February 10, 1872
[Page 8]
PERSONAL AND PRESIDENTIAL.
All the readers of this paper, and some others, know perfectly well that Victoria C. Woodhull has not been an inactive woman during the last two or three years. Her private life is her own, although it has been a subject of free comment. As the individual American, however, is supposed to live in a glass house, into and through which the public have a right to look, she has, perhaps, no ground of complaint on that score, only that, with some others, she would complain not of intrusive comment but of deliberative misrepresentation. Her public life is at the public service.
In April, 1869, the world was startled from its propriety by the announcement of a woman’s intention to run for the Presidential chair. A few persons thought this was a freak of insanity, others read in it an outrageous craving for personal notoriety.
Some wonderingly inquired whether ‘the woman’ could possibly be in earnest, while the community at large laughed at the ridiculous presumption of a woman who thus dared to outrage the proprieties and brave an ordeal of unfriendly criticism and aspersion from which a case-hardened political adventurer might well recoil. A few generous exception there were, indeed, who neither blamed nor ridiculed, but saw in the fact a Sign of the Times, and left events to shape their own course. Among the foremost of these bold free-thinkers was Mr. Bennett. The columns of the Herald were thrown open to Mrs. Woodhull; in them
her presidential pronunciamiento and her views of government were enunciated, and if the Herald did not praise, it did not blame. It simply recorded progress and change, and left its readers free to choose between the old and the new.
The objects that Victoria C. Woodhull had in view in her presidential candidature were multiform. The most prominent was the deliberate announcement of her conviction that a woman had political rights–that she had, moreover, intellectual capacity for the highest political position. A woman’s claim to the highest office in the gift of the nation at once covered the whole ground of ‘woman’s rights.’ The right to vote and to work had been talked; the equal capacity of woman had been advanced, but nothing practical had been done. Victoria C. Woodhull stepped to the front, and, grasping the hostile weapons, concentrated them on herself and undertook to receive the full charge of ridicule, obloquy and detestation, in the hope that the cause might triumph.
Her object has been gained. A woman has been heard in Congress, a woman’s arguments have been respectfully listened to by the Judiciary Committee. Women are admitted to colleges, practice law, in one Territory have been admitted to political rights, and that cause which was once a by-word and term of reproach, a laughing-stock and a thing of derision, is now held in respect and is become the leading question by whose issue the social and political regeneration, not only of this nation, but of all nations, is to be
determined. It is decided that woman’s equality with man in all the functions of social and political life is to be the corner-stone of the new edifice in the coming time.
The growth of the woman question, like all great projections of free thought in all reformatory periods of the world’s history, has opened up innumerable correlative topics. A review of our whole social and moral condition is impending. After dissonance, harmony.
Inasmuch as the self-nominated candidateship of Victoria C. Woodhull for the Presidential office still disturbs some weak minds with visions of unknown possibilities, and inasmuch as she values unity of action far beyond any purposes of personal advancement, Victoria C. Woodhull repeats, what she has frequently said, that the purposes for which she advanced her name signifying Presidential aspirations are accomplished.
We are approaching a season of Presidential nominations, and all political parties are skirmishing for favorable positions and points of departure. It is nearly certain that the regular Republicans will renominate General Grant. It is not yet evident that the Democrats will not nominate an independent ticket. There is a deal of wire-working going on looking to union between disaffected Republicans and Democrats, and undoubtedly such a programme is already formed. Whether it can succeed is not certain, since democracy will resist final burial with all the energy of despair. But such a consummation will come or there will be a straight Democratic nomination, in which case there will also be a broad field for a third party, made up of all the varied elements of radical reform, standing upon a platform of unmistakable meaning, and under the appellation of
THE EQUAL RIGHTS PARTY.
It was with this view that the National Labor Union were invited to postpone their Columbus Convention ; and the general favor with which the idea of a Union Convention is received promises well for its accomplishment.
It should be in a peculiar sense a spontaneous gathering, to which the people should go, leaving all personal ambitions and prejudices at home; and, being imbued with the great purposes in view, they would construct a platform of principles to which none could object, and wide enough for all to gather upon, and which would inspire enthusiasm in the hearts of the people, from the very fact of the harmony and unity of purpose in which it was conceived. This is an age of rapid progress. Who can say that a party thus begun might not sweep over the country like a refreshing rain after a long drouth, [sic[ to the perfect astonishment even of its own movers.
At all events, there will be several elements in the next canvass which have never before manifested themselves in a Presidential election, each of which, acting separately, would produce modifying effects upon the vote. The Labor Unionists are a power if they resolve to work for political purposes. So also are the Temperance Reformers, while the Woman Suffragists are by no means to be ignored; and the more recent developments looking to the political action of Spiritualists will cause whatever parties there may be in the field to proceed with the utmost caution. The Spiritualists alone, acting in unison, can defeat any party, and they will defeat any party which does not carry at its head the promise, at least, of Equal Humanitarian Rights.
It is all of these branches of reform that should meet in common convention and organize for the impending campaign.
It is because such events are at hand that Victoria C. Woodhull at this particular time wishes her position distinctly understood, so that nothing relative to it can be made an objection by anybody to the proposed Convention. Whatever she has done has been with the sole view of pushing the car of progress and justice, and entirely without reference to personal considerations. She has and makes no claim upon anybody, but feels amply repaid for whatever service it has been her privilege to render the common cause. Indeed, she believes there are wider fields of reform than open to view in the White House, while those upon which she has recently entered are so radical and revolutionary, and so generally unpopular among those who now hold and dispense the national favors, that the idea of political preferment in her case is precluded. She has only to add, that had she been a political aspirant, she would not have entered upon them. Let people who have made her motives only those of an ambitious woman consider this before they repeat their assertions. She will work for the election of the candidate of the Equal Rights Party, and to defeat any party which still adheres to the right of the government to, at its will only, dispense the right to vote among citizens, or, if it please them, to withhold it altogether.
[Page 4]
“FREE LOVE,” MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.
BY MRS. GOODRICH WILLARD
No. I.
The conservative world today professes to be greatly shocked and dreadfully disgusted at the “free-love” doctrines put forth by a certain class of woman suffragists.
Now, if the “free lovers” are so greatly in error and the conservative world so neatly right, it seems to me that it would be very easy to show up the errors of the former, and thus put a stop to the spread of their false doctrines.
Instead of this, what do we see? The conservative world, including the Church, seems powerless to check the “free-love” tide. There must be a reason for this, and, to me, the reason is very plain. It is because the conservative world is deeper in the mud than the “free lovers” are in the mire. Satan cannot reprove sin with any hope of success. The difference between the “free lovers” and the conservatives is that the former preach boldly what the latter secretly practice.
I believe that today Victoria Woodhull is leading a virtuous life, while the majority of those who are howling at her are secretly and habitually guilty of adultery or licentiousness; and they howl because they fear exposure. I am glad if the time has come for the fulfillment of that prophecy which declares that that which is done in secret shall be proclaimed on the house-top.
Conservatives! Pharisees ! hypocrites! put your own feet on the solid ground of moral right and virtue-cast the beam out of your own eye before you attempt to pluck the mote from the eye of your sister.
There is, there can be, no difference of opinion about the right of every person to exercise the freest love for everybody that is lovely and lovable, in the same sense that we love a beautiful or fragrant flower. Such a love must be free; no law can touch it, because it is purely a personal matter. It does not even require that the love should be mutual, and, of course, it cannot involve or injure the rights of any other person. There would be no pith or point to the assertion or to the opposition to free-love doctrines on such grounds. But such love does not imply or constitute marriage.
True marriage implies a mutual love and a contract or compact of union between two persons of opposite sex. Nothing less than this can be called marriage in any true sense of the word. The real question at issue is, shall we have marriage at all or shall we not? Shall that love—shall that sexual relation that implies parentage, that involves the rights and happiness of partner and child, that lies at the very foundation of all social organization and order—I say,shall such a relation be regulated by mutual legal compact—shall it be tethered to law and order, or shall it be left solely to individual control, and therefore in multitudes of cases to
the fickle caprice of designing or misguided men and women.
I reply in the most positive and emphatic terms, that social organization and order imply the regulation b civil law of all important relations that exist between or affect second and third parties. Civil law is, or should be, the expression of the highest moral tone of the best developed element of society, and this moral tone, expressed and enforced by law, controls, or should control, the lower and baser elements, which, if left to themselves, would recognize no rights but their own selfish desires.
[Ah! Mrs. Willard, are you not making a rather broad assertion ? Does social organization imply the regulation as you first state ; or the control, as you state last ? There is a wide difference between the right to regulate and the right to control. It seems to us that Mrs. Willard utterly ignores the logic of individual freedom, since she says ” some people would recognize no rights but their own selfish desires.” Doesn’t Mrs. Willard see that freedom is the only cure for the lawlessness of which she complains, which is legalized by present marriage customs? Or can she not comprehend that in freedom no expression of selfish desires is possible unless they first find a consenting party. And who has the right to object in that case? Be sure you comprehend freedom, Mrs. Willard, before you presume to settle what its consequences will be.]
Men will bind themselves before the world to obey a much higher code of morality than they would practice in secret ; and it is in this way that society lifts itself up to a higher plane of life and action. In the light of a higher morality than their own, men are ashamed of their secret practices, and when they secretly disobey laws to which they have openly given a voluntary assent, it becomes necessary to expose them, and then their own sense of shame and their fear of further exposure are often enough to compel reform and obedience.
[A most successful manner by which to manufacture hypocrites! Compel men to be open in all their actions, and banish canting sycophancy. If Mrs. Willard can invent a system by which to legislate morality into men and women, perhaps by a little further experiment she may also find the means to legislate intellectuality into them, and thus do away with the necessity of education. ]
Mrs. Woodhull asserts most positively that all which is good and commendable now existing in the marriage relation, would continue to exist if ail marriage laws were repealed to-morrow. I am just as positive that it would not continue to exist long. Public opinion might preserve and maintain the present legal status of sexual morality for a while, but civil law is the form and expression of public morality, and this moral tone or status could not long remain after its form and expression had been destroyed.
[We do not know by what authority Mrs. Willard assumes this position. We have the right to assume the position which we occupy, since the extension of freedom in every other direction has been accompanied by beneficial results. It is one thing to assume: anybody can do that. It is quite another matter to deduce conclusions from the logic of events. Only those who can separate principles from effects are capable of this.]
Civil marriage should embody the form and expression of the highest moral sense of that sexual relation that implies parentage; but today it does not. The best and most intelligent element of society has outgrown our civil code of marriage laws and regulations. I am just as much opposed to the present unjust law and conditions of marriage as Mrs. Woodhull, but I would not abrogate the present laws until I had substituted better ones.
[We have never advocated the immediate and unconditional repeal of all laws to regulate marriage. But we do say the reasons that we presented to prove the right to institute such laws apply equally to numerous other things beside marriage. If the children argument is advanced to prove the right to control marriage, why should not laws also be enacted to compel people to eat and drink such things as the doctors tell us are conducive to health. It seems to us that health for children is of a vast deal more importance than the mere matter of support during youth. It is always an indication of wisdom in a person who undertakes to wade in deep water to be sure he knows all the surroundings, lest in escaping one “hole” he falls into others of which he knows nothing.]
In all the relations of life (especially in one so fundamental and vital to society as the sexual), where two or more persons are concerned, the law should seek to bind the parties to deal truly and justly by each other, to keep them on their best behavior, to throw them upon their honor, and when either of them fails to come up to the standard of what is just and right, then the law should take cognizance of the failure in such a way that the one who has acted falsely and basely should feel that he has compromised his honor and disgraced himself, and that in so far as his conduct has been base, he has shown himself or herself unworthy of trust and confidence.
[To the doctrine of total depravity we oppose that of the inate goodness of the human heart.]
If public opinion could become so demoralized that a man could feel as if it was perfectly honorable for him to desert his wife at any time, even when the law of maternity had placed her in a condition that made his loving care and attention essential to her health and happiness, I am very certain that greater misery and worse children would result from the reform than under the present laws and conditions of marriage, bad as they are.
[Women should be placed upon such a footing by the general customs of society that they will be perfectly independent of men. Then there will be no such thing as desertion. And women will only have children when they desire them. Such children are never, while all others are liable to be, bad, not only intellectually and morally, but also physically.]
If I understand Mrs. Woodhull aright, she would have no legal form or recognition of the conjugal relation; and now, with the kindest feelings toward Mrs. Woodhull, and without at all impugning her motives or her character, I must say, in all sincerity, that I believe that such doctrines, if fully carried out and practically realized, would produce such a lawless condition of society as would render social order and self-government impossible.
[According to Mrs. Willard, society all these years has been advancing backward. It ought to have been going toward despotism instead of toward freedom; toward absolutism instead of democracy.]
I am uncompromisingly opposed to every form of slavery, but I am just as strongly opposed to unbridled license and lawlessness. It is no more slavery to bind ourselves by a solemn compact of marriage in such a way as would lead us to repress the evil passions and tendencies of our nature and cultivate the best feelings and affections toward each other, than it would be slavery to join a temperance society and bind ourselves not to get drunk.
[Will Mrs. Willard define slavery, and also license? And is she commissioned to declare what evil tendencies and evil passions are? Why shouldn’t the law compel us to join a temperance society? And why shouldn’t the law forbid the bearing of children having such tendencies and passions ?
If there were no dishonor or legal hindrances attending the separation of conjugal partners I am very certain that, in very many cases, there would be so little restraint to the indulgence of bad temper and the picking of quarrels for slight causes that love would seldom last longer than the honeymoon. It is a very easy matter to kill love by neglect and ill-temper, and just as easy to cultivate and strengthen it by kindness and attention.
[On the contrary, the only way to insure constancy is to be in a state of perfect freedom.]
Two persons may not be able to promise to love each other and to live together as long as life shall last, but they can promise to do their best to insure such a result. The conditions of the marriage union and compact should be such as to compel the parties, as far as possible, to do their best to be always true and constant and affectionate toward each other. Nevertheless, divorces should be granted whenever the best good of all parties concerned demands it; but the best good of children and of society should be.the para
mount consideration. Patriotism and parentage and honor should forbid us to be governed by our own selfish feelings, because parents should feel that they are mainly responsible for the existence and training and character of their children.
[And who is to be the judge ? If we had perfect men and women, we would make no objection.]
The marriage compact should be such as to make men and women careful in assuming those relations that shall make them parents. If men and women could, without loss of character and honor, select conjugal partners one day, desert each other the next, and unite with other partners on the third day, there would be very little caution, I trow, in the selection of conjugal partners. When it shall become just as honorable for men and women to take a new conjugal partner every week or month; or every year, or every three or five years, as it is for them to remain true and loving to each other as long as life lasts, then truth and constancy and
firmness of character will cease to be virtues, and falsity and fickleness will take their places, and the social conditions upon which to build a firm, self-governing republic will have ceased to exist.
[Assumption without anything to sustain it.]
Every permanent organization, whether natural or social, must be governed by law-by such laws of equilibrium and justice as shall produce order and harmony. Natural organizations are controlled by natural laws; social and political organizations must be governed by social and civil laws. The law of gravitation binds the earth to its integrity and holds it in its orbit; the laws of marriage should bind men and women to their integrity in the conjugal relation, that society may be held together and preserved from anarchy and dissolution.
[Arbitrary law can control nothing. Laws to govern mus[t] be the natural laws. These, in the relations of society, have not been discovered. When social laws shall be as well known as the laws of mathematics are, then we shall be governed by law. But until they are discovered, we want freedom to investigate and experiment. Suppose Franklin ad been prevented experimenting with lightning until he had discovered the law, where would our telegraphs have been ? Mrs. Willard would have us learn to swim before going near the Water. It is high time that social matters should be reduced to a common-sense standard, and treated
as we treat all other matters. Then the superficiality of Mrs. Willard’s strictures will become apparent even to herself.]
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