amendment as a precondition to regaining congressional representation; all four states did so. The struggle for ratification was particularly close in Indiana and Ohio, which voted to ratify in May 1869 and January 1870, respectively. New York, which had ratified on April 14, 1869, tried to revoke its ratification on January 5, 1870. However, in February 1870, Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas ratified the amendment, bringing the total ratifying states to twenty-nine—one more than the required twenty-eight ratifications from the thirty-seven states, and forestalling any court challenge to New York's resolution to withdraw its consent. The first twenty-eight states to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment were: Nevada: March 1, 1869 West Virginia: March 3, 1869 North Carolina: March 5, 1869 Illinois: March 5, 1869 Louisiana: March 5, 1869 Michigan: March 8, 1869 Wisconsin: March 9, 1869 Maine: March 11, 1869 Massachusetts: March 12, 1869 Arkansas: March 15, 1869 South Carolina: March 15, 1869 Pennsylvania: March 25, 1869 New York: April 14, 1869 (Rescinded ratification: January 5, 1870; re-ratified: March 30,