Victoria
Claflin, the sixth of ten children, was born in Homer, Ohio on 23rd
September, 1838. When Victoria was a child the family was forced to
leave Homer after her father, Reuben Claflin, was accused of an insurance
fraud. She received very little education and spent most of her childhood
with her family's travelling medicine show.
At the
age of fifteen Victoria married Canning Woodhull. The following year
she gave birth to Byron Woodhull. Over the next few years she earned
a living by telling fortunes, selling patent medicines and performing
a spiritualist act with her sister, Tennessee Claflin.
Canning
Woodhull was an alcoholic and in 1864 she divorced him and two years
later married Colonel James Blood. In 1868 Victoria Woodhull moved
to New York City where she became friends
with millionaire railroad magnate, Cornelius
Vanderbilt. With Vanderbilt's backing, the enterprising sisters
went into business as Wall Street's first female stockbrokers. The
sisters made a large amount of money and this enabled them to publish
their own journal, Woodhull and Claflin's
Weekly.
Woodhull's
journal was used to promote women's suffrage
and other radical causes such as the 8 hour work day, graduated income
tax, and profit sharing. Woodhull also exposed fraudulent activities
that were then rampant in the stock market. Woodhull became the leader
of the International Workingman's Association in New York and in 1872
controversially became the first person to publish The
Communist Manifesto by Karl
Marx and
Frederick
Engels.
In May
1872 Victoria Woodhull was nominated as the presidential candidate
of the Equal
Rights Party.
Although laws prohibited women from voting, there was nothing stopping
women from running for office. Woodhull suggested that Frederick
Douglass should
become her running partner but he declined the offer.
During
the campaign Woodhull called for the "reform of political and
social abuses; the emancipation of labor, and the enfranchisement
of women". Woodhull also argued in favour of improved civil rights
and the abolition of capital punishment. These policies gained her
the support of socialists, trade
unionists and women suffragists. However,
conservative leaders of the American
Woman Suffrage Association,
such as Susan
Anthony and
Elizabeth
Cady Stanton,
were shocked by some of her more extreme ideas and supported Horace
Greeley in
the election.
Friends of President Ulysses
Grant decided
to attack Victoria
Woodhull's character
and she was accused of having affairs with married men. It was also
alleged that Victoria's previous husband was an alcoholic and her
her sister, Utica Claflin, took drugs. Woodhull became convinced that
Henry
Ward Beecher was
behind these stories and decided to fight back. She now published
a story in the Woodhull
and Claflin's Weekly that
Beecher was having an affair with a married woman.
Woodhull was arrested and
charged under the Comstock Act for sending obscene literature through
the mail and was in prison on election day. (Woodhull's name did not
appear on the ballot because she was one year short of the Constitutionally
mandated age of thirty-five.) Over the next seven months Woodhull
was arrested eight times and had to endure several trials for obscenity
and libel. She was eventually acquitted of all charges but the legal
bills forced her into bankruptcy.
In 1878 Woodhull moved
to England. She continued to campaign for women's rights and in 1895
she established the Humanitarian
newspaper. Victoria Woodhull died on 9th June, 1927.
(1)
Victoria Woodhull, Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly (12th August,
1871)
Everybody
prates of the wonders of the present age of the world, and yet it
may be doubted whether any of us half estimate its really marvelous
character. Every age, objects some captious reader, or some discontented
pessimist, is a a great age to those that live in it, just as everybody’s
own country is the greatest of all countries, or as every mother’s
baby is the finest baby that ever was born. We must still regard this
latter half of the nineteenth century as the most distinguished speck
in the world’s history. There is, we believe, a hundred times
more mental activity at this time in the world at large than at any
previous period, and events are progressing in a proportionately rapid
ratio. It is an error to suppose that evolution in anything always
takes place at the same even rate.
Physically,
but in respect to man, the world is undergoing just at this nick of
time, in several respects, the greatest changes it has ever undergone
or can ever undergo, the transition from the fragmentary and imperfect
state to that which is integral and complete.
Notably,
in physical geography we are just solving the last problems, finding
the sources of the Nile, laying open the closed frontiers of China
and Japan, and the hidden secrets of Central Africa, and searching
the North Polar Sea. Every ocean is already navigated, every continent
and island familiarized to our acquaintanceship. A labor that has
thus occupied the race of man for five or ten thousand years, demanding
the greatest sacrifices and the most strenuous exertions, is getting
itself finished up, and the books of that business enterprise of humanity
are being closed up just about now. We have gone over the surface
of our entire inheritance in respect to landed estate, waterfront,
fisheries and navigation; and so to say, we have got our farm fenced
in. That makes an epoch.
But we
have done more. We have begun the unitary culture and administration
of this human habitat and domicile, instead of the fragmentary and
patchwork management which has prevailed through all the past ages.
We have learned how to put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes,
and we compass the earth’s circumference with steamers as regularly
as we cross a ferry; and all this has happened just now for the first
time, in all ages.
And we
are talking glibly of unitary weights and measures, of a unitary currency,
of a common and universal language, and finally of a Universal Government;
and nobody thinks stage of, or laughs at, these stupendous propositions
which fifty years ago would have been received perhaps with a guffaw
of derision. The world has been astonished so many times that it refuses
to be astonished any longer. The greater an enterprise or a proposition
nowadays the more likely it is to be believed in. Progression has
reached, or is just now reaching, the pivot-point of equilibration
where in place of resistance to elevation we gain acceleration and
momentum from mere weight; when reform of all sorts, instead of struggling
laboriously up hill, will be rushing down a declivity, helped by the
same law which has hitherto retarded it, the mere inertia of public
opinion. It is going presently to be easier to go ahead with increasing
velocity than it will be to stop, or even to be still.
Who can
calculate the immense revolution that such a state of things will
make in every sphere and department of human affairs. If inventors,
discoverers and experimenters had no difficulty whatever in commanding
sympathy and capital to test at the earliest moment every project
of human improvement; if money flowed all the more regularly and readily
into novelties, and because merely that they were novelties, if the
new dominated generally over the load, and the future over the past,
there is no calculating the velocity of human progress and growth
of society.
And it
is because we are just at the turning point from an old fogy and conservative
order of things, which has predominated through all the past periods
of history, and the more so the further back we look, to just this
normal and universal career of predominate progress; that indeed this
progress has begun already; that we have entered on the descending
grade, and so past the turning point; that we call this a wonderful
and exceptional age in the world’s history.
A few grand
hindrances, accumulated obstructions, and formidable obstacles have
hitherto hedged the tendency to this easy-going tendency to the easy
and rapid progression of the race. Despotism, slavery and oppressive
restrictions on women are or have been the chief barriers. Despotism
still lingers on the stage in Europe, but shudders with instinct of
its own early destruction or decay. Slavery has just met with its
quietus. Hindrances to the freedom of woman are rapidly yielding,
and will dissolve into nothing sooner than either of the other obstructions
referred to, as there are a thousand causes favoring that revolution
which have not favored the others, and as the accelerated movements
of reform itself is now brought to bear on this new subject of thought,
discussion and action.
(2)
Victoria Woodhull, Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly (28th October,
1871)
People
who do not stand upon principles and guide all their actions by them
are always found contradicting and stultifying themselves. People
who tell lies must resort to habitual lying in order to be consistent
and not expose themselves; but such persons are, sooner or later,
certain to be detected, since it is natural for people to speak the
truth rather than to lie; and sometimes they will forget themselves
and act in accordance with their natural inclination.
We are
forcibly reminded of this general rule of life from comparing the
present attitude of some of the "Boston Exclusives" with
that assumed by them in past time. Last week was presented the protest
against marriage laws made by Lucy Stone, who is most vehement against
us for now advocating their amendment; This week we contrast the position
of the editor-in-chief of the organ of the Exclusives with that she
occupied in 1869.
On the
15th of July, at a Woman Suffrage Convention at Plano, Ill., Mrs.
Livermore, then a resident of Chicago, made the following speech upon
the proposition that "the men and women most forward in this
movement are of immoral character," are such as we do not most
desire to pin our teeth to: "Mrs. Livermore," says the Aurora
Herald, "denied the above in toto. She was herself President
of the Woman Suffrage Association in the west, and Mrs. Jane Willing,
of Rockford, was the Secretary. The well-known advocates of the cause
were of the purest morality. No purer girl lives than Anna Dickinson?
No more tender mother than Mrs. Cady Stanton; no truer woman Susan
B. Anthony; and hosts of the great and good men throughout the land."
"But
what difference does it make to the hungry man whether his food comes
to him on a dish of gold or silver, or of wood? In either case it
satisfies hunger as well. What difference does it make who buys it?
And so with the truth - whether presented by an angel or a devil,
the truth is all the same; and blind is the man who cannot see that.
Is Woman Suffrage right? That is the question. What matters it who
advocates it, whether Free Lovers, Spiritualists, or the Methodists,
orthodox or heterodox? It makes no difference. ‘Truth is truth
wherever we find it.’" The Herald afterward says: "To
Mrs. Livermore was tendered the thanks of the Convention for her instructive
speeches, accompanied by a roll of greenbacks."
Mrs. Livermore
at that time belonged to the class who were the objects of abuse,
who were called all sorts of bad names by the then "respectables."
But a change has come over the spirit of her life. She has contracted
the disease of respectability and can abuse as vilely as the most
pious of former times. Then Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony were good
women and true. Now they are not fit for the excellent Bostonians
to mingle with at all; indeed, they will have nothing to do with anything
that either these ladies associate with. They are even doing the cause
"great injury," according to the paper Mrs. Livermore edits,
because they hold more advanced social ideas than are considered admissible
by the clique of which she is chief. But Mrs. Livermore considered
the truth of suffrage to be acceptable even from Free Lovers and Spiritualists
then, while now they are not even to be permitted to so much as approach
the platform upon which "the immaculates" stand. They are
even so discourteous as to tell them in a call for a convention that
they are not wanted. We presume Mrs. Livermore and the rest of her
set are not as hungry for suffrage now as she was then, since they
will not accept it through anything that has a taint of Wood about
it. Suffrage must be tendered to them on golden plates; and be most
graciously offered by satin-clothed servants; their tastes have so
improved upon what they were that anything short of this will not
agree with their present delicate sensibilities. . . .
For our
part we should be very glad to have the movement for suffrage receive
the support of all persons who are honest advocates of it; but we
maintain now, as Mrs. Livermore did in 1869, that whoever rejects
aid, let it come from whatever source it may, is not for suffrage
but against it; and Mrs. Livermore and all the rest of that clique
know it is so. And when they say that the 150,000 readers of a paper
which advocates suffrage earnestly and persistently, are not representatives
of the movement, and, in fact do not belong to it at all, simply because
they patronize that paper which advocates Lucy Stone’s former
marriage theory in preference to the Journal, they know they speak
a lie of which they are liable to convict themselves, whenever the
spirit of truth predominates over their assumed policy of falsehood.
(3)
Victoria Woodhull, Lecture on Constitutional Equality (20th
February, 1872)
That the framers of the Constitution had Woman's Rights
clearly in their minds is borne out by its whole structure. Nowhere
is the word man used in contradistinction to woman.
They avoided both terms and used the word "persons"
for the same reason as they avoided the word "slavery,"
namely, to prevent an untimely contest over rights which
might prematurely be discussed to the injury of the infant
republic.
The issue upon the question
of female suffrage being thus definitely settled, and its rights inalienably
secured to woman, a brighter future dawns upon the country. Woman
can now unite in purifying the elements of political strife in restoring
the government to pristine integrity, strength and vigor. To do this,
many reforms become of absolute necessity. Prominent in these are:
A complete reform in the
Congressional and Legislative work, by which all political discussion
shall be banished from legislative halls, and debate be limited to
the actual business of the people.
A complete reform in Executive
and Departmental conduct, by which the President and the Secretaries
of the United States, and the Governors and State officers, shall
be forced to recognize that they are the servants of the people, appointed
to attend to the business of the people, and not for
the purpose of perpetuating their official positions, or of securing
the plunder of public trusts for the enrichment of their
political adherents and supporters.
A reform in the tenure
of office, by which the Presidency shall be limited to one term, with
a retiring life pension, and a
permanent seat in the Federal Senate, where his Presidential
experience may become serviceable to the nation, and on
the dignity and life emolument of Presidential Senator he
shall be placed above all other political positions, and be excluded
from all professional pursuits.
A reform between the relations
of the employer and employed, by which shall be secured the practice
of the great natural law, of one-third of time to labor, one-third
to recreation and
one-third to rest, that by this intellectual improvement
and physical development may go on to that perfection
which the Almighty Creator designed.
A reform in the system
of crime punishment, by which the death penalty shall no longer be
inflicted - by which the hardened criminal shall have no human chance
of being let loose to harass society until the term of the sentence,
whatever that may be, shall have expired, and by which, during that
term, the entire prison employment shall be for - and the product
thereof be faithfully paid over to - the support of the criminal's
family, instead of being absorbed by the legal thieves to whom, in
most cases, the administration of prison discipline has been entrusted,
and by whom atrocities are perpetrated in the secrecy of the prison
enclosure, which, were they revealed, would shock the moral sense
of all mankind.
In the broadest sense,
I claim to be the friend of equal rights, a faithful worker in the
cause of human advancement;
and more especially the friend, supporter, co-laborer with
those who strive to encourage the poor and the friendless.
If I obtain the position
of President of the United States, I promise that woman's strength
and woman's will with God's support, if he vouchsafe it, shall open
to them, and to this country, a new career of greatness in the race
of nations.
In accordance with the
above, we shall assume the new position that the rights of women under
the Constitution are complete, and hereafter we shall contend, I not
for a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, but that the
Constitution already recognizes women as citizens, and that
they are justly entitled to all the privileges and immunities
of citizens.
It will therefore be our
duty to call on women everywhere to come boldly forward and exercise
the right they are thus
guaranteed. It is not to be expected that men who assume that they
alone, as citizens of the United States, are entitled
to all the immunities and privileges guaranteed by the Constitution,
will consent that women may exercise the right of
suffrage until they are compelled. We will never cease the struggle
until they are recognized, and we see women established in their true
position of equality with the rest of the citizens of the United States.
(4)
Victoria Woodhull, speech, (February,
1872)
These privileged classes of the people have an enduring hatred for
me, and I am glad they have. I am a friend not only of freedom in
all things, and in every form, but also for equality and justice as
well. These cannot be inaugurated except through revolution. I am
denounced as desiring to precipitate revolution. I acknowledge it.
I am for revolution, if to get equality and justice it is required.
(5)
Cincinnati Commercial, May 11, 1872
Last night I stepped
into Apollo Hall, one of the noblest and most picturesque halls in
the city, where the National Convention of the Woodhull and Claflin,
Male and Female Labor Party are holding a two days’ session.
As I approached the place, I heard the voice of Mrs. Woodhull resounding
through the hall, and when I entered I found her standing in front
of the platform, which was filled with people of both sexes, and declaiming
in the most impassioned style, before a crowded audience of men and
women who had been wrought up to a very high state of excitement.
The scene was really dramatic, and to those who were in sympathy with
it, it was, doubtless "thrilling," "glorious,"
"sublime." Somehow or other, Mrs. Woodhull, as she stood
there, dressed in plain black, with flushed face, gleaming eye, locks
partly disheveled, upraised arm and quivering under the fire of her
own rhapsody, reminded me of the great Rachel in some of those tragic
or fervid passages in which the dominating powers of her nature and
genius were displayed in their highest effect. She seemed at moments
like one possessed, and the eloquence which poured from her lips in
reckless torrents swept through the souls of the multitude in a way
which caused them to burst, every now and then, with uproarious enthusiasm.
A moment after I entered there was one of these spiritual explosions,
which brought her to a brief pause, and the first sentence I heard
was her exclamation, in loud, clear tone: "Who will dare to attempt
to unlock the luminous portals of the future with the rusty key of
the past?" Age, indeed who will? was the thought which involuntary
came to one’s mind while looking at the extraordinary spectacle
displayed in Apollo Hall.
When her declamation ended,
the audience, masculine and feminine, sprang to their feet and cheered
till their wind was exhausted, cheered with a frenzy and force that
must have startled the multitudinous promenaders who swept along Broadway.
The heroine of the moment disappeared from the platform, but the multitude
encored till she returned, stepped to the front, and bowed once and
again her acknowledgments for the applause.
Then a stout and hearty
personage, who was recognized by the Chair as Judge Carter of Cincinnati,
stepped quickly to the front, and in stentorian tones nominated Mrs.
Victoria C. Woodhull as a candidate for the Presidency of the United
States. "All who are in favor of the nomination, say aye"
were the words from the Chair, and instantly the shouts of the Convention,
delegates and outsiders, burst forth in a roar, thunderous and continuous,
which might have blown the roof of the building to the skies. Again
Mrs. Woodhull appeared on the platform, and accepted the nomination
in a few words.
Then followed an hour’s
wrangle, with countless speeches as to the candidate for the Vice
Presidency. The first nomination made was that of Frederick Douglass,
who was eulogized by half a dozen speakers in succession, and opposed
by two or three, on various grounds. We had the oppressed sex represented
by Woodhull; we must have the oppressed race represented by Douglass.
Other names followed: Ben Wade, Theodore Tilton, Spotted Tail, Ben
Butler, Henry Ward Beecher, Robert Dale Owen, Governor Campbell, Wendell
Phillips, Richard
Trevithick, and others.
Frederick Douglass, however, at last got the vote of the Convention.
And was thus nominated for the second place on the Woodhull Presidential
ticket - the Executive Committee being empowered to substitute another
name in case of his refusal to accept.
The platform of the party,
which demands a new National Constitution, and numerous other things
in the revolutionary line, was subsequently adopted.
I forgot to say that throughout
the entertainment, the audience were excessively merry and were as
wildly enthusiastic. She left the place pretty well exhausted with
cheering. The audience were highly respectable, as well as large and
strikingly American in physiognomy and appearance. There were large
numbers of fashionable dressed ladies, and most of the gentlemen evidently
belonged to the business and professional classes. There were also
plenty of "Reformers," and in fact, it was they who contributed
the real genius of the assemblage.
At the close of the session,
Mrs. Woodhull, the nominee for the Presidency, passed into an ante-room,
where her friends crowded to congratulate her. She was in ecstasy,
and so was her sister, Miss Claflin. Her face beamed under her high-crowned
Neapolitan black hat. She shook hands with the gentlemen enthusiastically.
The ladies kissed her and embraced her, kissed each other, and kissed
her again. I never before saw so much kissing and hugging in public,
nor, for that matter, in private either. Men were not afraid to pass
hands round women who were not their wives, and women indulged in
political osculation till they were tired.
(6)
Victoria Woodhull, Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly (15th June,
1872)
From various
quarters we hear the query, "Do these reformers really mean what
they have put forth as their platform, or have they willfully perpetrated
a large joke?" Had the inquirers been present in Apollo Hall
and taken note of the sort of material that constituted the convention
which constructed the platform, there would have been no need of making
this inquiry. If there ever were serious people, meaning every word
they said, those to whom we refer were such. And although the enthusiasm
of the occasion raised, at times, to a high degree, it never ruled,
at the expense of wisdom and discretion.
Hence,
we may safely assure everybody that every word which appears either
in platform or resolutions which that convention formed, was intended
in dead earnest. Some brainless editors who have never grasped an
idea or had the capacity to entertain a principle, but who, from a
continuous practice of lines of policy, bring all their natural capacities
to do either, may talk of its being child’s play and nonsense;
but they will live long enough, if they live only till next November
to learn that their wisdom is indeed foolishness.
Many imagine
because, in reality, they have never stopped to think about it, that
our systems of law, organism and execution, are consistent with the
theory laid down in the Declaration of Independence. There could be
no greater error than this supposition. There is not even the faintest
shadow of truth in it, unless, perhaps, it may be said that the first
section of the Fourteenth Amendment may be an exception; and whatever
of salvation there was in that, they attempted to defeat, by the next
section, fearing to let a single grain of real freedom and equality
stand free from the tares of despotism.
The declaration
that the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is
inalienable in the individual was the first expression of the great
change in the uses of government, which is but just now beginning
to be understood. We say beginning to be understood, for there is
no law upon the statute books of any country, whose first purpose
is to establish and protect human rights, but they, one and all, are
for the purpose of establishing and protecting property rights, to
the utter ignoring of those of the higher sort.
If the
right to life were, by law held to be, as the declaration maintains
it to be, inalienable, there could be no law providing for the death
penalty. In the abstract sense, the taking of life, whether by the
individual or by the State, is equally murder, and there is no sort
of logic that can controvert this fact. If it were necessary that
a murderer should be hung to save the lives of members of the community,
there might be a reasonable argument in favor of capital punishment;
but nobody pretends that any such proceeding is necessary in these
days of safety asylums like our prisons. Therefore, when the community
commits murder, the crime is multiplied from the individual into the
whole number who constitute the community, each one of whom is equally
guilty with the person whom they murder for having murdered, and there
is no way of escaping the inevitable law of divine compensation and
justice, which is administered without regard to any arbitrary distinctions.
The same
rule is applicable in the same way when persons are deprived of their
liberty for any purpose except for the protection of the community.
The present imprisonment of criminals is to carry out the idea of
punishment. Nothing that is thus administered can by any possibility
be just, since justice exists alone in the immutable laws of the universe,
while human laws ought to be so founded upon principles as not to
militate in any manner whatever against their prerogatives.
But if
in our systems, the inalienable rights to life and liberty are infringed,
how much more so is that to the pursuit of happiness. This right is
hedged upon every possible side by all conceivable forms of law and
standards of public opinion. Instead of being formulated to protect
this inalienable right, our laws could not have been better constructed
if prohibition were their purpose.
The right
to the pursuit of happiness means that every individual has the right
to seek his or her happiness, as he or she may determine; and as a
corollary the necessary implication follow that in whatever manner
the individual shall choose to seek that happiness, all other individuals
should respect and the community as a whole protect.
But, says
the objector, if everybody shall be permitted to follow his or her
own inclinations in the pursuit of happiness and there should be no
law to prevent it, what assurance is there that such pursuit will
not interfere with the rights of others. Now this is the great stumbling-block
everywhere raised to oppose the spread of the new interpretation of
individual freedom, but at the same time the most fallacious one possible
to be conceived of. Nobody denies the right of community to erect
and maintain a government; but it is demanded that government be restricted
to its legitimate uses, the protection of individual rights. If this
idea be properly conceived of, the objection named will vanish before
is as mist before the noon-day sun.
Up to,
and including this time, governments have not been maintained to protect
the inalienable rights of individuals, but to enforce the edicts of
one class of the community upon its other classes; and no better illustration
of this statement could be had than the manner in which one-half of
all the people are denied a right freely exercised by the other half,
this other half being the denying power. This is a self-evident exemplification
of the various theories which our governments, national and State,
vitalize; and which are declared by the platform of the Equal Rights
Party, to be far behind our present civilization.
It is the
mission of this party to reconstruct the government so that the theories
it shall give vitality to shall be those set forth in the Declaration
of Independence, which are in strict accordance with the theory which
involves all other theories; the theory that there are such things
as human rights, all-sided freedom, equality, justice and equity;
not only in one specific department of life, but in all departments;
in the political, the social, the industrial and the educational departments;
which then include all that can properly be brought within the legitimate
limit and sphere of government; since it has not jurisdiction over
those things that necessarily are matters of individual thought and
conscience.
At least
seven-tenths of all the people, whether conscious of it or not, naturally
and inevitable belong to the Equal Rights Party. Not a person who
is not constitutionally opposed to freedom and equity, can deny a
single proposition of principle laid down as its platform. It is too
true, however, that, heretofore the people generally have had no considerable
realization of the theories laid down by the founders of our government.
But it may safely be assumed that they require only to be presented
to be apprehended, appreciated and accepted; and in this fact rests
the certain success of the Equal Rights Party.
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