by Mary Gabriel
Tilton had borne much by way of criticism and slander over the years, but Bacon’s name-calling was the final straw. In June 1874, Tilton published a response to Bacon in which he did not reveal the truth of his wife’s affair with Beecher but did include a short note written to him by Beecher in January 1871. In this note, Beecher offered a heartfelt apology for an unspecified crime and ended by saying he wished he were dead.
Tilton’s self-defense and the tantalizing note sparked a flurry of press reports questioning the good reverend. On June 27, shortly after Tilton’s letter to Bacon was published and in an effort to put the matter to rest, Beecher asked for a Plymouth Church investigation into the charges against him. In his letter requesting the hearing, he named the six men who would constitute the panel and who would, it was quite clear, under no circumstances find him guilty of any impropriety.
During the course of the hearing, which began in July, Tilton told the panel that Beecher had seduced his wife on numerous occasions. He produced documentary evidence in the form of letters between various people involved in the scandal. He also detailed his relationship with Victoria, which he described as contrived on his part to prevent her from publishing the story of the affair by providing her with “personal services and kindly attentions.” He said that all association with Woodhull had ended in April 1872.
Victoria was traveling during the proceedings, after her offer to testify had been refused by the committee, but the story was carried in every U.S. newspaper and several of the large English dailies. In this manner she was able to keep up with the details and was no doubt irked by the “truthful” Tilton’s explanation of their relationship as one in which he manipulated her into silence.
After returning to the United States from Europe, she was hounded by reporters at every stop to comment on the progress of the investigation. Finally in Chicago she did. In July, when a Chicago Times reporter asked her about Tilton, she said she knew him intimately because they had been lovers: “Correspondent—‘;Do I understand my dear madam, that the fascination was mutual and irresistible?’
“Mrs. W.—‘You will think so when I tell you that so enamored and infatuated with each other were we that for three months we were hardly out of each other’s sight, and that during that time he rarely left my house, day or night. Pardon me for the statement, but you sincerely seek truth, and you shall have it first-handed. . . . Of course we were lovers devoted, true, faithful lovers. Theodore was then estranged from his wife and undergoing all the agonies of the torture inflicted upon him by the treachery of his friend Mr. Beecher.’”
It was an unusually frank admission, even for Victoria. Later, while not denying the substance of her comments, she tried to distance herself from them by saying that even if the statement were true, it would be foolish for a woman in her position to say such a thing.
Back in Brooklyn, Beecher denied every bit of Tilton’s story, suggesting that he was the victim of unsolicited attention from Elizabeth Tilton and of a possible blackmail scheme by Tilton and Moulton. Elizabeth Tilton sided with Beecher. She was under Beecher’s protection and on the payroll of a group of prominent Plymouth Church members when she said in a letter to The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper that her husband was motivated to make the charges against Beecher by a hatred of him so profound that his sole goal in life was to ruin the reverend. She said that the letter that Tilton had produced in which she confessed her adultery had been obtained from her under duress when she was too ill to realize what she was writing.
By August 27, 1874, the Plymouth Church panel returned a verdict that surprised no one. The six-member panel concluded: “First—We find from the evidence that the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher did not commit adultery with Mrs. Elizabeth R. Tilton. . . .
“Second—We find from the evidence that Mr. Beecher has never committed any unchaste or improper act with Mrs. Tilton, nor made any unchaste or improper remark, proffer or solicitation to her of any kind or description whatever.
“Third—If this were a question of errors of judgment on the part of Mr. Beecher, it would be easy to criticize especially in the light of recent events.
“Fourth—We find nothing whatever in evidence that should impair the perfect confidence of Plymouth Church or the world in the Christian character and integrity of Henry Ward Beecher.”
The panel also found Elizabeth Tilton’s conduct, in becoming overly attached to her minister, “indefensible.”
If the wise men of Plymouth Church thought that this ruling would be the end of the scandal, they were wrong. Tilton and Moulton were so infuriated by Beecher’s insinuation that they were persecuting him, after they had spent years trying to protect him, that Tilton swore out a complaint in Brooklyn City Court against Beecher, charging him with “willfully alienating and destroying Elizabeth Tilton’s affection for her husband.” He demanded $100,000 for having “lost the comfort, society, aid and assistance of his said wife.”
The press, too, continued pursuing the case. The Associated Press at one point had thirty reporters assigned to the scandal, and local news organizations employed reporters to shadow each of the protagonists. One reporter’s stakeout position was high in a tree opposite Frank Moulton’s house. Another reporter went so far as to file a complaint against Tilton for libeling Beecher in order to force all the participants into court, thereby providing a more impartial arena than Plymouth Church for a thorough investigation.
VICTORIA HAD BEEN a peripheral figure during the Plymouth Church proceedings, a dark shadow hanging over them, but in August she once again took center stage. Just as the daily hearings in Brooklyn were ending, a pamphlet surfaced called Beecher, Tilton, Woodhull, the Creation of Society: All Four of Them Exposed, and if Possible Reformed, and Forgiven, in Dr. Treat’s Celebrated Letter to Victoria C. Woodhull. The pamphlet was gobbled up by a press eager for fresh angles on the case. What it provided were the most salacious details so far.
Joseph Treat had worked on the Weekly for less than a year, and much of that time was in 1873 when Victoria was in prison or on the road lecturing. By the fall of 1873 he had fallen out of favor with Woodhull, Claflin & Co. because he was part of the spiritualist faction that wanted her to publicize the details of her private life. He drafted a “letter” that he wanted the Weekly to print allegedly telling the world what Victoria refused to admit. As early as October 1873, Victoria issued a warning of sorts in the Weekly about Treat: “Nearly a year ago a lonely and confessedly unfortunate and wretched man came to me, and excited my sympathy by the story of his life. I gave him all the aid I could, partially, at least, feeding and nourishing him, and permitting him to sleep in my office, sometimes at personal inconvenience to myself. I introduced him to all my friends in the city and to those who visited the office from abroad; permitted him free access to the columns of the Weekly to get before the public (of which he took advantage to write the most fulsome things of me personally); in short did everything a person in my condition could do that was kind and comforting, and that a sister should do for a suffering and needy brother. I admired his talent and pitied his condition.
“This is the man who has busied himself writing these vile letters to my friends all over the country. Having been warmed into life and into the power to do harm by me, he takes advantage of the knowledge he has obtained in the guise of a friend to send his envenomed shafts where he thinks he can do me injury, and create prejudice.”
The Treat pamphlet accused Victoria of being a fraud who did not write one word of her editorials, speeches, or notes; of being an inveterate gambler who frequented a “policy shop”; of being a drunk; of working as a prostitute for Colonel Blood, who operated as a pimp to her and Tennie; of working with her father to force her late sister Utica into prostitution; of having a mother who, even at her advanced age, was sexually promiscuous with men other than her husband; of having Tilton and Beecher among her sexual clients; and of living in a virtual brothel.
Victoria had taken steps to rehabilitate her im
age in the nearly two years since the scandal issue. Her repeated vindication in court and the revelations in Brooklyn, which indicated she had been telling the truth, had gone a long way toward earning her increased respect, especially on the road. But as soon as the press published the Treat charges she was once again denounced as a “harlot.” No one sought to question the author’s motives or even his sanity. What he said confirmed the public’s worst suspicions about Victoria, in much the same way Harriet Beecher Stowe had three years earlier in “My Wife and I.” Any woman who dared discuss sexuality in public must be guilty of unspeakable crimes in private. As with “My Wife and I,” the Victoria Woodhull described in the Treat pamphlet would define her for generations.
NEW YORK CITY, APRIL 1875
If Victoria could not salvage her reputation, she was pragmatic and desperate enough to at least try to recoup some of the financial losses she had suffered since November 1872. Her brokerage business was dead, the Weekly just barely existed, and her only income was from lectures that the Treat disclosures threatened to kill.
In January 1875, she was back in Washington, where the women’s movement held its annual convention. But she was not there to fight for women’s rights. She was fighting for her own survival. Along with Blood and Tennie, she petitioned Congress for reimbursement of the losses they had sustained as a result of the obscenity case. In a letter to Congress they said that all the “losses and distresses to which your petitioners have been subjected were caused and brought upon them by these acts of the United States and that all these acts were unjust and unlawful, and when brought to trial in the United States District Court were dismissed as having no foundation in law.” They estimated that they had sustained losses of $500,000 but indicated that they would accept reimbursement of one-fifth that amount.
Their request was denied.
Victoria no doubt had been looking forward to an infusion of money to help her through the winter. Her health was failing and increasingly she was forced to cancel her lectures because of “lung” problems. She could not travel aboard the drafty railcars or speak in the cold halls rented for the occasions: she said the cold made her feel as though she was being strangled. The Weekly continued its appeals for money, but its published list of contributors was not long and the donations were usually no more than a dollar.
In April 1875, the Weekly ran an open appeal to Cornelius Vanderbilt signed by Victoria and Tennessee: “We want our hands supported; we want our Paper endowed beyond the fear of disaster . . . we want the cause of her emancipation so assisted that it may become an active moving power. To do all this, would require a paltry sum only when compared with your many millions—a sum whose absence neither you nor your heirs would scarcely feel; but which for what we ask it, would be salvation indeed.”
There is no evidence that Vanderbilt responded to their appeal.
By the spring, perhaps driven to a new path by Victoria’s despair, the Weekly began to reflect a change in philosophy: it began carrying articles defending Catholicism. The Weekly said that while the Vatican did not truly represent the doctrines of Christ, Catholicism was much closer to the tenets of Christianity than was Protestantism, which the Weekly said worshiped money as its god. This new interest in Catholicism in the Weekly edged out the spiritualism that had previously filled its columns.
In the May 6 Weekly, an article announced that the paper’s proprietors were taking a step “forward,” looking for the justification of social freedom in the Bible and in the teachings of Christ. As for sexual freedom, the proprietors had come to the conclusion that it was “not possible of the present order of society—of present civilization. We need a higher order and a better civilization. Then purity shall reign.”
While some people may have applauded this reversal, Victoria’s remaining followers accused her of abandoning the cornerstones of her public career: spirituality and free love.
NEW YORK CITY, MAY 1875
On May 11, Victoria was subpoenaed to appear in court in Brooklyn. Tilton’s civil suit against Beecher had begun in January, but neither side had dared to call Victoria until the case was well under way. Lawyers for both Tilton and Beecher had interviewed her and she had told them she would tell the truth on the stand, which was perhaps not what they wanted to hear. Beecher’s lawyers had finally summoned her, but not to testify; instead they asked her to turn over all letters and other documents she had received from Tilton during the course of their relationship.
On the morning of May 12, the Beecher trial, which had attracted as devoted a following as any theatrical production and on that day included a group of Scottish tourists, was delayed by a defense announcement that the court was awaiting some important papers. By 11:30 the crowd had become restless and even the judge appeared irritated by the delay. At 11:35 the court door opened and through it stepped one of the defense lawyers in the company of a woman dressed in a black suit, black straw hat, and veil who the gathering recognized immediately as Victoria Woodhull.
The Tribune reported that her appearance created “one of the most marked sensations that has occurred in the court-room since the trial began. There was much smothered laughter, and many rose to their feet and fixed their eyes on Mrs. Woodhull. The counsel on both sides turned in their chairs and looked at her. The jurymen smiled and whispered to one another, casting curious glances toward Mrs. Woodhull.” The Sun reported that the three “scandal folks” present that day—Theodore Tilton, Eunice Beecher (the wife of Henry Ward), and Frank Moulton—“made no effort to hide their interest.” The Herald reported that, for the Scottish tourists, Victoria was “a greater phenomenon than any other personage in the case.”
Victoria asked that she be allowed to explain the letters, not simply turn them over to the defense as Beecher’s lawyers had requested. After much negotiating at the bench—and no doubt to the delight of the audience—her request was granted: “Mrs. Woodhull was apparently abashed. She took a step nearer the bench and bowed to his Honor, who gravely returned the salutation,” The Sun reported. “During a moment of hesitation, which in the suspense seemed quite a long interval, she was apparently trying to control herself and think what to say. The previous confused murmur of the audience had given place to the most perfect silence. . . .
“‘I have a very few unimportant letters Judge, in my possession,’ Mrs. Woodhull began, speaking tremulously, while her mouth twitched as though she was barely able to control her nerves and her face reddened still more. Then she hesitated again, as though at a loss for words, and went on unsteadily. ‘I feel that in bringing me into this suit at this stage of the proceedings, an explanation is due me. They are letters which are entirely creditable to myself as well as to the gentleman who wrote them. I have no disposition to keep them from a court of justice. Perhaps you are aware, or perhaps you do not remember, that I have been imprisoned several times for the publication of this scandal. During that time my office was ransacked and all my private letters and papers taken away from me; therefore I have reason to believe that some of my private letters are in the hands of the defense as well as of the prosecution—they may not be—that is simply my private opinion—and the very few unimportant letters left in my possession, of course, cannot result in their disadvantage to myself, and I don’t wish to have any thought of that nature.’
“Mrs. Woodhull opened a Russia leather bag which she had held in her hand, disclosing a bundle of papers, and added, ‘I am perfectly willing to give them with this explanation.’ Then she bowed again to Judge Nelson, and, stood irresolutely. Her agitation had not subsided while she had been speaking, and her hands trembled as she took the papers out of the bag and handed them to Mr. Shearman. She seated herself in an adjacent chair, and lawyers Evarts, Porter, Tracy and Shearman grouped themselves apart and began hurriedly to read the documents.”
Beecher’s lawyers were disappointed. The letters neither disproved Tilton’s charges against Beecher nor undermined Tilton’s character. No doubt the reverend’s
legal team was especially hoping the letters would contain material damaging to Tilton; they already had in their hands several letters of an intimate nature.
My Dear Victoria: Put this under your pillow, dream of the writer, and peace be with you. Affectionately, Theodore Tilton.
My dear Victoria: Emma is expecting you at dinner this evening. It will be a picnic frolic for the three of us, held in the library . . . and graced with Frank’s Burgundy. I will call for you in a carriage at your office at a quarter past six o’clock. You will stay all night at Emma’s. Do not fail to be ready. Hastily, T.T.
Victoria: I have a room temporarily at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where I shall abide for a few days and until Frank’s return. I will ride up with you in your carriage this afternoon at 5 o’clock. If I don’t call for you, please call for me, Hastily, T.T.
But none of the documents presented that day by Victoria hinted at anything beyond a cordial relationship between herself and Mr. Tilton. Beecher’s crestfallen lawyers said they would not recall Tilton to the witness stand and shortly there-after rested the case for the defendant. Victoria, who had caused such a stir upon her arrival, left the courtroom quietly. She was escorted home by Blood, who had been waiting for her in the vestibule.
After 112 days, the Beecher-Tilton case ended on July 2 with a hung jury, which Plymouth Church interpreted as a victory for Beecher. The reverend had testified in his own defense but had declined to swear on the Bible, saying he had “conscientious scruples against it.” The church raised $100,000 to pay Beecher’s legal fees and also published the defense lawyers’ summation of the case for distribution to libraries throughout the country. Tilton did not have the resources to mount a similar effort; he was financially and personally ruined by the trial. As a result, the Beecher publication, for many institutions, became the only record of the case.