Hooker was in the full swing of the suffragist movement traveling throughout the mid-west on her first speaking tour. This first of many tours was in preparation for the 1871 Washington convention on suffrage, which focused on just suffrage alone, not women's rights in general. Isabella thought that by building the convention around one issue, she could re-unite the divided women's movement. Isabella set the agenda by describing the situation as she saw it, a view in which the constitution provided women with citizenship, and congress only needed to recognize this fact for women suffrage to be a done deal. This convention got the women's movement in the congressional door, for the first time Congress responded to the women activists with a hearing. Victoria Woodhull led the presentation to the House Judiciary Committee, and Isabella followed; they both presented the convention's argument. Isabella maintained the constitutional argument for most of the 1870s and used it for the many additional times she spoke before the House Judiciary Committee. Isabella believed this argument partly because she thought it would be too difficult to get a constitutional amendment passed. However, most of the congressmen rejected the suffragists' notions, and contended that Congress could not intervene in voter eligibility. However, Isabella felt so strongly that women could already technically vote, that she and other women activists tried to vote in the election of 1872; while Susan Anthony succeeded, and was arrested, Isabella was unable to penetrate the security at the polling station. By the mid-1880s Isabella advocated the more common position that women should vote because they would bring a new level of dignity to politics. Along with her drift in strategy, Isabella Hooker was campaigning for women's rights in general, instead of focusing on suffrage alone. During 1887, Isabella spoke on the need for women to have greater roles in society, including the benefits of female police officers. She digressed on a campaign for police reform than included complete reorganization of New York City's police department, with a woman as superintendent; for this she was mocked by the New York World and the Chicago Tribune. While Isabella Hooker was derided in New York and Chicago, she had enough national stature that her speaking tours were regularly reported. Furthermore, she gained respect in Hartford, where The Hartford Courant published her lectures from around the country and her congressional addresses. As she wound down her