Victoria Claflin Woodhull (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927) was an American suffragist who was described by Gilded Age newspapers as a leader of the American woman's suffrage movement in the 19th century. She became a colorful and notorious symbol for women's rights, free love, and spiritualism as she fought against corruption and for labor reforms. The authorship of many of her speeches and articles is disputed. Many of her speeches on these subjects were not written by Woodhull herself alone but also by her backers and husband. Either way, her role as a representative of these movements was nonetheless powerful and controversial. She was the first woman along with her sister to operate a brokerage firm in Wall Street and then open a weekly newspaper. She is most famous for her declaration and campaign to run as the first woman for the United States Presidency in 1872. Many of the reforms and ideals espoused by her for the common working class against the corrupt rich business elite were extremely controversial in her time though generations later many of those implemented are now taken for granted. Other ideas and reforms still remain controversial and debated today.
Early life
Woodhull was born Victoria California Claflin in Homer, Licking County, Ohio. Her father, Reuben Buckman Claflin [1] was a con man, arsonist, snake oil salesman and occasional fraudulent doctor. Her brothers, Hebern and Maldon, were printers. [2] Victoria was closely associated during most of her life with her sister Tennessee Celeste Claflin, who was seven years younger than she.
When she was just 15, Victoria became engaged to a 28-year-old Canning (Channing, in some records) Woodhull from a town outside of Rochester, New York. Dr. Woodhull was an Ohio medical doctor at a time when formal medical education and licensing were not required to practice medicine in that state. He met Victoria in 1853 when her family consulted him to treat her for an illness. According to some accounts, Canning Woodhull claimed he was the nephew of Caleb Smith Woodhull, mayor of New York City from 1849 to 1851, who was actually a distant cousin. Victoria married Canning Woodhull in November 1853, just a few months after they met, but soon learned that her new husband was an alcoholic and a womanizer, and that she would often be required to work outside the home to support the family. She and Canning had two children, Byron and Zulu (later Zula) Maude. According to one account, Byron was born with an intellectual disability in 1854, a condition Victoria believed was caused by her husband's alcoholism. Another story says his disability resulted from a fall from a window. In 1872 she started a relationship with the anarchist Benjamin Tucker, lasting for 3 years.
"Get thee behind me, (Mrs.) Satan!" 1872 caricature by
Thomas Nast: Wife, carrying heavy burden of children and drunk husband, saying to Mrs. Satan (Victoria Woodhull), "I'd rather travel the hardest path of matrimony than follow your footsteps." Mrs. Satan holds sign "Be saved by free love."
Woodhull’s support of free love probably originated at the time of her first marriage. Women who married in the United States during the 19th century were bound into the unions, whether loveless or not, with few options to escape. Divorce, where possible, was scandalous, and women who divorced were stigmatized and often ostracized by society. Victoria Woodhull concluded women should have the choice to leave unbearable marriages, and she railed against the hypocrisy of tacitly tolerating married men who had mistresses and engaged in other sexual dalliances. Victoria believed in monogamous relationships, although she did state she had the right also to love someone else "exclusively" if she desired. She said:[3]
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To woman, by nature, belongs the right of sexual determination. When the instinct is aroused in her, then and then only should commerce follow. When woman rises from sexual slavery to sexual freedom, into the ownership and control of her sexual organs, and man is obliged to respect this freedom, then will this instinct become pure and holy; then will woman be raised from the iniquity and morbidness in which she now wallows for existence, and the intensity and glory of her creative functions be increased a hundred-fold . . . |
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The Woodhull Freedom Foundation & Federation,[4] which works through research, advocacy, and public education to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right, is a global sexual freedom advocacy organization named in honor of Victoria Woodhull.
Female broker
She made a fortune on the New York Stock Exchange with Tennessee, as the first female Wall Street brokers. Woodhull, Claflin & Company opened in 1870 with the assistance of a wealthy benefactor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, an admirer of Victoria's mediumistic skills and rumored to have been a lover of her sister Tennesse's. Newspapers like the New York Herald hailed Woodhull & Claflin as "the Queens of Finance" and "the Bewitching Brokers." Many contemporary men's journals (e.g., The Days' Doings) published sexualized images of the pair running their firm (although they did not participate in the day-to-day business of the firm themselves), linking the concept of publicly-minded, un-chaperoned women with ideas of "sexual immorality" and prostitution.
Newspaper editor
On May 14, 1870, she and Tennessee used the money they had made in their brokerage days to found a paper, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, which stayed in publication for the next six years. It became notorious for publishing controversial opinions on taboo topics, advocating among other things sex education, free love, women's suffrage, short skirts, spiritualism, vegetarianism, and licensed prostitution. It is commonly stated that the paper also advocated birth control, but some historians disagree. The paper is now known primarily for printing the first English version of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto in its December 30, 1871 edition.
In 1872 the Weekly published a story that set off a national scandal that preoccupied the public for months. One of the most renowned ministers of the day, Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church, had condemned Woodhull's free love philosophy in his sermons. But a member of his church, Theodore Tilton, disclosed to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a colleague of Woodhull, that his wife had confessed to him that Beecher was committing adultery with her, and this hypocrisy provoked Woodhull to expose Beecher. Ultimately Beecher stood trial for adultery in an 1875 legal proceeding that equaled, if not exceeded, the sensationalism of the O.J. Simpson trial a century later, holding the attention of hundreds of thousands of Americans. The verdict was ultimately a hung jury.
George Francis Train once defended her. Other feminists of her time, including Susan B. Anthony, disagreed with her tactics in pushing for women's equality. Some characterized her as opportunistic and unpredictable: in one notable incident, she had a run-in with Anthony during a meeting of the NWSA. (The radical NWSA later merged with the conservative AWSA to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association).
Women's rights advocate
Woodhull's experiences taught her how to penetrate the all-male domain of national politics. A year after she set up shop in Wall Street, she preempted the opening of the 1871 National Woman Suffrage Association's third annual convention in Washington. Suffrage leaders postponed their meeting to listen to the female broker address the House Judiciary Committee. Woodhull argued that women already had the right to vote — all they had to do was use it — since the 14th and 15th Amendments granted that right to all citizens. [5] The simple but powerful logic of her argument impressed some committee members. Suffragists, including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Isabella Beecher Hooker, saw her as their newest champion. They applauded her statement: "women are the equals of men before the law, and are equal in all their rights."
Woodhull catapulted to the leadership circle of the suffrage movement with her first public appearance as a woman's rights advocate. Although her Constitutional argument was not original, she focused unprecedented public attention on suffrage. Following Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Woodhull was the second woman to petition Congress in person. Newspapers reported her appearance before Congress. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper printed a full-page engraving of Woodhull, surrounded by prominent suffragists, delivering her argument.[6]
Presidential candidate
Woodhull was nominated for President of the United States by the newly formed Equal Rights Party on May 10, 1872, at Apollo Hall, New York City. A year earlier, she had announced her intention to run. Her nomination was ratified at convention on June 6, 1872. Former slave Frederick Douglass was nominated for Vice President. Douglass never acknowledged this nomination. Instead, he served as a presidential elector in the United States Electoral College for the State of New York.
While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for President of the United States, some people have questioned the legality of her run, usually citing one of the following reasons:
- The government declined to print her name on the ballot.
This criticism is not valid as the government was not responsible for printing ballots. In 1872, political parties were responsible. This practice changed in the United States between the years 1888-1892 with the adoption of the Australian ballot. The Washington Post, about fifty years after the election, claimed that the Equal Rights Party published ballots bearing her name and that they were handed out at the polls. Because no Equal Rights Party ballot for 1872 has been preserved, this claim cannot be confirmed. The first woman to appear on a presidential ballot printed by the government was Charlene Mitchell in 1968.
- She was under the constitutionally mandated age of 35.
This is the most cited criticism in the 20th and 21st centuries, but was hardly noticed in the 19th. The presidential inauguration was in March 1873. Woodhull's 35th birthday was in September 1873. Some contend attorney Belva Lockwood was the first woman to run for President, because she was over the age of 35 when she ran in 1884 and 1888. However, some of the other criticisms about the legality of Woodhull's run also apply to Lockwood. There also is no legal primary evidence that Woodhull was born in 1838. Ohio did not require the registration of births until 1867. The probate court in Licking County, Ohio, burned down in 1875, destroying all previously recorded records except land records.
- She did not receive any electoral and/or popular votes.
While it is true that Woodhull received no electoral votes, there's evidence that Woodhull did receive popular votes that were not counted. Official election returns also show about 2,000 "scattering votes." it is unknown whether any of those scattering votes were cast for her. Supporters contend that her popular votes were not counted because of gender discrimination and prejudice against her views, while critics contend the votes were not counted because they had other legal defects besides gender. The first woman to receive an electoral vote was Libertarian Tonie Nathan, who received a vote for Vice President in 1972.
- Women could not legally vote until August 1920.
Although it is true that most women could not legally vote until 1920, some women did legally vote and hold public office prior to 1920. The Wyoming Territory granted women the vote in 1869. Susanna M. Salter was elected Mayor of Argonia, Kansas, in 1887, and Jeannette Rankin of Montana was elected to Congress in 1916. In New York, Woodhull's state of residency, the state took away the right of propertied women to vote in 1777. In 1871, Woodhull went to the polls for a local election in New York and was allowed to register, but when she returned to vote, her ballot was refused by election officials. Some believe that when the 19th amendment passed giving women the right to vote, it implicitly gave women the right to run for President. For that reason, they contend Senator Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman to run for President in 1964 when she was put forward as a possible nominee at the Republican Party San Francisco convention. Smith is often called the first woman to be nominated for President by a major party, but the July 6, 1920 issue of the Bridgeport Connecticut Telegram reported that Laura Clay and Cora Wilson Stewart of Kentucky were put forward as possible Presidential nominees at the Democratic Party San Francisco convention and received "the first vote cast for a woman in the convention of either of the two great parties."
This was the most cited legal impediment in the 19th century. Some of Woodhull's contemporaries believed that because she was a woman she was not a citizen and, therefore, not entitled to vote. Since the Constitution required that the President be a citizen, she would also be excluded from holding the office of President. Others believed women were citizens, but that the states had the right to limit the franchise to males only. Some Woodhull supporters believed that even if Woodhull could not vote legally, that would not have excluded her from running for public office. United States law has its roots in English common law, and under English common law, there was an established precedent of women holding public office.
It was not just her gender that made Woodhull's campaign notable; her association with Frederick Douglass stirred up controversy about the mixing of whites and blacks and fears of miscegenation. The Equal Rights Party hoped to use these nominations to reunite suffragists with civil rights activists, as the exclusion of female suffrage from the Fifteenth Amendment two years earlier had caused a substantial rift. The circumstances leading up to Woodhull's nomination had also created a rift between Woodhull and her former supporter Susan B. Anthony, and almost ended the collaboration of Anthony with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton, who had unsuccessfully run for Congress in New York in 1868, was more sympathetic to Woodhull. When Anthony cast her vote in the presidential election, she voted for Grant.
Like many of Woodhull's protests, this was first and foremost a media performance, designed to shake up the prejudices of the day. Vilified in the media for her support of free love, Woodhull devoted an issue of Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly (November 2, 1872) to a rumored affair. She alleged an affair between Elizabeth Tilton and Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, a prominent Protestant figure (who incidentally was a supporter of female suffrage). She published this article in order to highlight what she saw as a sexual double-standard between men and women.
On Saturday, November 2, 1872, just days before the presidential election, U.S. Federal Marshals arrested Woodhull, her second husband Colonel James Blood, and her sister Tennie C. Claflin on charges of "publishing an obscene newspaper."[7] The sisters were held in the Ludlow Street Jail for the next month, a place normally reserved for civil offenses, but which contained more hardened criminals as well. The arrest was arranged by Anthony Comstock, the self-appointed moral defender of the nation at the time, and the event incited questions about censorship and government persecution. Woodhull, Claflin, and Blood were acquitted on a technicality six months later, but the arrest prevented Victoria from attempting to vote during the 1872 presidential election. The publication of the Beecher-Tilton scandal led Theodore Tilton, husband of Elizabeth Tilton, to sue Beecher for "alienation of affection" in 1875. The trial was sensationalized across the nation, eventually resulting in a hung jury.
Woodhull attempted to secure nominations for the presidency again in 1884 and 1892. The newspapers in 1892 reported that she was nominated by the "National Woman Suffragists' Nominating Convention" on September 21 at Willard's hotel in Boonville, New York presided over by Anna M. Parker, President of the convention. Mary L. Stowe of California was nominated as the vice presidential candidate, but some woman's suffrage organizations repudiated the nominations, stating the nominating committee was not authorized. Her 1892 campaign was probably taken less seriously because newspapers quoted her as saying she was "destined" by "prophecy" to be elected President of the United States in 1892.
Life in England
In October 1876, Woodhull divorced her second husband, Colonel Blood. Less than a year later, exhausted and possibly depressed, she left for England to start a new life. She made her first public appearance as a lecturer at St. James's Hall in London on December 4, 1877. Her lecture was called "The Human Body, the Temple of God," a lecture that was previously presented in the United States. Present at one of her lectures was banker John Biddulph Martin, the man who would become her third and last husband on October 31, 1883. From then on, she was known as Victoria Woodhull Martin. Under that name, she published a magazine called The Humanitarian from 1892 to 1901. As a widow, Woodhull gave up the publication of her magazine and retired to the country, establishing residence at Bredon's Norton.
Death
She died on June 9, 1927 at Norton Park in Bredon's Norton, Worcestershire, West Midlands, England, United Kingdom.[8]
Views on abortion and eugenics
Her opposition to abortion is frequently cited by opponents of abortion when writing about first wave feminism.
- "[t]he rights of children as individuals begin while yet they remain the foetus." [From an 1870 Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly article]
- "Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth." [From an 1875 edition of the Wheeling, West Virginia Evening Standard]
Woodhull was outraged by the concept of human eugenics while she was politically active, though she believed that states of mind were inherited, and that the circumstances of a birth affected the character of the child. Her interest in these issues was likely motivated by the profound mental retardation of her son, which she believed was affected by the drunkenness of his father. She argued that because a parent's state of mind could affect the character of a child, the system of sexual relationships between people needed to be as free as possible. Later in life, after renouncing much of her previous feminist stances, she indicated support for eugenics. This was in stark contrast to her earlier works in which she advocated social freedom and opposed government interference in matters of love and marriage.
References
- ^ Wight, Charles Henry, Genealogy of the Claflin Family
- ^ 1850 federal census, Homer, Licking, Ohio; Series M432, Roll 703, Page 437; father listed as Buckman, brothers incorrectly transcribed as Hubern and Malven
- ^ http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/IntercourseII.html
- ^ About WFF at www.woodhullfederation.org
- ^ Constitutional equality. To the Hon. the Judiciary committee of the Senate and the House of representatives of the Congress of the United States ... Most respectfully submitted. Victoria C. Woodhull. Dated New York, January 2, 1871
- ^ Susan Kullmann, Legal Contender... Victoria C. Woodhull, First Woman to Run for President. Accessed 2009.05.29.
- ^ "Arrest of Victoria Woodhull, Tennie C. Claflin and Col. Blood. They are Charged with Publishing an Obscene Newspaper.". New York Times. November 3, 1872. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F03E5DB1439EF34BC4B53DFB7678389669FDE. Retrieved on 2008-06-27. "The agent of the Society for the Suppression of Obscene Literature, yesterday morning, appeared before United States Commissioner Osborn and asked for a warrant for the arrest of Mrs. Victoria C. Woodhull and Miss Tennie ..."
- ^ "Victoria Martin, Suffragist, Dies. Nominated for President of the United States as Mrs. Woodhull in 1872. . Leader of Many Causes. Had Fostered Anglo-American Friendship Since She Became Wife of a Britisher ...". New York Times. June 11, 1927. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60D1EFA3F591A728DDDA80994DE405B878EF1D3. Retrieved on 2008-06-27.
Further reading
- Frisken, Amanda. Victoria Woodhull's Sexual Revolution. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8122-3798-6
- Gabriel, Mary. Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull Uncensored. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1998, 372 pages. ISBN 1-56512-132-5
- Goldsmith, Barbara. Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998, 531 pages. ISBN 0-06-095332-2
- Brough, James. The Vixens. Simon & Schuster, 1980. ISBN 0-671-22688-6
- Meade, Marion. Free Woman. Alfred A. Knopf, Harper & Brothers, 1976.
- Marberry, M.M. Vicky. Funk & Wagnills, A Division of Reader's Digest Books, Inc., New York. 1967.
- Sachs, Emanie. The Terrible Siren. Harper & Brothers, 1928.
- The Staff of the Historian's Office and National Portrait Gallery. If Elected...' Unsuccessful candidates for the presidency 1796-1968. Washington,DC: United States Government Printing Offices, 1972.
Documentary
Publications
- Antje Schrupp, Das Aufsehen erregende Leben der Victoria Woodhull (2002: Helmer).
- Woodhull, Victoria C., Free Lover: Sex, Marriage and Eugenics in the Early Speeches of Victoria Woodhull (Seattle, 2005). Four of her most important early and radical speeches on sexuality as facsimiles of the original published versions. Includes: "The Principle of Social Freedom" (1872), "The Scare-crows of Sexual Slavery" (1873), "The Elixir of Life" (1873), and "Tried as by Fire" (1873–74). ISBN 1-58742-050-3.
- Woodhull, Victoria C., Lady Eugenist: Feminist Eugenics in the Speeches and Writings of Victoria Woodhull (Seattle, 2005). Seven of her most important speeches and writings on eugenics. Five are facsimiles of the original, published versions. Includes: "Children--Their Rights and Privileges" (1871), "The Garden of Eden" (1875, publ. 1890), "Stirpiculture" (1888), "Humanitarian Government" (1890), "The Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit" (1891), and "The Scientific Propagation of the Human Race" (1893). ISBN 1-58742-040-6.
- Woodhull, Victoria C., Constitutional equality the logical result of the XIV and XV Amendments, which not only declare who are citizens, but also define their rights, one of which is the right to vote without regard to sex. New York: 1870.
- Woodhull, Victoria C., The Origin, Tendencies and Principles of Government, or, A Review of the Rise and Fall of Nations from Early Historic Time to the Present. New York: Woodhull, Claflin & Company, 1871.
- Woodhull, Victoria C., Speech of Victoria C. Woodhull on the great political issue of constitutional equality, delivered in Lincoln Hall, Washington, Cooper Institute, New York Academy of Music, Brooklyn, Academy of Music, Philadelphia, Opera House, Syracuse: together with her secession speech delivered at Apollo Hall. 1871.
- Woodhull, Victoria C. Martin, "The Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit". New York, 1891.
- Davis, Paulina W., ed. A history of the national woman's rights movement for twenty years. New York: Journeymen Printers' Cooperative Association, 1871.
- Riddle, A.G., The Right of women to exercise the elective franchise under the Fourteenth Article of the Constitution: speech of A.G. Riddle in the Suffrage Convention at Washington, January 11, 1871: the argument was made in support of the Woodhull memorial, before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, and reproduced in the Convention. Washington: 1871.
See also
External links
- Victoria-Woodhull.com
- VictoriaWoodhull.org
- Woodhull on harvard.edu
- Biographical timeline
- Victoria Woodhull, Anthony Comstock, and Conflict over Sex in the United States in the 1870s
- Eugenic Feminisms in Late Nineteenth-Century America Reading Race in Victoria Woodhull, Frances Willard, Anna Julia Cooper and Ida B. Wells
- Legal Contender... Victoria C. Woodhull: First Woman to Run for President Article first appeared in The Women's Quarterly (Fall 1988)
- "A lecture on constitutional equality," delivered at Lincoln hall, Washington, D.C., Thursday, February 16, 1871, by Victoria C. Woodhul
- A history of the national woman's rights movement, for twenty years, with the proceedings of the decade meeting held at Apollo hall, October 20, 1870, from 1850 to 1870, with an appendix containing the history of the movement during the winter of 1871, in the national capitol, comp. by Paulina W. Davis.
- "And the truth shall make you free." A speech on the principles of social freedom, delivered in Steinway hall, Nov. 20, 1871, by Victoria C. Woodhull
- America's Victoria, Remembering Victoria Woodhull. Movie Review on the biography of Victoria Woodhull. The American Journal of History
- America's Victoria: Remembering Victoria Woodhull (1998) (TV) at the Internet Movie Database
- "Tried as by Fire" at the University of South Carolina Library's Digital Collections Page
