Notorious Victoria

by Mary Gabriel

  Tuesday came and Howe told the court that Victoria and Tennessee were not ready to enter a plea. Now that it seemed the case would not go away without a fight, the sisters and their lawyers needed time to plot a strategy. The ever adaptable Tennessee told a reporter that they were becoming used to their imprisonment and that Warden Tracey and his family were very kind. But there were others who were not so. The New York Sun reported that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had been one of Victoria’s staunchest advocates during previous difficulties, was now disowning her. Stanton was quoted as saying that, concerning Victoria’s assertions that she had heard of the Tilton-Beecher affair from her in May 1871, “Mrs. Woodhull’s statements are untrue in every particular.”

  The general consensus of newspapers around the country was that the sisters had finally received what they had long deserved. The press editorialized as to why it had taken authorities so long to silence the women who had been polluting the public by printing free-love filth and French communism in their newspaper and by preaching similarly loathsome ideas from the platform. No one appeared to be mourning the incarceration of Woodhull, Claflin or Co.

  It was hardly the press Victoria would have expected on November 5, 1872. It was election day and somewhere in the twenty-two states where her Equal Rights Party had delegates, her name was being written in on ballots in the presidential election. She was not listed as an official candidate because she was a woman and because, at thirty-four, she was not legally old enough to run. Ulysses S. Grant was handily returned to office in the election, which analysts said saw big money and party politics “crush to earth” any attempt by reformers to make inroads into the electoral process. But on that day from her jail cell Victoria Woodhull went down in the annals of American history as the first woman candidate for the U.S. presidency.

  NEW YORK CITY, NOVEMBER 20, 1872

  The throngs of spectators who appeared every day in court trying to get a glimpse of the Woodhull-Claflin-Blood proceedings were disappointed until Friday, November 8, when the three main characters, along with Luther Challis, made an appearance in Jefferson Market Court. At immediate issue was a writ of habeas corpus filed on Blood’s behalf in the Challis libel suit.

  People jammed the stairwell outside the courtroom, while inside every seat and every inch of standing room was packed with men and women, many of the latter heavily veiled. Victoria, Tennessee, and Blood sat at the defense table and Buck Claflin sat directly behind the witness chair. He was going deaf and was allowed to lean toward the witness with his ear cupped in his hand to hear the testimony.

  Luther Challis took the stand to describe the libel perpetrated against him. He described his occupation as “gentleman,” which was to say that he had been a merchant, a banker, a speculator, and that he was now living off the proceeds. He was of medium height with a red face topped by closely trimmed black hair. He wore a mustache and goatee and was elegantly attired in a black suit and white necktie. Challis kept a silk umbrella at his side even while testifying.

  The defense lawyer William Howe overpowered Challis in every way. He was an enormous man with a large chest, a lion’s head of wavy gray hair, and a walrus mustache. His dress was nothing less than flamboyant. One writer said he had “the passion of a Raffles for diamonds” and he wore the stones every possible way he could: on his fingers, on his watch chain, as shirt studs, as cuff buttons, in place of a tie. The only physical characteristic he shared with Challis was a ruddy complexion from too much drink.

  Howe sauntered up to Challis that morning determined to convince the court that the “gentleman” on the stand was every bit the roué the Weekly claimed him to be. Only the people in court that day were privy to the contents of the Challis examination, however: the newspapers found the details altogether too filthy to report.

  The press’s self-imposed gag order meant that the second day’s crowd was even larger than the first day’s. Those lucky enough to gain entry to the courtroom were not disappointed: an even more stellar cast of witnesses, including Anthony Comstock, was scheduled to take the witness stand.

  The moral crusader Comstock described going to the office on Broad Street and purchasing a copy of the November 2 Weekly. He said that in the office at the time were Blood, Woodhull, and Claflin. When asked to identify Blood in the courtroom, however, he could not, even though the colonel was sitting in front of him. He also admitted that he was offered a bounty of sorts for every conviction arising from one of his obscenity charges: he said he was offered one-half the total fine collected.

  Next on the stand was Buck Claflin, who, as Claflin family members were wont to do when called to testify in court, only made matters worse. He said that he had warned his daughters against printing the Challis article and that he believed Blood was responsible for it, although Victoria testified that Blood had nothing to do with the article and was only nominally employed at the office.

  An acquaintance of Challis—a Mr. Maxwell who answered no to the question “Are you a gentleman?”—then took the stand and confirmed the statements contained in the Challis article. He said he had been with Challis at the French Ball described in the article when the two young girls were seduced. Maxwell himself was arrested shortly after testifying.

  Despite Howe’s best efforts, the judge reserved his decision and did not issue a ruling on Blood’s incarceration or bail until a week later. When he did, he said Blood was probably guilty of the misdemeanor as charged and ordered him held in lieu of five thousand dollars’ bond.

  Meanwhile, eighteen days after her arrest, Victoria was still in jail. On November 20, she finally issued a statement, published in the New York Herald, in her own defense:

  “To the Editors of the Herald:—

  “No one can be more conscious than I am that prudent forethought should precede any appeal made to the public by one circumstanced as I am and I think I have not ignored that consciousness in asking the attention of the public through your columns. . ..

  “I have been systematically written down as the most immoral of women, but no act of mine has been advanced in support of the charge. My theories have been first misstated or misrepresented, and then denounced as ‘revolting.’ Thus have I been gratuitously misinterpreted by the press to the public, whose interests it professes to watch over and protect. But has it ever occurred to this great public, which now holds up its hands in horror of me, that even in its estimation, manufactured by the press as it has been, I am no worse than thirty years ago were the prime movers in the anti-slavery movement in the estimation of the public of that time? Is it remembered how they were abused by the press, imprisoned by the authorities, and stoned and almost hanged by the people? And yet, strange as it is, on the great, broad earth, there are none more esteemed and respected to-day than are the veritable persons who so recently were generally condemned. And, what is still more strange, some who were thus condemned, forgetting the lesson of their own experience, earnestly join in the present persecution. Verily, history does repeat itself, even within the remembrance of a single generation. . ..

  “But what is the great danger which the public pretends to fear from me? The plain statement of what I desire to accomplish, and it is this at which the public howls, is this:—I desire that woman shall be emancipated from the sexual slavery maintained over her by man.

  “It is by reason of her sex only that woman, whether as wife, * * * , now supports herself; and man is determined not to give up this domination. This is all wrong, and against it I long since declared war—relentless and unceasing war. I desire that woman shall, so far as her support is concerned, be made independent of man, so that all her sexual relations result from other reasons than for maintenance; in a word, shall be wholly and only for love.

  “Is there anything so dreadful, as the public has conjured up in its mind that there is, in this? Ask those about to enter marriage ‘for a home,’ those who have already done so and the so-called prostitutes, if they think this is a dangerous and terrible pro
position? And yet it is the sum and substance, the intent and effect, of my ‘revolting theories.’ These theories ought to appear dangerous to such men, only, as now purchase women by money, who, under other circumstances, would be unable to command them by love. . ..

  “Again: ‘Among the most dangerous forces is so-called free thought, that would make immorality free from all restraint, and that, under the name of liberty of the press, would make the journal, the vehicle, not only for the vilest slanders, but for the filthiest expression of debauched thought.’ And again, I ask, does the immorality consist of the facts that exist in the community; or is it in making them known to the unsuspecting, to the great honest moral masses? And is the act of thus making them known, ‘the filthiest expression of thought,’ or giving expression to filthy facts? Answer this also, and then condemn me if you will. . ..

  “The great public danger then is not in my exposure of the immoralities that are constantly being committed, but in the fear that their enactors will be shown up to the public they have so long deceived. The public is in no danger from me; but those who are distilling poisons and digging pitfalls for it are in danger, and will remain in danger so long as I live; and since this is known the danger must be removed, at whatever cost of public justice or private right. To the public I would say in conclusion they may succeed in crushing me out, even to the loss of my life; but let me warn them and you that from the ashes of my body a thousand Victorias will spring to avenge my death by seizing the work laid down by me and carrying it forward to victory.”

  Victoria and Tennessee were finally released on bail on December 3, after paying a total of sixteen thousand dollars each.

  NEW YORK CITY, JANUARY 1873

  Victoria emerged from four weeks in jail in the mood for a fight. She scheduled her first lecture in Boston, which, along with Brooklyn and Hartford, was Beecher territory. Prior to her speech, however, she received word from its organizers that the governor, the chief of police, and the city council had refused to grant her a permit.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe had been intriguing to stop the speech; no doubt she feared Victoria would link her brother Henry to more unspeakable acts. During the recent ordeal, Stowe had been her brother’s confidante and shield. She had warned him in a letter in December that the fight would not be easy. “Fully do I believe that wretched woman to be under the agency of satanic spirits & I recognize that in this attack we wrestle not with flesh & blood.”

  She also wrote her daughters Eliza and Hattie in December: “Those vile women ‘jailbirds’ had the impudence to undertake to advertise that they were going to give a lecture in [Boston’s] Music Hall. It has roused such an indignation among the citizens that I am told the whole thing is to be stopped. It appears that lectures cannot be given without a license of the city government which was not to be forthcoming. The impudence of those witches is incredible! Say nothing however till you hear it from others. I have been privately advised of the movement.”

  In a Christmas letter to a friend Stowe wrote: “I am delighted that Boston has fought the good fight with those obscene birds so faithfully. There was a quiet reprisal not noisy but effectual. Mrs. Claflin said Gov. Claflin went to the State & remonstrating with the committee said that they might as well have the murderess women of North St. on the stage there. . . . They [Victoria and Tennessee] did not speak in Boston as I am told. It was admirably done & done without saying a word about them in the papers a thing equally admirable. They perfectly long to be abused in the papers & they cant get it.

  Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe were at the center of the scandal that resulted in Victoria’s imprisonment: when Victoria published the details of Beecher’s extramarital affair, his sister Harriet worked to discredit and destroy her. (Alberti and Lowe Collection, date unknown)

  “Did I tell you that here in Framingham lives the wife of that Col Blood whom this wicked woman has seduced & infatuated to be her tool & slave. Mrs. Blood is a lovely dignified accomplished woman with a daughter twelve years of age. Her husband she tells me was a young man of one of the best families in St. Louis, had served with honor in the army was in good position & with every prospect of rising in the world, perfectly correct in all his habits and devoted to her & her child. This Woodhull woman set up in St. Louis as clairvoyant physician & Blood consulted her as to his wifes health. Immediately this witch set her eye on him & never left practicing every diabolical art till she really got him to give up his family—his position his prospects in life, his wife & his child to follow her in a life of infamy as he has been doing ever since. Mrs. Blood is connected with one of the first families here, much beloved & respected—a great sympathy is felt for her. She bears her sorrow with a quiet dignity that wins universal respect. She is very lovely in person & manners & one wonders what Devil spell can have taken away a man from such a woman. I do hope that this pending trial will land Mrs. W in the Penitentiary—if it would shut her in & him out there might be some hope for him—There was a sorrowful sweetness in her earnest manners of speaking of what he once was that seemed as if all hope was not yet dead in her heart that he might be saved. . . . For every sinner is there a good angel praying?—she evidently looks on him as under the influence of some spell & incantation—& it does look like it. . . .

  “Bye the bye in reply to what you said. Tilton does deny the story in the most indignant manner & mentions suit against any body that cares repeat it—But all parties advise that no public notice be taken of a slander from such a source.”

  Having been shut out of Boston, Victoria moved her address to Springfield, Massachusetts, where on December 20 she delivered a lecture titled “Moral Cowardice & Modern Hypocrisy” in a nervous and rapid manner that showed the strain of her incarceration. She described how in just over two years she and her sister Tennessee had gone from being praised in the press as “The Fascinating Financiers” and “The Queens of the Quill” to being lampooned as “Political Harlequins.” Victoria said the change began following her appearance before the House Judiciary Committee in January 1871. Soon after, she said, the press began calling her and Tennie “humbugs,” “frauds,” “public nuisances,” “prostitutes,” and finally “blackmailers.”

  In her lecture, Victoria underscored the lack of evidence for any of these charges: “Now, by all of these, [we] have been brought into public dishonor and disrepute, while not a single fact of crime to justify a single one of the various charges has ever been advanced by any journal. Imagine, for a moment, how easy a thing it is to ruin the usefulness of any person by this system of insinuation and innuendo. . . . It is not enough that the press charge [us] as prostitutes and blackmailers. It ought to have charged [us] with specific cases of prostitution and blackmailing certain persons, then the charges could have been disproved.”

  When the slander and name-calling didn’t scare her into silence, Victoria said, her enemies turned to imprisonment, and the November 2 issue of the Weekly was seized upon as the excuse. But, she boldly declared, even imprisonment would not stop her: “The old, worn-out, rotten social system will be torn down, plank by plank, timber after timber, until place is given to a new, true and beautiful structure, based upon freedom, equality and justice to all—to women as well as men; the results of which can be nothing else than physical health, intellectual honesty and moral purity.

  “Stop their press they may, but their tongues, never!”

  ANTHONY COMSTOCK ROSE to Victoria’s challenge. His new year’s pledge for 1873 was to do “something for Jesus” every day and he began that first week in January by once again going after Victoria.

  Under the name James Beardsley, Comstock mailed the Weekly a request for copies of the November 2 issue. After receiving a dozen copies in the post, he promptly requested another arrest warrant for Victoria, Tennessee, and Blood. He was perhaps motivated to move quickly, as Victoria’s lawyer Howe would later claim in court, by the fact that she had announced a lecture on “The Naked Truth” to be delivered at t
he Cooper Institute on January 9, 1873. The idea of Victoria at the podium talking about anything “naked,” even if it be the truth, was no doubt too much for Comstock to bear.

  The morning of the lecture two marshals arrived at the Broad Street office to arrest Blood. Comstock wrote in his diary, “When we arrested Blood there were about six or eight of the hardest kind of free-lovers, judging by their looks, to be found anywhere. Blood was much excited and exclaimed, ‘Oh we are all arrested again.’”

  The sisters weren’t at the Broad Street office at the time and Blood managed to get word to them that new warrants had been issued against them. Tennie evaded arrest by hiding at home under a washtub that a washerwoman was using when the authorities arrived. Victoria fled to Jersey City, New Jersey, where she planned to hide at Taylor’s Hotel until her lecture that night in New York City.

  There was a strong police presence that evening at the Cooper Institute; the authorities were prepared to arrest Victoria if she tried to enter. As eight o’clock drew near, a crowd of about three thousand had gathered, and though they were told that the lecture was canceled, they moved into the hall anyway and stomped their feet and demanded Mrs. Woodhull. The women’s rights advocate and spiritualist Laura Cuppy Smith took the platform to say that she would deliver Victoria’s planned speech, but as she spoke a small woman with a scarf on her head and a checked shawl over her shoulders began to move toward the platform. She passed from a front seat up to the stage and then behind a pillar as the crowd giggled at her odd appearance. Just as Smith announced that neither Mrs. Woodhull nor Miss Claflin could attend, the old lady dashed forward, dropped her hat, shawl, and gray dress. Victoria Woodhull stood on the stage with her disguise coiled at her feet, her arms raised in nervous excitement and her hair in a wild confusion! She had eluded the police. The audience roared its approval.