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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Woodhull
Victoria Woodhull
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Victoria Woodhull
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Born
Died
Knownfor Politics
women's rights
women's suffrage
feminism
civil rights
anti-slavery
stockbroker
journalism
free love
Spouse(s) Canning Woodhull (m.1853?)
Colonel James Blood (m. c.
18651876)
John Biddulph Martin (m. 18831901)
Children
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Parent(s)
Relatives
Contents
Signature
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having "insured it heavily,"[2] burned the family's rotting gristmill. When he tried to get compensated by
insurance, his arson and fraud were discovered; he was run off by a group of town vigilantes.[2] The
town held a "benefit" to raise funds to pay for the rest of the family's departure from Ohio.[2]
Early marriages
First marriage and family
When she was 14, Victoria met 28-year-old Canning Woodhull
(listed as "Channing" in some records), a doctor from a town
outside Rochester, New York. Her family had consulted him to
treat the girl for a chronic illness. Woodhull practiced medicine
in Ohio at a time when the state did not require formal medical
education and licensing. By some accounts, Woodhull claimed to
be the nephew of Caleb Smith Woodhull, mayor of New York
City from 1849 to 1851; in fact he was a distant cousin.
They were married on November 20, 1853.[10][11] Their marriage
certificate was recorded in Cleveland on November 23, 1853,
when Victoria was two months past her 15th birthday.[2][12] She
soon learned that her new husband was an alcoholic and a
womanizer. She often had to work outside the home to support
the family. She and Canning had two children, Byron and Zulu
(later Zula) Maude.[13] According to one account, Byron was
born with an intellectual disability in 1854, a condition Victoria
believed was caused by her husband's alcoholism. Another
version said his disability resulted from a fall from a window.
Victoria divorced her husband after having the two children, and
kept his surname.[3]
Second marriage
About 1866[14] Woodhull married Colonel James Harvey Blood, who also was marrying for a second
time. He had served in the Union Army in Missouri during the American Civil War, and had been
elected as city auditor of St. Louis, Missouri.
Free love
Woodhull's support of free love probably originated as she discovered the failings of her first husband.
Women who married in the United States during the 19th century were bound into the unions, even if
loveless, with few options to escape. Divorce, where possible, was scandalous, and women who
divorced were stigmatized and often ostracized by society. Victoria Woodhull concluded women should
have the choice to leave unbearable marriages. She railed against the hypocrisy of society's tolerating
married men who had mistresses and engaged in other sexual dalliances. In 1872, Woodhull publicly
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criticized well-known clergyman Henry Ward Beecher for adultery. Beecher had an affair with his
parishioner, Elizabeth Tilton, who later confessed to the affair.[15] Woodhull sent the accounts of the
affair through the federal mails, landing her in jail.[16] Woodhull believed in monogamous relationships,
although she did state she had the right also to change her mind: the choice to make love or not was in
every case the woman's choice (since this would place her in an equal status to the man, who had the
capacity to rape and physically overcome a woman, whereas a woman did not have that capacity with
respect to a man).[17] Woodhull said:
To woman, by nature, belongs the right of sexual determination. When the instinct is
aroused in her, then and then only should commerce follow. When woman rises from sexual
slavery to sexual freedom, into the ownership and control of her sexual organs, and man is
obliged to respect this freedom, then will this instinct become pure and holy; then will
woman be raised from the iniquity and morbidness in which she now wallows for existence,
and the intensity and glory of her creative functions be increased a hundred-fold . . .[18]
In her same (at the time, infamous) "Steinway speech," delivered on Monday, November 20, 1871 in
Steinway Hall, New York City, Woodhull also stated her opinion on free love quite clearly: "Yes, I am a
Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or
as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor
any law you can frame have any right to interfere."[19]
Careers
Stockbroker
Woodhull and her sister Tennessee (Tennie) Claflin became the first women stockbrokers and in 1870,
opened a brokerage firm on Wall Street. She made a fortune on the New York Stock Exchange.
Woodhull, Claflin & Company opened in 1870, with the assistance of the wealthy Cornelius Vanderbilt,
an admirer of Woodhull's skills as a medium; he is rumored to have been her sister Tennie's lover, and to
have seriously considered marrying her.[21] Newspapers such as the New York Herald hailed Woodhull
and Claflin as "the Queens of Finance" and "the Bewitching Brokers."[22] Many contemporary men's
journals (e.g., The Days' Doings) published sexualized images of the pair running their firm (although
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Newspaper editor
On the date of May 14, 1870, Woodhull and Claflin used the
money they had made from their brokerage to found a paper,
Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, its primary purpose to support
Victoria Claflin Woodhull for President of the United States,[23]
and which published for the next six years. Feminism was the
Weekly's primary interest,[23] but it became notorious for
publishing controversial opinions on taboo topics, advocating
among other things sex education, free love, women's suffrage,
short skirts, spiritualism, vegetarianism, and licensed
prostitution. Histories often state the paper advocated birth
control, but some historians disagree. The paper is now known
for printing the first English version of Karl Marx's Communist
Manifesto in its December 30, 1871 edition, and the paper
"argued the cause of labor with eloquence and skill.[23] James
Blood and Stephen Pearl Andrews wrote the majority of the
articles, as well as other able contributors.[23]
In 1872, the Weekly published a story that set off a national scandal and preoccupied the public for
months. Henry Ward Beecher, a renowned preacher of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church, had condemned
Woodhull's free love philosophy in his sermons. But a member of his church, Theodore Tilton, disclosed
to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a colleague of Woodhull, that his wife had confessed Beecher was
committing adultery with her. Provoked by such hypocrisy, Woodhull decided to expose Beecher. He
ended up standing trial in 1875, for adultery in a proceeding that proved to be one of the most
sensational legal episodes of the era, holding the attention of hundreds of thousands of Americans. The
trial ended with a hung jury.
George Francis Train once defended her. Other feminists of her time, including Susan B. Anthony,
disagreed with her tactics in pushing for women's equality. Some characterized her as opportunistic and
unpredictable; in one notable incident, she had a run-in with Anthony during a meeting of the National
Women's Suffrage Association (NWSA). (The radical NWSA later merged with the conservative
American Women's Suffrage Association [AWSA] to form the National American Woman Suffrage
Association.)
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some committee members. Learning of Woodhull's planned address, suffrage leaders postponed the
opening of the 1871 National Woman Suffrage Association's third annual convention in Washington in
order to attend the committee hearing. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Isabella Beecher
Hooker, saw Woodhull as the newest champion of their cause. They applauded her statement: "[W]omen
are the equals of men before the law, and are equal in all their rights."[24]
With the power of her first public appearance as a woman's rights advocate, Woodhull moved to the
leadership circle of the suffrage movement. Although her Constitutional argument was not original, she
focused unprecedented public attention on suffrage. Woodhull was the first woman ever to petition
Congress in person. Numerous newspapers reported her appearance before Congress. Frank Leslie's
Illustrated Newspaper printed a full-page engraving of Woodhull, surrounded by prominent suffragists,
delivering her argument.[14][25]
First International
Woodhull joined the International Workingmen's Association, also known as the First International. She
supported its goals by articles in her newspaper. In the United States, many Yankee radicals, former
abolitionists and other progressive activists, became involved in the organization, which had been
founded in England. German-American and ethnic Irish nearly lost control of the organization, and
feared its goals were going to be lost in the broad-based, democratic egalitarianism promoted by the
Americans. In 1871, the Germans expelled most of the English-speaking members of the First
International's U.S. sections, leading to the quick decline of the organization, as it failed to attract the
ethnic working class in America.[26] Karl Marx commented disparagingly on Woodhull in 1872, and
expressed approval of the expulsions.[27]
Presidential candidate
Woodhull announces her candidacy for President by writing a letter to the editor of the New York Herald
on April 2, 1870.[28]
Woodhull was nominated for President of the United States by the newly formed Equal Rights Party on
May 10, 1872, at Apollo Hall, New York City. A year earlier, she had announced her intention to run.
Also in 1871, she spoke publicly against the government being composed only of men; she proposed
developing a new constitution and a new government a year thence.[29] Her nomination was ratified at
the convention on June 6, 1872. They nominated the former slave and abolitionist leader Frederick
Douglass for Vice President. He did not attend the convention and never acknowledged the nomination.
He served as a presidential elector in the United States Electoral College for the State of New York. This
made her the first woman candidate.
While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for President of the
United States, some have questioned that priority given issues with the legality of her run. They disagree
with classifying it as a true candidacy because she was younger than the constitutionally mandated age
of 35. However, election coverage by contemporary newspapers does not suggest age was a significant
issue. The presidential inauguration was in March 1873. Woodhull's 35th birthday was in September
1873.
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That same day, a few days before the presidential election, U.S.
1872 caricature by Thomas Nast:
Federal Marshals arrested Woodhull, her second husband
Wife, carrying heavy burden of
Colonel James Blood, and her sister Tennie C. Claflin on charges
children and drunk husband,
of "publishing an obscene newspaper" because of the content of
admonishing (Mrs.) Satan (Victoria
this issue.[30] The sisters were held in the Ludlow Street Jail for
Woodhull), "I'd rather travel the
the next month, a place normally reserved for civil offenses, but
hardest path of matrimony than
which contained more hardened criminals as well. The arrest was
follow your footsteps." Mrs. Satan's
arranged by Anthony Comstock, the self-appointed moral
sign reads, "Be saved by free love."
defender of the nation at the time. Opponents raised questions
about censorship and government persecution. The three were
acquitted on a technicality six months later, but the arrest prevented Woodhull from attempting to vote
during the 1872 presidential election. With the publication of the scandal, Theodore Tilton, the husband
of Elizabeth, sued Beecher for "alienation of affection." The trial in 1875 was sensationalized across the
nation, and eventually resulted in a hung jury.
Woodhull again tried to gain nominations for the presidency in 1884 and 1892. Newspapers reported that
her 1892 attempt culminated in her nomination by the "National Woman Suffragists' Nominating
Convention" on September 21 of that year. Mary L. Stowe of California was nominated as the candidate
for vice president. The convention was held at Willard's Hotel in Boonville, New York, and Anna M.
Parker was its president. Some woman's suffrage organizations repudiated the nominations, however,
claiming that the nominating committee was unauthorized. Woodhull was quoted as saying that she was
"destined" by "prophecy" to be elected president of the United States in the upcoming election.
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In October 1876, Woodhull divorced her second husband, Colonel Blood. Less than a year later,
exhausted and possibly depressed, she left for England to start a new life. She made her first public
appearance as a lecturer at St. James's Hall in London on December 4, 1877. Her lecture was called "The
Human Body, the Temple of God," a lecture which she had previously presented in the United States.
Present at one of her lectures was the banker John Biddulph Martin. They began to see each other and
married on October 31, 1883. (His family disapproved of his marriage.)
From then on, she was known as Victoria Woodhull Martin. Under that name, she published the
magazine, The Humanitarian, from 1892 to 1901, with help from her daughter Zula Woodhull. After her
husband died in 1901, Martin gave up publishing and retired to the country, establishing residence at
Bredon's Norton.
Death
Woodhull, by then Martin, died on June 10, 1927, at Norton Park in Bredon's Norton, Worcestershire,
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See also
List of civil rights leaders
List of suffragists and suffragettes
List of women's rights activists
Ezra Heywood
Swami Laura Horos
Onward Victoria
Timeline of women's rights (other than voting)
Timeline of women's suffrage
International Workingmen's Association in America
References
Notes
1. Kemp, Bill (2016-11-15). "Free love advocate Victoria Woodhull excited Bloomington". The Pantagraph.
Retrieved 2016-04-13.
2. Johnson, 1956, p. 46
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31. "Victoria Martin, Suffragist, Dies. Nominated for President of the United States as Mrs. Woodhull in 1872.
Leader of Many Causes. Had Fostered Anglo-American Friendship Since She Became Wife of a Britisher
...". New York Times. June 11, 1927. Retrieved 2008-06-27.
32. Photo taken by RobertFrost1960 on September 21, 2010 (https://secure.flickr.com/photos/32157648@N08
/5019811422/), accessed June 9, 2011.
33. The Performing Arts: A Guide to the Reference Literature. Libraries Unlimited.
34. Woodhull Institute (http://woodhull.tv/about/); Retrieved 3 April 2013
35. "National Women's Hall of Fame". Greatwomen.org. Retrieved 2013-02-17.
36. "Women's Rights, Historic Sites Location List". Office of Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer.
37. Dunham, Mike. "ANCHORAGE: Review: Opera about first woman to run for president debuts in Anchorage
| Arts and Culture". ADN.com. Retrieved 2013-02-17.
Further reading
Brough, James. The Vixens. Simon & Schuster, 1980. ISBN 0-671-22688-6
Caplan, Sheri J. Petticoats and Pinstripes: Portraits of Women in Wall Street's History. Praeger, 2013. ISBN
978-1-4408-0265-2
Carpenter, Cari M. Selected Writings of Victoria Woodhull: Suffrage, Free Love, and Eugenics, Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2010
Frisken, Amanda. Victoria Woodhull's Sexual Revolution, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. ISBN
0-8122-3798-6
Gabriel, Mary. Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull Uncensored, Algonquin Books of Chapel
Hill, 1998, 372 pages. ISBN 1-56512-132-5
Goldsmith, Barbara. Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria
Woodhull, New York: Harper Perennial, 1998, 531 pages. ISBN 0-06-095332-2
Johnson, Gerald W. 1956. "Dynamic Victoria Woodhull" (http://www.americanheritage.com/content
/dynamic-victoria-woodhull). American Heritage Volume 7, No. 4, June 1956
MacPherson, Myra (2014). The scarlet sisters: sex, suffrage, and scandal in the Gilded Age (First ed.). New
York, NY: Twelve. ISBN9780446570237. LCCN2013027618. biography of Victoria Woodhull and
Tennessee Celeste Claflin
Marberry, M.M. Vicky. Funk & Wagnalls, New York. 1967
Meade, Marion. Free Woman, Alfred A. Knopf, Harper & Brothers, 1976
Sachs, Emanie. The Terrible Siren, Harper & Brothers, 1928
The Staff of the Historian's Office and National Portrait Gallery. 'If Elected...' Unsuccessful candidates for the
presidency 17961968. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Offices, 1972
Stern, Madeleine B., ed., The Victoria Woodhull Reader, Weston, Mass.: M&S Press, 1974
Underhill, Lois Beachy, The Woman Who Ran for President: The Many Lives of Victoria Woodhull
(Bridgehampton, N.Y.: Bridge Works, 1st ed. 1995 (ISBN 1-882593-10-3))
Publications
Antje Schrupp, Das Aufsehen erregende Leben der Victoria Woodhull (2002: Helmer).
Woodhull, Victoria C., Free Lover: Sex, Marriage and Eugenics in the Early Speeches of Victoria Woodhull
(Seattle, 2005). Four of her most important early and radical speeches on sexuality as facsimiles of the
original published versions. Includes: "The Principle of Social Freedom" (1872), "The Scare-crows of Sexual
Slavery" (1873), "The Elixir of Life" (1873), and "Tried as by Fire" (187374). ISBN 1-58742-050-3.
Woodhull, Victoria C., Lady Eugenist: Feminist Eugenics in the Speeches and Writings of Victoria Woodhull
(Seattle, 2005). Seven of her most important speeches and writings on eugenics. Five are facsimiles of the
original, published versions. Includes: "ChildrenTheir Rights and Privileges" (1871), "The Garden of
Eden" (1875, publ. 1890), "Stirpiculture" (1888), "Humanitarian Government" (1890), "The Rapid
Multiplication of the Unfit" (1891), and "The Scientific Propagation of the Human Race" (1893). ISBN
1-58742-040-6.
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Woodhull, Victoria C., Constitutional equality the logical result of the XIV and XV Amendments, which not
only declare who are citizens, but also define their rights, one of which is the right to vote without regard to
sex. New York: 1870.
Woodhull, Victoria C., The Origin, Tendencies and Principles of Government, or, A Review of the Rise and
Fall of Nations from Early Historic Time to the Present. New York: Woodhull, Claflin & Company, 1871.
Woodhull, Victoria C., Speech of Victoria C. Woodhull on the great political issue of constitutional equality,
delivered in Lincoln Hall, Washington, Cooper Institute, New York Academy of Music, Brooklyn, Academy of
Music, Philadelphia, Opera House, Syracuse: together with her secession speech delivered at Apollo Hall.
1871.
Woodhull, Victoria C. Martin, "The Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit". New York, 1891.
Davis, Paulina W., ed. A history of the national woman's rights movement for twenty years. New York:
Journeymen Printers' Cooperative Association, 1871.
Riddle, A.G., The Right of women to exercise the elective franchise under the Fourteenth Article of the
Constitution: speech of A.G. Riddle in the Suffrage Convention at Washington, January 11, 1871: the
argument was made in support of the Woodhull memorial, before the Judiciary Committee of the House of
Representatives, and reproduced in the Convention. Washington: 1871.
External links
Weston, Victoria. America's Victoria, Remembering Victoria Woodhull (http://www.imdb.com/title
/tt0963742) features Gloria Steinem and actress Kate Capshaw. Zoie Films Productions (1998).
PBS and Canadian Broadcasts.
Woodhull on harvard.edu (http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ww/woodhull.html)
Biographical timeline (http://www.nwhp.org/tlp/biographies/woodhull/woodhull_bio.html)
Horowitz, "Victoria Woodhull, Anthony Comstock, and Conflict over Sex in the United States in
the 1870s" (http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/justtop.cgi?act=justtop&url=http:
//www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/87.2/horowitz.html), The Journal of American History,
February 1987
STEPHANIE ATHEY, "Eugenic Feminisms in Late Nineteenth-Century America: Reading Race
in Victoria Woodhull, Frances Willard, Anna Julia Cooper and Ida B. Wells"
(http://www.genders.org/g31/g31_athey.txt), Genders Journal, 2000
"Legal Contender... Victoria C. Woodhull: First Woman to Run for President"
(http://feministgeek.com/teaching-learning/woodhull/), The Women's Quarterly (Fall 1988)
Victoria Woodhull (http://www.loc.gov/rr/news/topics/woodhull.html), Topics in Chronicling
America, Library of Congress
"A lecture on constitutional equality," delivered at Lincoln hall, Washington, D.C., Thursday,
February 16, 1871, by Victoria C. Woodhul (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?nawbib:3:.
/temp/~ammem_baJv::@@@mdb=mcc,nawbib,suffrg,mnwp,rbcmillerbib,awh,awhbib),
American Memory, Library of Congress
A history of the national woman's rights movement, for twenty years, with the proceedings of the
decade meeting held at Apollo hall, October 20, 1870, from 1850 to 1870, with an appendix
containing the history of the movement during the winter of 1871, in the national capitol, comp.
by Paulina W. Davis. (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?nawbib:1:.
/temp/~ammem_baJv::@@@mdb=mcc,nawbib,suffrg,mnwp,rbcmillerbib,awh,awhbib),
American Memory, Library of Congress
"And the truth shall make you free." A speech on the principles of social freedom, delivered in
Steinway hall, Nov. 20, 1871, by Victoria C. Woodhull (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query
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/D?nawbib:4:.
/temp/~ammem_baJv::@@@mdb=mcc,nawbib,suffrg,mnwp,rbcmillerbib,awh,awhbib),
American Memory, Library of Congress
"Tried as by Fire" at the University of South Carolina Library's Digital Collections Page
(http://www.sc.edu/library/digital/collections/woodhull.html)
"Victoria Claflin Woodhull". Suffragist, Social Reformer. Find a Grave. Apr 9, 2004. Retrieved
Aug 17, 2011.
Movie review: "America's Victoria, Remembering Victoria Woodhull"
(http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/justtop.cgi?act=justtop&url=http:
//www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/86.3/mr_11.html), The American Journal of History
America's Victoria: Remembering Victoria Woodhull (1998) (TV) (http://www.imdb.com/title
/tt0963742/) at the Internet Movie Database
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Victoria_Woodhull&oldid=723780400"
Categories: 1838 births 1927 deaths 19th-century American newspaper editors
19th-century American newspaper founders 19th-century American newspaper publishers (people)
19th-century women writers American abolitionists American classical liberals
American expatriates in England American feminists American libertarians
American stockbrokers American suffragists American women's rights activists Claflin family
Female United States presidential candidates Free love advocates Lecturers
Members of the International Workingmen's Association People from Licking County, Ohio
People from Worcestershire Sex-positive feminists United States presidential candidates, 1872
Women company founders Women in Ohio politics Women newspaper editors
Women of the Victorian era Women stockbrokers United States presidential candidates, 1884
United States presidential candidates, 1892
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