by Mary Gabriel
By 2:00 P.M., the event’s grand marshals gave word that the parade would begin and its five thousand participants formed columns five abreast. The gathering was a cross section of New York City: men in silk top hats walked next to hunched old men in woolen caps; lavender-gloved gentlemen were in line alongside calloushanded German and Irish laborers. One reporter noted that the marchers wore every degree of attire between “elegance and bare decency.”
The grand marshals, attired in black with red rosettes and sashes and black crepe around their arms and hats, led the procession. Each carried a staff also draped in black crepe. They were followed by a flag-draped catafalque drawn by six horses heavily draped in mourning, the Hawkins Zouave Band, and the Honor Guard. Next came the Skidmore Light Guard, a band of black soldiers in light blue uniforms who carried rifles and marched with military precision. Following the Skidmore Guard came a band of women led by Tennie, who carried a red flag edged in black fringe bearing the inscription “Complete Political and Social Equality for Both Sexes.” Victoria walked behind her, accompanied by Blood and Andrews. Theodore Tilton followed them.
The World detailed the progress of the marchers: “From the corner of Great Jones street up, the sidewalks of Broadway were fairly jammed with spectators. There were a large number of ladies, nearly all of whom wore red ribbons in some way, and a great many of the men wore similar tokens of acquiescence in the spirit of the parade. The windows of the Grand Central Hotel were crowded with the guests, and away up in the attic, ten stories from the ground, the servants and waiters of the hotel were leaning out, in seeming defiance of all the laws of gravitation, to watch the demonstration. The windows of a large clothing store on the corner were filled by the clerks of the establishment. A magazin des modes two doors up, had a galaxy of beauty in its windows, and every shop window along the route was well lined.
“As the bands were heard playing on the march through Great Jones street, the crowd on Broadway grew denser. Men and women came pouring through Bleecker, Amity and Fourth streets, and swelled the surging tide who awaited the coming of the processionists. Some of the men and boys clambered up on lampposts and awnings to obtain a better view of the procession. At length the advance guard of three Internationals, wearing broad red scarfs and with staves in their hands, appeared and were followed by the band of the First regiment playing a solemn dirge. As it appeared the crowd gave a great cheer and the ladies in the windows waved their handkerchiefs. The Skidmore Light Guard, a negro military organization numbering about forty men, came next and were loudly cheered.
“But the cheers they received were paltry compared with the reception accorded the ladies who followed them, marching behind Mr. T. H. Banks, the Grand Marshall. In the front rank were Mrs. Victoria C. Woodhull and Tennie C. Claflin. They were attired in dark blue jackets, cut tight to the figure, black silk dresses, white collars, Alpine hats, and each wore a broad crimson scarf. In her hand Miss Claflin carried a flagstaff, surmounted by a crimson bannerol. With them was Mrs. H. S. Leland, Mmes. Constant, Amadie, Leclercq, and Chretien, and several other French ladies. All these ladies wore decorations in the shape of rosettes of red ribbon or crimson scarfs. The crowd on the sidewalk, touched by this feminine tribute to the dead, cheered vociferously, shout following shout in rapid succession. The sound of the cheering could be heard in police headquarters where Commissioner Smith was waiting to hear of a riot.”
The police had not only allowed the second march to proceed unimpeded, they had not even deigned to attend and keep the crowd under control. The city’s thieves took advantage of the situation, robbing at will. From the Bowery to Great Jones Street, bands of thieves crowded ladies and gentlemen who looked as though they had cash or jewelry and robbed them “right and left,” as one reporter described it. But in the crush of the march and the swarming tide of humanity the sideline skirmishes went unnoticed: “As the head of the procession wound around Waverley place and wheeled into Fifth avenue, as far up as the eye could reach the sidewalks were crowded with fashionably dressed ladies and gentlemen,” The World reported. “The rainbow colors of the ladies’ attire stretching in a vista of beauty a long way ahead, looked very happy. The Internationals now marched with greater precision and formality. They imagined that from statements made the residents of Fifth avenue were disposed to treat them disdainfully, and so each man kept his head erect and marched more proudly than ever. The band struck up the grand march from Zampa, and then the Internationals were agreeably surprised, for they were cheered heartily. A flush of pleasure was on the cheeks of every one of them. When they came to the Manhattan Club-house, at the southwest corner of Fifteenth street and Fifth avenue, the grand-marshal noticed that the American flag on the club-house flew at half mast and pointed to it. The windows of the clubhouse were filled with the members, who clapped their hands. As soon as the Internationals saw the flag at half mast they gave a mighty cheer, and many raised their hats in return for the compliment.”
The procession ended at Union Square, where the crowd was so dense that only with great difficulty was anyone able to move. Once again speeches were de manded of Victoria and Tennessee and once again they declined, only to be met by jeers. They tried to escape the crush into a waiting carriage when a gang of thieves made a rush for their group. The thieves were stopped by a journalist who was mobbed by the bandits, dragged across the street, and beaten. The World reported that the “two or three policemen who had stood on the corner of Broadway and observed the brutal outrage then leisurely advanced, dispersed the crowd, and did not make any arrests.”
Police Commissioner Henry Smith had been waiting at police headquarters with his top deputies throughout the day for any news of a riot. They were hooked up by telegraph to other precincts that reported on the progress of the march. Next door, the orphan children at St. Barnabas Charity School sang hymns, and the commissioner’s group could also hear “Nearer to Thee” coming from a black church nearly opposite. Blue smoke from cigars filled the room while the men waited. At 4:30 P.M., they received word that, “the Internationals are now disbanding at Union square; reserves not wanted,” and Commissioner Smith went home to dinner. There had been no commune-style revolt in the streets of New York that day, but the five thousand people who marched in the parade were sure to be a force to be reckoned with sometime in the future.
ABOUT TWO WEEKS after the march, on December 30, 1871, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly reprinted Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. It was the first American publication of Marx’s treatise and confirmed for many Victoria’s stature in the International movement, yet it was a movement in which she no longer had an official position: Section 12 had been ousted from the American council of the IWA for alienating workers with its radical positions on social issues. And critics were trying to convince the general council in London to expel the section entirely from the IWA. How could Irish-Catholic workers, the American IWA argued, possibly be expected to support the notion of free love? As far as the American IWA was concerned, the immediate issues were labor and wages, but Victoria’s section demanded that women’s rights and social freedom be added to those. The entrenched veterans of the international labor movement would have none of it.
Frederich Sorge, who was the father of modern American socialism, a friend of Marx, and the founder of the first International section in the United States, wrote bitterly of the situation to the general council in London: “The so-called reform parties spring up overnight and for every one that disappears, two new ones are formed. These parties declare that the emancipation of labor, or better the wellbeing of mankind, can be freely and easily arrived at through universal suffrage, brilliant educational measures, benevolent and homestead societies, universal languages, and other plans and systems, which they represent glowingly in their countless meetings and which nobody carries out. The leading men of these parties . . . see only the superficial aspects of the labor question, and all their humanitarian advice, accordingly, only touches the externals. Such
a reform movement well advocated and intelligibly presented to the working men is often gladly accepted, because the laborer . . . does not perceive the hollowness of that gilded nut shining before his eyes.”
WASHINGTON, D.C., JANUARY 1872
January 1872 saw the National Woman’s Suffrage Association once again at Lincoln Hall in Washington for its semi-annual convention and another go at Congress. This year the Senate Judiciary Committee had agreed to hear their argument for enfranchisement. The stage contained some new faces that had not been there the year before when Victoria made her debut, but mostly it was filled with the old guard: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Paulina Wright Davis, and Isabella Beecher Hooker. Victoria was also on the platform and she had filled the audience with spiritualist and labor friends. One reporter noted that the new faces in the crowd seemed to “infuse fire and enthusiasm into the leaders of the movement.”
After the Civil War, the women suffragists had hoped that the reformers who had fought together to abolish slavery would remain united, but they did not. The immorality of slavery was a unique issue that inflamed the passions of a range of reformers, from religious conservatives to secular radicals. But once that battle for freedom was won, the differences among the abolitionists resurfaced and separated them. Now, under the guidance of Victoria Woodhull, the reformers finally appeared to be reuniting under the banner of women’s rights.
Speakers took the stage to address the crowd and, while the themes were diverse, there was one constant: nearly every speaker paid tribute to Victoria. She sat on the platform in a blue suit and double-breasted chinchilla coat listening to those in attendance pledge indifference to the rumors circulating about her. Susan B. Anthony confronted the issue during the second day of the meeting. Throwing the matronly shawl from her wine-colored silk dress (much to the amusement of the crowd), Anthony demanded, “You think we came here for notoriety? Now I have been speaking in this cause for over twenty years, and have been called everything but decent. . .. Victoria Woodhull was mad last night but she did not begin to be as mad as I am now. She has been abused, but not half as much as I have. I have been on the public platform for twenty years as an advocate of equal rights and have been scoffed and scorned. You have killed off women in a moment by pointing at them the finger of scorn, but we don’t propose to die so easily now that our cause carries strength. . ..
“Who brought Victoria C. Woodhull to the front? I have been asked by many, why did you drag her to the front?
“Now, bless your souls, she was not dragged to the front: she came to Washington from Wall street with a powerful argument and with lots of cash behind her, and I bet you cash is a big thing with Congress. She presented her memorial to Congress, and it was a power. I should have been glad to call it the Dickinson memorial or the Beecher memorial or the Anthony memorial. It was a mighty effort, and one that any woman might be proud of. She had an interview with the Judiciary Committee; we could never secure that privilege. She is young, handsome and rich. Now, if it takes youth, beauty and money to capture Congress, Victoria is the woman we are after.
“Women have too much false modesty. I was asked by the editors of New York papers if I know of Mrs. Woodhull’s antecedents. I said I didn’t, and I did not care any more about them than those of Congress. Her antecedents will compare favorably with any member of Congress. I will not allow any human being wearing the form of manhood, to ask me to desist working with any woman; for what woman is today is the result of man’s handiwork.
“I have been asked all along the line of the Pacific coast, what about Woodhull? You make her your leader? Now, we don’t make leaders, they make themselves. If any can accomplish a more brilliant effort than Victoria C. Woodhull, let him or her go ahead and they shall be the leaders.”
The applause in the hall resounded for Anthony and for Victoria. But despite their bold statements on her behalf and their claims that they did not care what society thought of her, the women’s leaders—especially Anthony—would abandon Victoria within the year. Just as Victoria had lost favor among the strict Internationalists for advocating issues beyond wages and labor, she would alienate the suffragists, in part because she insisted that women’s freedom consisted of more than access to the ballot box.
PERHAPS VICTORIA SENSED that her days in the women’s movement were numbered, or perhaps she was simply responding to the growing disquiet among workers in New York—she had a knack for tailoring her positions to fit a new audience, which some critics called opportunism but others saw merely as politic. But whatever the reason, in early 1872 Victoria became more radical in her positions on wealth and financial equality.
Once again, the Weekly was her mouthpiece. She quickly alienated many of her supporters on Wall Street by writing articles that exposed the inside deals that made them rich. And since the Weekly was also being read by labor agitators, these articles proved even more dangerous to the monied set, because they gave the movement the matches to inflame the already restless workers. Just that fall, twenty thousand people had marched in favor of an eight-hour workday, and the millions of immigrant workers whom industry had eagerly accepted because they worked for lower wages than their American counterparts were turning on their employers and organizing unions. Victoria was positioning herself as a beacon for this leaderless mass.
The Weekly of February 17 announced that on the twentieth, Victoria would deliver her latest speech, “The Impending Revolution,” at the Academy of Music, the heart of bourgeois New York. The turnout for her address was even greater than for her social freedom speech, and even more unruly. An hour before the lecture, the crowd began gathering outside the academy, and when the doors were opened at 7:45 P.M., the crush was so great that any efforts on the part of ushers to collect tickets, or police to keep order, were futile: “Women and girls were wedged in so tight that they were helpless beyond uttering pitiful screams, indicative of disaster to toilets and unaccustomed abrasion of knees and shoulders, while several fat old gentlemen nearly lost their tempers as some broad-footed republican sovereign stood for an instant on a favorite corn,” The Sun reported in a page-one article. “One woman’s hat was knocked over her eyes in a very undignified manner, while her arms were fastened down by the press in such a way as rendered her helpless.
“Many were carried utterly off their feet and so conveyed along with the surge into the vestibule.”
The Herald reported that there were as many people turned away as were able to gain a place in the standing-room-only auditorium, where even ladies were “forced to stand up packed like herrings in a barrel.” Many succumbed to fainting and had to be carried outside.
By the time Victoria was ready to speak, the many-tiered crowd was stamping and hooting and exchanging barbs among themselves: “Prompt to the minute, Victoria Woodhull appeared at the side entrance and walked hastily to the stand in the center of the stage,” The Sun reported. “No one accompanied her, and no one occupied the stage. The lady was arrayed in a plain black dress, without a colored ribbon or bow to relieve the somber effect. Her hair was carefully parted in the middle, and kinked. . .. Without gesture or a preliminary word she began to read her lecture, plunging into it with a high strong voice, which during the entire reading scarcely relaxed its intensity.”
Victoria asked the assembly a crucial question: “Does the impending revolution imply a peaceful change or a bloody struggle?”
The answer? Victoria went on to say, “No person who will take the trouble to carefully observe the conditions of the various departments of society can fail to discern the terrible earthquakes just ready to burst out upon every side, and which are only now restrained by the thick incrustations with which customs, prejudices and authorities have encased humanity.
“Oh the stupid blindness of this people! Swindled every day before their very eyes, and yet they don’t seem to know that there is anything wrong, simply because no law has been violated.
“A Vanderbilt may sit in his office and
manipulate stocks, or make dividends by which, in a few years, he amasses fifty million dollars from the industries of the country, and he is one of the remarkable men of the age. But if a poor, half-starved child were to take a loaf of bread from his cupboard to prevent starvation, she would be sent first to the Tombs and thense to Blackwell’s Island.
“An Astor may sit in his sumptuous apartments and watch the property bequeathed him by his father, rise in value from one to fifty millions, and everybody bows before his immense power, and worships his business capacity. But if a tenant of his, whose employer has discharged him because he did not vote the Republican ticket, and thereby fails to pay his monthly rent to Mr. Astor, the law sets him and his family into the street in midwinter, and, whether he dies of cold or starvation, neither Mr. Astor or anybody else stops to ask, since that is nobody’s business but the man’s. This is a free country, you know, and why should I trouble myself about that person because he happens to be so unfortunate as not to be able to pay Mr. Astor his rent?
“But, it is asked, how is this to be remedied? I answer, very easily! Since those who possess the accumulated wealth of the country have filched it by legal means from those to whom it justly belongs—the people—it must be returned to them, by legal means if possible, but it must be returned to them in any event. When a person worth millions dies, instead of leaving it to his children, who have no more title to it than anybody else’s children have, it must revert to the people who really produced it.