by Mary Gabriel
The Sun reported that the applause that greeted Victoria’s speech was “deafening.” The crowd demanded more, if not from Victoria then from Tennie, but Victoria was unable to mount the platform again and Tennie unwilling. The energized crowd emerged from the Cooper Institute and the press once again began to whisper “commune.”
When Victoria took the same lecture to Detroit, Mayor Moffat refused to approve a license for her to speak. Only through the intercession of an unlikely advocate—the city’s chief of police—was Victoria finally allowed to deliver her address, which the press said the next day “would [have been] charming” except for her occasional “burst of irreverence.”
BEFORE THE SEPTEMBER crash and subsequent depression, Victoria’s finances were stretched to the limit. After the crash she lived hand to mouth. She could no longer afford the luxury of a Broad Street office and so, after three years of being a presence on the “street,” she gave up the location and announced in the Weekly that Woodhull, Claflin & Co. had permanently relocated to the family residence on West 23rd Street, where they would be happy to receive visitors. The Weekly also announced that the group was founding an organization called The Psyche Club at that address, which they believed would be a “convenient centre in which reformers may discuss all questions.” What was left unsaid in the announcement was that any dues the club might collect would help pay for the Weekly and the rent.
The appeal must not have attracted enough money to support a family, because Victoria continued lecturing. Her life at the end of 1873 and the beginning of 1874 was not very much different from what it had been before she arrived in New York City. With Tennessee, Blood, and sometimes Zulu Maud and Byron, she would travel from town to town. They worked as an ensemble, with Victoria as the road show’s main attraction. Twelve-year-old Zulu would open the act with a poem, Tennie would recite a piece of poetry or a brief speech, and then Victoria would deliver an oration that Blood had either written for her or transcribed and edited. The only difference between the Victoria Woodhull of 1867 and the Victoria Woodhull of 1874 was that instead of peddling spiritual communications she was dispensing political ideas that had evolved from her own hard life.
In one of her most powerful and controversial speeches, “Tried As By Fire, or The True and The False, Socially,” Victoria described the stories that continued to haunt her: “Of all the horrid brutalities of this age, I know of none so horrid as those that are sanctioned and defended by marriage. Night after night, there are thousands of rapes committed, under cover of this accursed license; and millions—yes I say it boldly, knowing whereof I speak—millions of poor, heart broken, suffering wives are compelled to minister to the lechery of insatiable husbands, when every instinct of body and sentiment of soul revolts in loathing and disgust. . . . The world has got to be startled from this pretense into realizing that there is nothing else now existing among pretendedly enlightened nations, except marriage, that invests men with the right to debauch women, sexually, against their wills, yet marriage is held to be synonymous with morality! I say, eternal damnation, sink such morality! . . .
“What a commentary on the divinity of marriage are the watering places during the summer season! The mercenary ‘mammas’ trot out their daughters on exhibition, as though they were so many stud of horses, to be hawked to the highest bidder. It’s the man who can pay the most money, who is sought. . . . To him who bids the highest, in the parlance of the auctioneer, the article is knocked down. . . . And we prate of the holy marriage covenant. . . .
“I say it boldly, that it is the best men of the country who support the houses of prostitution. It isn’t your young men, but the husbands and fathers of the country, who will occupy positions of honor and trust. It is not the hardworking industrial masses at all, but those who have the money and the time to expend for such purposes, who are really the old hoary-headed villains of the country. The young haven’t money enough to support themselves. So when you condemn the poor women, whom you have helped to drive to such a life, remember to visit your wrath upon the best men of the country as well. . . .
“O! Mothers, that I could make you feel these things as I know them. I do not appeal to you as a novice, ignorant of what I speak, merely to excite your sympathies, but as one having learned through long years of bitter experience. Go where I have been, visit the prisons, insane asylums and the glittering hells that I have visited; see the maniac mother at the cell door of her son, to be hanged in the morning, as I have seen her—cursing god, cursing man, cursing until nothing but curses filled the air, and until their fury flecked her face with foam, that her crime should be visited upon her poor poor boy. Follow her home, and when the agony of the gallows has come and gone, ask her the meaning of all this, and she will tell you, as she has told me: ‘That boy was forced upon me; I did not want him; I was worn out by child-bearing; and I tried in every way I know to kill him in my womb. . . .’
“But look upon another scene. Go home with me and see desolation and devastation in another form. The cold, iron bolt has entered my heart and left my life a blank, with ashes upon my lips. Wherever I go I carry a living corpse in my breast, the vacant stare of whose living counterpart meets me at the door of my home. My boy, now nineteen years of age, who should have been my pride and joy, has never been blessed by the dawning of reasoning. I was married at fourteen, ignorant of everything that related to my maternal functions. For this ignorance, and because I knew no better than to surrender my maternal functions to a drunken man, I am cursed with this living death. . . . Do you think in this sorrow seated on my soul I can ever sit quietly down and permit women to go on ignorantly repeating my crime? Do you think I can ever cease to hurl the bitterest imprecations against the accursed thing that has made my life one long misery? . . .
“So after all I am a very promiscuous free lover. I want the love of you all, promiscuously. It makes no difference who or what you are, old or young, black or white, pagan, Jew, or Christian, I want to love you all and be loved by you all, and I mean to have your love. If you will not give it to me now, these young, for whom I plead, will in after years bless Victoria Woodhull for daring to speak for their salvation.”
NEW YORK CITY, MARCH 1874
On March 4, 1874, a year and a half after the suit was filed against them, Victoria, Blood, and Tennessee were finally standing trial in the Luther Challis criminal libel case. Having just returned to New York from a grueling lecture tour to face their accuser, the group arrived at the Court of General Sessions that morning only to be apprised by one of their bondsmen that he had withdrawn his security. Because they had not learned of the withdrawal sooner and had no additional bond or money of their own to match the amount withdrawn, they were incarcerated after the first day’s proceedings.
Charles Brooke had taken over as their lead counsel after winning them an acquittal in the obscenity case the previous June. He argued against their imprisonment, saying that the way the bond withdrawal had been sprung upon his clients was surely “indicative of palpable oppression.” He also told the bench, occupied by Judge Sutherland, that he needed his clients free in order to consult with them about their case. The judge denied his request, however, and the three were sent to the hideous Tombs. It must have seemed to Victoria that her months of appeals for support around the country, and the warm welcome she had received from the public and the press wherever she spoke, meant nothing compared to the forces at work in New York City that were bound, she said, to destroy her.
On the second day of the case, prosecutors began presenting their witnesses, who amounted to three printers and publishers who testified that they had worked on the Weekly, received money for its publication, or been directly involved with producing the November 2 issue. Testimony for the day at an end, Brooke asked the judge to reduce bail to five hundred dollars so his clients could go free. The judge said he would not feel justified in reducing the amount, though he would take it under advisement, and the defendants returned to the Tombs.
On the third day of the trial, Anthony Comstock took the stand to relate to yet another jury that he had indeed purchased a copy of the “obscene” newspaper at the Woodhull, Claflin & Co. offices at 48 Broad Street, and with that said the prosecution rested. After a year and a half, its case amounted to the testimony of a few printers and Comstock, none of whom addressed the issue of whether Challis had in fact been libeled in the article.
When Brooke opened his case, he told the jury of twelve men that the charge was not that the defendants had published the newspaper but that they had libeled Mr. Challis in so doing. He said he would prove they had not. He presented two witnesses to establish that Challis had been at the French Ball, which advertised itself as having been attended by three thousand of the best men and four thousand of the worst women in New York City; that Challis had been drinking wine; and that Challis had been in a box in the company of a number of women. One of the witnesses testified that shortly after the ball he was present during a conversation in which Challis’s conduct with two young girls was alluded to, but he said the conversation had not made sense until he read the Challis story in the Weekly.
The court was adjourned. Victoria, Tennessee, and Blood were ordered to the Tombs for a third night.
On Saturday, March 7, Victoria was called to the stand. She was visibly nervous at the start of her testimony, even bursting into tears at one point. She described for the jurors what had taken place in the Challis box at the French Ball, how two young schoolgirls from Baltimore were plied with champagne, how Victoria remonstrated with the men for forcing the girls to drink, and how she ascertained from Challis at a later date that he had taken the girls to an improper house after the ball. Brooke asked her why she had published the article and she said she wanted to show the world that men who were guilty of immorality should be ostracized as well as women. Her response was greeted with loud applause from the court’s many visitors and it took several minutes before a red-faced and visibly agitated Judge Sutherland brought his courtroom under control.
Under questioning from the former judge Fullerton, who was representing Challis, Victoria said a Mrs. Shepherd had written the article in question. At this point, although the cross-examination had not ended, the case was adjourned for the weekend. Victoria, Tennessee, and Blood did not spend another night in jail, however. They had made bail of two thousand dollars each and were allowed to return home.
When court resumed on Monday, Victoria finished her testimony. Once again she was forced to specify when she had married Blood and whether she was divorced from her first husband at the time. She also testified that her first husband had not been sober one single day during their marriage.
The next key witness to take the stand was Challis himself, who denied everything to which Victoria had testified and everything contained in the Weekly article. He told the court he had not seduced two young women nor invited Mrs. Woodhull into his box nor indulged in excessive drinking. He also denied ever having been drunk at Victoria’s home and said he had never brought alcohol there except once, when, at Tennie’s request, he had arrived with a pint of champagne.
By the sixth day of the trial, interest in the proceedings had grown to the extent that hundreds of would-be spectators were turned away because there was not even standing room available. That day there were more witnesses who had been at the French Ball. Unfortunately, they testified one way under direct examination and another way under cross, so that by the time the court session ended it was less clear what had happened in January 1872 at the Academy of Music than before the court proceedings began.
Day seven included closing arguments, and day eight began with instructions to the jury. Victoria and Tennessee watched the jurors anxiously during the instructions to determine what impact the judge was having on them. He had shown himself during the trial to be less than sympathetic to the defense, and in his comments preceding the instructions he stressed that this was more than just a case about a libel against Challis; he said that “under the circumstances surrounding it, [the case] was of very great importance.” He also advised the jury not to be swayed to sympathize with Victoria because of her difficult life, which she had recounted during the trial. One paper characterized his instructions as arguing strongly in favor of conviction.
The jurors retired to deliberate at 12:30 P.M. and by 8:30 P.M. had not yet returned a verdict, so they were sequestered for the night.
When court resumed at 11:00 A.M. the next morning, the foreman of the jury informed the judge that the panel had reached a verdict.
“How say you; do you find the prisoners guilty or not guilty?” asked the court clerk.
The foreman replied, “Not guilty.”
The courtroom erupted with applause and cheers that continued until the judge successfully quieted the crowd with his gavel. Victoria and Tennessee burst into tears and were unable to speak for several minutes. The New York Times reported that Blood, for all his military reserve, appeared only slightly less agitated. The foreman then said that he wished to read a statement from the jury: “The jury wish to express their unanimous and most hearty concurrence in the sentiment expressed so eloquently by Your Honor in regard to the character and tendency of the teachings of these defendants. At the same time, in the exercise of that large discretion confided to them by the State constitution and laws in such cases as these, and in deference to the honest doubts which existed in the minds of a majority of the jury from the commencement of their deliberations, they have unanimously decided to yield to the defendants that charitable presumption of innocence, when there is a reasonable doubt, by which the law protects those who are placed in jeopardy of life or liberty.”
The judge told the jurors their decision was “the most outrageous verdict ever recorded; it is shameful and infamous, and I am ashamed of the jury who rendered such a verdict.” The defendants were then discharged, but they were immediately arrested again on a civil suit instituted by Challis. They were required to post five thousand dollars’ bond each and to have the money by March 23. Until they produced the money they were confined to the limits of New York County. By April they had made bail and were traveling far away from Gotham, to the Pacific coast. In August, the Weekly announced that its staff was headed to Europe for a long-overdue rest. Before she left, however, Victoria was reminded one more time that she, the queen of individual liberty, was only being allowed to go abroad—she was not unfettered and free to do so. Just before the steamer was to set sail, Victoria, Tennie, and Blood were arrested after a Mrs. Truman brought charges that they were indebted to her for four hundred dollars. She claimed the money had been left with them at the brokerage firm some years back and she had only just that day gotten around to pursuing the case. Charles Brooke, who had so admirably represented them in court, once again came to the rescue, depositing security for more than the claim in lieu of bail. They were finally allowed to leave.
It was rumored that the Woodhull-Claflin-Blood party set off to France aboard the Lafayette with fifteen thousand dollars in their pockets from Henry Ward Beecher or his protectors. In the months before their departure, Plymouth Church had finally convened a committee to investigate the allegations involving the reverend and Mrs. Elizabeth Tilton. Beecher handpicked the committee, so there was little doubt in advance that it would exonerate him. Many people assumed, though, that Victoria and the others were paid off to go to Europe so they couldn’t be called as witnesses before the committee.
In the issue that announced their departure, the “proprietors and editor of the Weekly” sought to dispel the rumor of bribes by saying they had not “sold out to the Beecher party.” In any case, they added, they could not be bought off cheaply.
When their ship finally sailed from New York Harbor, the Woodhull party left a social upheaval in their wake.
NEW YORK CITY, AUGUST 1874
Nearly four years after Elizabeth Tilton unburdened herself to her husband about her affair with Henry Ward Beecher, and nearl
y two years after the Weekly published its notorious scandal issue detailing the story, the bombshell that had threatened to destroy Brooklyn finally exploded.
During the first two years, Theodore Tilton, Henry Bowen, an intermediary named Frank Moulton, and Henry Ward Beecher and his family had made Herculean efforts to contain the controversy. Those efforts continued after Victoria published the exposé and they were largely successful, despite the general currency given the sordid tale following her disclosures. Because the messenger was the “wicked” Woodhull, those who chose not to believe that Beecher had sinned had a good excuse. But by late 1873 efforts were under way at Plymouth Church to drop Theodore Tilton from its rolls for circulating and promoting scandalous rumors about Brother Beecher. Tilton had not set foot in Plymouth Church since 1870, but his self-imposed exile was apparently not good enough for the congregation, which wanted him formally written out. In October 1873, by a vote of 201 to 13, Tilton’s name was erased from the Plymouth Church rolls.
The following April, a Congregational church leader, the Reverend Leonard Bacon, delivered a public lecture in New Haven, Connecticut, where Beecher held his post at Yale Divinity School. Bacon’s topic was whether Plymouth Church had violated Congregational policy by dropping Tilton from its rolls without a formal and public investigation into whether he warranted expulsion. It was not that Bacon thought there was anything wrong with ridding the Brooklyn congregation of Tilton; it was the manner in which he was expelled that Bacon questioned. In fact, to show the extent of his support for Beecher, Bacon said in his lecture that Beecher had, if anything, been too magnanimous toward Tilton by allowing his name to remain in the church register for so many years. He then proceeded to call Tilton a “knave” and a “dog.”