A Public Woman: Victoria Woodhull

“One portion of citizens have no power to deprive another portion of rights and privileges such as are possessed and exercised by themselves. The male citizen has no more right to deprive the female citizen of the free, public, political expression of opinion than the female citizen has to deprive the male citizen thereof.” Victoria Woodhull, January 11, 1871. 

Welcome to Civics and Coffee. My name is Alycia and I am a self-professed history nerd. Each week, I am going to chat about a topic on U.S history and give you both the highlights and occasionally break down some of the complexities in history; and share stories you may not remember learning in high school. All in the time it takes to enjoy a cup of coffee. 

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Hey everyone. Welcome back.

Throughout Reconstruction, debates about what it meant to be a United States citizen - and the rights that came with it - were frequent. As newly emancipated Black men worked to convince legislators that they would not be truly free until they had the franchise, American women - Black and white alike - struggled to make similar arguments. The women’s rights movement split over the issue of the 15th Amendment which granted Black men the right to vote as some women felt strongly that any extension of voting rights were worthless unless women were included. Women like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Victoria Woodhull fought for women to be included in the political process, though they varied in their approaches. Victoria Woodhull, however, was unafraid to draw public attention to the cause. 

While I briefly covered Victoria Woodhull in an episode I did a few years back about women in politics, we’ve reached the point in the series where it makes sense to dedicate a whole episode to her. Perhaps best known to contemporary audiences as the first woman to launch a bid for the presidency, Victoria Woodhull was more than just a far fetched political candidate. Woodhull challenged convention by forcefully and loudly pushing for women’s rights - not just publicly at the voting booth, but privately in her advocacy of free love. Victoria Woodhull pushed the boundaries of what it meant to be a woman in the late 19th century and she help carve a path for future women looking to agitate and advocate for change. But who was Victoria Woodhull? And why did she launch of bid for the presidency knowing that she was likely to fail in her mission? 

Grab your cup of coffee, peeps. Let’s do this. 

Victoria Claflin was born on September 23, 1838 in Homer, Ohio to her parents Reuben Buckman “Buck” and Roxanna, “Anne” Claflin. The 7th of 10 children, Claflin enjoyed just a few years of rudimentary education at the local Methodist church before the family was forced to leave town under suspicious circumstances. Her family was a bit strange - even for 19th century standards - and Victoria spent her formative years participating in the Claflin family medicine show where she told paying customers their future and offered medical treatments for the ill. When she became ill herself at 15, Victoria was treated by the man who would become her husband just a year later in 1853 - 28 year old Canning Woodhull. 

Together, the couple had two children, a son named Byron - who was born with a mental disability and a daughter who they named Zula Maud. Despite his medical training, Canning proved to be an insufficient source of support for the young family as he struggled with alcoholism and so Victoria - who took her husband’s last name of Woodhull - took on all sorts of odd jobs to help the family make ends meet. She worked as a store clerk, seamstress and - once they were living in San Francisco - a stage actress. One of Woodhull’s sisters, Tennessee, who went by the nickname Tennie, had been earning a living as a traveling healer and Victoria - seemingly tired of the meager earnings she commanded as an actress - decided to join her sister on tour. 

Together, the two sold their services - with Tennie telling fortunes and Victoria working as a medical clairvoyant - or someone who could diagnose and heal an individual through intuition. Woodhull eventually tired of her husband, filing for divorce in 1865. She quickly met and married another, Colonel James Harvey Blood, in 1866. While traveling, the team of sisters met and became close personal friends with Cornelius Vanderbilt, the American railroad magnate, and used their reputation as clairvoyants to get into his good graces. Vanderbuilt was a known believer in spiritualism, engaging with mediums and psychics to try to make contact with his dead mother and son. It is rumored that Tennie had a sexual relationship with Cornelius, but whatever the relationship, Vanderbilt became smitten with the young ladies and shared financial advise that helped them amass a bit of wealth for themselves. With his financial tutelage and backing, the sisters were able to launch the first ever female brokerage firm on Wall Street, Woodhull, Claflin, and Company in 1870.

As much as Wall Street may have a reputation for being a male dominated industry in the twenty-first century, it was even more so during Woodhull’s hay day. Despite the evolving political attitudes of the day, this remained a period where women were largely expected to stay out of the public sphere. If they had to engage in public life by seeking work outside of the home, women were still expected to adhere to very specific rules and roles in society. This was a period when women were expected to not be alone in public and would be considered forward if they so much as made eye contact with a man. Running and operating a brokerage firm - where they served male clientele daily - only further inflamed their critics. Some even claimed that there was no way the sisters could run the brokerage business without also being sexually promiscuous. As far as the sisters were concerned, they were not going to let their lives be dominated by what society considered quote unquote appropriate for the female sex. In an interview about their firm, Tennie said quote: “we did not intend to let our petticoats interfere with anybody or take up any more room in the street than the other brokers’ trousers,” end quote. 

The sisters had the support of other prominent women’s rights activists - at least initially. Writing in support of their brokerage firm, Susan B. Anthony wrote that the sisters quote “stimulate the whole future of women by their efforts and their example,” end quote. Just a few months after launching her firm, Woodhull made a stunning announcement - she was going to run for President of the United States in 1872. Only 31 at the time of her announcement, the news of her candidacy was not surprising because of her age and lack of political experience - but because she was a woman. Why launch a presidential bid that was all but guaranteed to fail? Woodhull had been part of the women’s suffrage movement since 1869 where she attended National Woman’s Suffrage Association meetings and had taken the organization’s message to heart. And Woodhull wasn’t the first to pull such a stunt - Elizabeth Cady Stanton announced in 1866 that she was running for Congress, making the point that despite being able to vote, there was nothing in the Constitution that prevented her from serving if elected. Perhaps Woodhull, hoping to bring more attention to the cause of women’s suffrage, decided to use her new found celebrity to spark a larger conversation about the capacity of the American woman. 

In conjunction with her presidential announcement, Woodhull and her sister next launched a newspaper. First published in May of 1870 just a month after Woodhull’s declaration, the Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly was yet another example of Woodhull refusing to follow the rules society set in place. The paper unapologetically entered into some of the most controversial topics of the era, including publishing the first English translation of Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto. The paper also wrote stories linking prostitution to women’s exploitation instead of the prevailing sentiment of the day which was that women who engaged in sex work were immoral. Their paper supported the quote “sanitary regulation of prostitution,” end quote and demanded that any laws passed aimed at reducing prostitution quote “curb the immoral behavior of men as well as women,” end quote. 

Despite making a splash upon establishing the brokerage firm, the sister team started to lose money and clients thanks to recommending some risk investments. As the income dwindled from their efforts on Wall Street, Woodhull realized she would need another way to earn a living. Having a taste of notoriety, Woodhull decided to go out on the lecture circuit where she could also boost her national profile for the upcoming presidential election. 

Woodhull spoke as a fierce supporter of women’s rights - learning from experience that marriage was not the saving grace for women many publicly proclaimed. Woodhull espoused a belief in the idea of free love - or that men and women should be together because they cared for each other - not because of some financial benefit. Everyone, Woodhull argued, deserved happiness, as she argued quote: “women as much as men are personalities, responsible to themselves for the use which they permit to be made of themselves, and they rebel demanding freedom, freedom to hold their own lives and bodies from the demoralizing influence of sexual relations that are not founded in and maintained by love,” end quote. Woodhull espoused the then-crazy belief that women should be the ones who control the decision whether to have children and that women should enjoy the same educational opportunities as men. 

Woodhull made history when she went before the House Judiciary Committee in January 1871 to testify about women’s suffrage - a portion of her remarks I read at the opening of the episode. With her testimony, Woodhull became the first woman in United States history to testify before a committee in the House. Woodhull presented a modified argument of the New Departure philosophy where she claimed that the 14th and 15th Amendments already granted women citizenship and by extension, the right to vote. This interpretation, Woodhull argued, meant that there was no need for a separate, additional amendment to the Constitution. Several prominent activists were in the galley as Woodhull gave her testimony, including Susan B. Anthony.  

Giving a speech in front of more than 3,000 people at Steinway Hall in New York in November 1871, Woodhull again spoke in support of increased rights for women. The speech, known as the Principles of Social Freedom, made headlines not because of Woodhull’s call for a more progressive view of marriage, but because she admitted to being a supporter of Free Love, saying quote:  “Yes, I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere.” Also included in her speech was the recognition that women lacked autonomy and agency once they married and she shed a light on one of the dangers facing married women: domestic partner violence. Calling out the dangers to women Woohull said quote: “Thousands of poor, weak, unresisting wives are yearly murdered, who stand in spirit-life looking down upon the sickly, half made-up children left behind, imploring humanity for the sake of honor and virtue to look into this matter, to look into it to the very bottom, and bring out into the fair daylight all the blackened, sickening deformities that have so long been hidden by the screen of public opinion and a sham morality.”

Woodhull’s decision to be an outward supporter of free love eventually caused her to be considered a liability to the women’s suffrage movement and was painted as a quote unquote political disaster by members of the American Woman Suffrage Association. Not to be deterred, Woodhull’s presidential campaign centered around sexual revolution - ensuring her many headlines, but rapidly losing her supporters. By May of 1872 when she was nominated as the presidential candidate for the Equal Rights Party, along with Frederick Douglass who was nominated for Vice President, it is estimated that her fans topped at about one thousand people - definitely not enough to win a presidential race. Life was about to get even more uncomfortable for Woodhull as she attracted the attention of the one and only Anthony Comstock. 

If you are a member of the Patreon, then you already know who Comstock is, but for those of you who haven’t joined - Anthony Comstock was a major morality reformer who influenced the passage of the Comstock law - which is still on the books today - which criminalizes the mailing or transportation of quote unquote obscene materials. Described by one historian as quote “the nation’s most important censor of public morals,” end quote, Anthony Comstock made it his life’s mission to rid the country of obscene material and people. Comstock who, like Woodhull, likely craved a little celebrity, knew that arresting someone with Woodhull’s name recognition would not only rid the nation of an obscene individual, but it would also bring significant attention to his cause and, by extension, himself. But how would he accomplish such a challenging task?

Woodhull gave him the answer on a proverbial silver platter when she relaunched her periodical in October 1872. Her dedicated and public support of free love had not only lost her allies in the woman’s suffrage movement, but it lost her biggest financial support, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who pulled his investment from the sisters’ brokerage firm and the newspaper, forcing the paper to shut down temporarily. Not someone to go down without a fight, Woodhull saved enough money to relaunch the paper on October 28th where Woodhull & Claflin Weekly ran an expose about Henry Ward Beecher, a pastor with the Brooklyn Plymouth Church and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe who was against suffrage for women. The story described how Beecher had been engaged in a long time affair with Elizabeth Tilton - who was married to Theodore Tilton, a major supporter of the pastor. The article not accused Stowe of immoral actions, claiming that Tilton was only one in a long line of women he’d seduced, but also took to calling him a hypocrite who served as an example of why women fell from grace to begin with. Comstock knew he had his case locked up. Or did he?

Unable to convince the local District Attorney to file charges, Comstock requested a copy of the paper to be sent via the mail. When it arrived as requested, Comstock used it as evidence and had Woodhull arrested by the U.S. Marshalls on November 2nd, 1872, for the crime of sending quote unquote obscene material via the mail. Woodhull was imprisoned at the Ludlow Street Jail in New York City - the same day many suffragists were also jailed for illegally casting a ballot in defiance of state law. Woodhull’s trial began several months later in June of 1873 where she argued that if she’d been a man, she would never have been arrested. On the surface, her argument seems to have a bit of merit - once the story hit newsstands, other papers - with male editors and owners - reprinted it without ever attracting Anthony Comstock’s attention. 

At this point, Woodhull had fallen from grace and had limited support. She was eventually found not guilty due to a technicality as the federal law did not specify newspapers - but the trial did what Comstock likely aimed to do - it ruined Woodhull’s public career. Woodhull divorced her second husband and left the United States for England in 1877 where she eventually married a respectable banker and worked hard to redo her tattered image. She eventually distanced herself from her previous commitment to free love and died in 1927 at the age of 88. Anthony Comstock continued his pursuit of the obscene until his death in 1915 and, some scholars argue, despite losing his legal battle against Woodhull, Comstock ultimately won the war. In her analysis of the legal fight between Comstock and Woodhull, Helen Horrowitze observed quote: “in the years after Woodhull’s arrest, distorted by state and federal censorship, the American public conversation about sex took a truncated shape within new and narrower boundaries,” end quote. 

The term “the woodhull” became synonymous for a dangerous representative of the public woman and efforts to secure voting rights for women in the years immediately after her time in the public spotlight largely failed. Support for a 16th Amendment to the Constitution lost momentum in the aftermath of Woodhull’s public downfall and it would take another four decades before some women would get access to the franchise when the 19th amendment was ratified in 1920. 

Victoria Woodhull was a woman unafraid to speak her mind and live publicly in an era still clinging to notions of proprietary and curating separate spaces for men and women. While Woodhull brought significant attention to the issues facing women of the day, she was ahead of her time and failed to achieve many of the reforms she pushed for during her lifetime. 

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Thanks, peeps. I will see you next week.

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