If there had been anything wanting to show that the people in all directions are heartily sick of our present government, we have had it in the rush upon us of letters, from every direction, making inquiries as to the probabilities and possibilities of the coming convention, which, it is pretty generally understood, is to be a sort of common and spontaneous gathering of all kinds of reform, which find existing customs, forms and law standing in the way of the realization of their hopes.
The people generally begin to wake to the comprehension that they are living under a system of despotism instead of under a government such as is foreshadowed by the text upon which the constitution was founded and the government erected. The theory of individual freedom, they find, is so hedged in by the financial, commercial, and industrial systems imported from Great Britain, that sight of it is almost lost. The two are incompatible. They cannot exist together, since the last, in practice, deny the existence of the first in theory.
Laboring under the misapprehension that, because the theory of our government was the true one, the practice must, necessarily, be also true, we have gone on from bad to worse, until the government, instead of being the government of the people, as a whole, has become nothing more than a conspiracy of “office-holders,” “money-lenders,” land-grabber,” rings,” and “lobbies,” against the laborer, the mechanic, and the farmer, by which the former, a contemptible minority, manage to appropriate all the wealth created by the latter, the great majority; and to luxuriate in it, while they only escape starvation and want in all its varied forms, struggling along from youth to age, in all the despair of poverty, and die amid its utmost squalor, wanting the meanest comforts of life.
And yet these conspirators seem to think that it is all right, all safe. They think, since they have the reins in their own hands, that nothing can divert them from their career of triumph. But a sad day awaits them unless they “hold up” long enough to at least listen to the complaints of the people over whom they are riding with such complacency. Mutterings low but sullen are already heard, which will burst into ungovernable fury at the very first opportunity. In this city lone there are now over fifty thousand people either entirely out of work or working at starvation prices, just to keep the souls and bodies of their families together. These people, when thus driven to desperation, begin first to question if such things can be right, next to realize that it is all wrong; and this leads to inquiry regarding the causes. They begin to see clearly that, by some unaccountable process, all for which they have labored all their lives is in the possession of a few capitalists, merchants, and landlords, who have never laid their hands to productive industry.
Any political reform which ignores this condition is not worthy to be begun. Not even the degradation of woman, in being compelled to submit to male dominations, is a question large enough to stir the people with an enthusiasm sufficient to rouse them to the dethronement of the existing conspiracy. It must be the concentration of both these wrongs, which cry out for redress, that will accomplish this. Nothing less than this can call away the supporters of General Grant. Thousands upon thousands are in the Republican ranks, not because they love it leaders, but because there is no other and better place for them to go. And besides these there are other thousands who have held aloof from politics, because they see its iniquities. All these will come out from their retreats and join a Human Rights Party. If those who are moving from the consolidation of all the opponents of present parties into on e grand party by the proposed convention, are wise, they will inaugurate a movement, which will sweep over this country like a tornado, and completely uproot every form of despotism, which now exists to the joy of the few, but to the sorrow of the many.
[Page 11]
CHRISTIAN DESPOTISM
Ours is supposed to be a land of liberty and equality, and yet we have a despotism of public opinion which practically nullifies personal independence. It is well known that President Lincoln was a firm believer in modern Spiritualism and frequently consulted familiar spirits, the same was true of his lamented successor, but public opinion, Madam Grundy, said these things must be done in secret. The moral of all this is that they both lacked moral courage.
Latterly the President’s wife, Mrs. Lincoln, would consult a familiar spirit, much after the manner of Saul, King of the Jews, but society compelled her to observe the utmost secrecy to avoid the anathemas of our Christian civilization and liberty But prying eyes and ears discovered her true name and purpose, and straightway the press which never pollutes itself with personal private affairs, gives the fact wings of lightning and speeds it to every nook and cranny, to every palace and log cabin in the land. All this will do good in the end; but it is not pleasant to reflect that the despotism of public opinion compels secrecy in laudable investigation, and then violates our privacy by proclaiming our personal matters to the whole world, and this is the justice of our Christian civilization and our theoretical equality and independence.
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Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace. And saw within the moonlight of his room, Making it rich and like a lily in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold. Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold. “What writest thou?” The vision raised its head, And, with a look made of all sweet accord, Answered: “The names of those who love the Lord.” “And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,” Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low, But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee, then, Write me as one who loves his fellow-men.” The angel wrote and vanished. The new night, It came again with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blessed. And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!
VICTORIA C. WOODHULL
[From the New York Department of The Present Age]
This brave little woman is indefatigably at work in all directions. Now in Boston in Music Hall, from there way down east, then on to Washington, thence to Pennsylvania, back to this city to address a crowd at the Academy of Music on the 20th upon the “Impending Revolution.” What cares she for the critics who assail her or detractors who throw filth at her! She has thrown her whole soul into the cause she represents—the cause of humanity—and with a lofty serenity of soul and a courage that nothing can daunt, she walks steadily forward up on the path marked out for her by her invisible guides. Who can read her replies to her critics and assailants and not admire their spirit. Who can fail to see that she towers more than head and shoulders above them all. And she is rapidly being recognized, too, by the bravest and noblest of the land. We have seen letters of appreciation and encouragement written to this brave little woman by some of the foremost men and women of the times. She has no petty personal ambitions to serve. She is an enthusiast in the cause in which she has enlisted and were it to require tomorrow the sacrifice of her life, she would unhesitatingly give her body to the consuming fire of the martyr’s stake, so entirely does she sink her own selfhood in the great interests of the cause she has at heart. Who can read her article in Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly for February 10th, entitled “Personal and Presidential” and her reply to Emma Hardinge Britten in the Banner of Light under the heading “Impersonal Reform,” and not recognize the true spirit of the woman!
Toil on, brave and noble soul, and thou shalt surely win and enfranchised and redeemed thousands of thine own sex shall at no very distant day rise up and call thee blessed.
THE CONSISTENCY OF THE WORLD
MRS. VICTORIA WOODHULL—Madam: How dare you give expression to your thoughts? Don’t you know that you have no right to think, even, much less are you entitled to a place upon the rostrum at the Cooper Institute, where so many able as well as unable men have poured forth torrents of eloquence and floods of nonsense and uttered thoughts that thrilled the souls of those present with sensations of various kinds? You don’t seem to know that it is your “duty to go to church” and listen to and believe all that the Rev. Mr. Fog tells you…. What business have you to think, then, and worse still, to utter aloud your thoughts. Such audacity! But you go farther, you not only presume to think and speak out in meeting, but you publish your thoughts. And worse still, you seem to think that you must tell the truth at all times about everything and everybody. It is clearly evident that you have learned nothing in this respect from the orators of the pulpit. Their profound discourses and deep down erudition and lofty flights of eloquence and lucid explanations of their several plans or conclusions, each clearly proving to his own satisfaction, if not conviction, that his is the “only” plan, or program, or arrangement, whereby it is possible to be saved, appears to have been lost upon your obstinate ears. You go away from church, madam, and so does Tennie C. Claflin with thoughts as free and boundless as the ocean…. But it is more than a waste of time to say anything more about it, for I presume you will both go on thinking for yourselves and talking for yourselves and publishing disagreeable facts, and unpalatable truths and startling theories which shake the nerves of the feeble-minded and make the strong man see stars. So no more from
WILLIAM JONES.
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THE ETHICS OF SEXUAL EQUALITY. A LECTURE BY TENNIE C. CLAFLIN, At the Academy of Music, Friday Evening March 29, 1872.
If society were to become aware of the existence of an insidious plague in incipient form, making ready to sweep over the world and distill its subtle poison into the atmosphere, from which the people generally would unconsciously imbibe it, and which, though not alarmingly fatal in its immediate consequences, would, nevertheless, gradually and surely sap humanity’s great fountain of health, would it not be consistent to suppose that every possible effort would be put forth to analyze its causes, its modes of operation and its effects, and to stop it early in its career? But should the doctors of divinity, of law and of medicine, and the professors of respectability, together with all the reverend and honorable mistresses of the land, cry out against it and denounce the investigation, would it be right for those who should be engaged in it to stop short in their efforts because of such opposition, and should they quietly step aside and permit it to pass unnoticed in its destructive course ? And should some bold spirit more daring than the rest, caring more for the welfare of the multitude than for its approval, irresistibly rush to the front and proclaim the impending evil, would she not be justified in so doing, even in the very faces of the opposition ? Yes! Everybody except the opposers would consider it the highest possible duty that an individual could perform the highest possible duty for the few who should understand the threatening monster— persistently to continue her efforts against any and all opposition, until she should compel the people to listen and learn the real character of the impending danger. Now, just such a condition as this actually exists in our very midst to-day ; and yet scarcely anybody seems to be aware of its existence, while the few who do really suspect it, are deterred from entering upon its investigation, by the terrible persecutions and denunciations which are heaped upon, and hurled at, the individuals who are bold enough to stand out and defy the self-assumed conservators of the moral health of society, who, dagger in hand, are ever ready to strike as well as to defame.
And it is the more terrible that this disease to which I refer is arbitrarily, and without a single good reason, assigned to the realm of morality, and held to be a lack of morals, to be cured by preaching, rather than a lack of physical health, to be cured by a complete understanding of the laws which govern physical life.
But those who so blindly attempt to controvert the laws of nature, do not stop to consider that a genuine morality cannot have root in, and existence upon, a diseased physique. A truly moral condition must spring from a condition of genuine physical health. We hold this to be inevitable, since morals are the outgrowth of physical structure. As well might we expect perfect fruit from a decaying tree as to expect pure morality from a diseased physical structure. It is possible that a low moral condition may accompany a high degree of physical health; but the converse does not follow, although there may be seeming exceptions to the rule.
One of the very first and most important of all considerations for humanity, then, is physical health. With that as a foundation, all other things are possible; without that as a foundation, all other things are improbable. But how obstinately do all classes of teachers ignore this self-evident truth. Not one of them devotes even a thought to the subject. True, our physicians with their vile stuffs profess to, and in some instances think they do, cure disease. But I can assure them they have never yet cured any disease. They may have modified its symptoms, even have caused the effects to cease, but the causes are always left untouched; since next to nothing is known of causes.
With physics it is the same as it is in all other departments. People are intent in dealing with present effects, never seeming to care if the cause continue. Indeed it sometimes appears as if they do not want the removal of causes; since if they were to be removed then their effects would cease, and numberless professors, like Othello, would find their occupation gone. In other words, we are generally content when we find a branch bearing bad fruit to cut it from the body of the tree, leaving it to produce similar branches, rather than to dig it up by the root, and absolutely destroy the capacity to produce.
Human life is not different in absolute existence from the other forms of life. The same general laws govern its manifestations, though in a higher stage of development. And when we seek to discover the laws which govern it we must proceed by the same rules of analysis and deduction as when we discover laws in other forms of life. But up to this time the practice has been entirely different, and now, when it is proposed to subject human life to a common form of investigation, a terrific tumult is raised, and almost the whole world raises its hands and its voices in holy horror at the proposed sacrilege. Natural laws are recognized in everything else; but the very highest department of life is forcibly divorced from all control of natural law, and left to the mercy of the arbitrary impositions of a standard called moral, but which is really the result.of the very conditions it is framed to heal.
If there are unfortunate conditions existing, which none deny, it is not because people have failed to live up to the public standard of morals ; but because they have failed to live after the requirements of the natural laws; have failed to follow conditions in the direction of higher attainment. Whenever these laws are ignored, in the attempt to conform to the other sort, then the legitimate results follow; and they are always against the highest good of the subject.
The primal error that is made by society, and it is one that almost everybody makes, is in attempting to compel all sorts of people to conform to the same rules of life—a thing which is not only impossible in itself, but which everybody knows is impossible. It is an absolute law, everywhere in the universe that every condition has its own controlling laws; and it is impossible to compel the law of one sort of condition to apply to conditions of an entirely different character. It would be considered the height of absurdity to say, because some individuals are dyspeptic, hence every individual should subsist on Graham flour. But that would be no more absurd than are nearly all the rules laid down for the government of society in its most fundamental relations.
Finding certain effects existing in its body, society attempts to compel underlying principles to conform to them. Now that is all wrong, and nothing but misfortune can possibly flow from it. The only true mode is to discover the principles and laws which underlie all things, and then to formulate rules of government in conformity to them, in utter disregard of whatever may have been or whatever is.
I have said there is a terrible disease being engendered in society, which all “the powers that be” are exerting their utmost efforts to conceal, and to prevent inquiry being made about it. Those who presume, even to hint, that our sexual rules and regulations are not perfect, and their results are not sound, are at once branded as revolutionists, who desire to demoralize society by their immoral teachings, or who desire to excuse their own lives by advocating rules of conduct conforming to them….
The first thing that we encounter when we examine the present social system, and which is its chief corner-stone is marriage, or the union of the sexes. At the outset the question arises as to what marriage is. Is it a natural condition or an artificial production? Is it governed by natural or by artificial laws? Does it exist in the common order of the universe, or did mankind invent it in order that they might have its use….
That is to say, if marriage is a natural condition, which would exist whether there were any artificial laws or not, then, since it exists and there are laws, the laws which govern it should be such as to harmonize with those which govern in its natural condition. But if marriage is an artificial production, invented to serve specific purposes, as the watch is invented to mark time, then the laws by which it should be governed should be those which will best produce the purposes for which it was invented.
Now, is marriage an invention or is it a natural condition existing in the common order of things? It is scarcely necessary that I should say it is not in any sense of the word an invention made by man…. Man found the principle of marriage existing in men and women before there were any rules of society….
But first let us analyze the results that are attained. The first grand attempt is to induce two persons, opposite in sex, to think so much of each other that they feel willing in order to accomplish a present wish, to promise to love each other till death do them part. At the very introduction to the happy state, they are compelled to give a solemn pledge that they will perform something which there can be no human means of determining in advance, whether they can or cannot redeem. The only value a promise or a contract has, is the ability which is involved to fulfill it….
I believe that a large proportion of married people will agree with me that, as compared to what they anticipated, marriage is a stupendous failure—a gigantic fraud. But they don’t realize this until the blow is struck—until the deed is done—from which, twist it as they may, there is no escape. Some rebel…. The common result is the utter waste of all that is really grand and noble in life, sacrificed to satisfy a custom which the self-styled conservators of morality impose upon society. And the reason this sacrifice is made is because the moral courage to do differently is lacking. It is ostracism to do differently. The important crisis passed, the first incident of importance by which they are overtaken is, that the wife unexpectedly finds herself in a strange condition [pregnant], and wonders what the symptoms mean. Satisfied at length that something is wrong, the services of a Madam Restell [abortionist], if the parties have the means to obtain entrée to her august presence, are secured, and the situation is usually successfully relieved, in a scientific manner. But lacking the open sesame to this aristocratic relief, second, third and fourth rate resorts, according to cost, are put in demand. And when the information, means and courage to do either of these are lacking, then washes, teas, tonics and various sorts of appliances known to the initiated, are resorted to, either of which, if successful, inevitably induces a long list of complaints and weaknesses, the prevalence of which to-day is a standing reproach upon, and a permanent indictment against American women….
The next circumstance that usually turns up, when all resorts fail, is wives find themselves with babies on their hands. How they came by them they are usually only a little less ignorant of than of the care to which they are entitled….
Now, my second indictment against marriage is that it compels women to become mothers against their wish and will, and to maintain sexual relations with men for whom their love is not sufficiently deep to always make them happy at the prospect of reproducing themselves in children. I assert it as my earnest and well-established conviction that no woman should ever hold sexual relations with any man from the possibly consequences of which she might desire to escape.
But this raises a relative question as to what shall take the place of present marriage customs, since, so long as women depend upon the fact of their sex for support, marriage of some sort seems indispensable….
Scarcely any woman deems it dishonorable to assert that she married for a home, or that if it were not for support she would not remain with her husband; but the same woman will denounce a poor unfortunate, who cannot obtain a husband, because she sustains sexual relations, for the same purposes, with a man to whom she is not legally married.
It is, without doubt, the most unfortunate condition to which women are subject, that, as a general rule, they are compelled to rely upon their sex to gain favor with men…. The only stock a woman has in which to deal is her person. She must sell that to a man for life, or to men indiscriminately, in order to obtain the means of living.
But a great change must come. The total order of society must be reversed. It must be reconstructed so as to make women equally independent with men. Women must be educated as men are—to self support; and the idea that they are only born and grown to become the sexual slaves of some man, or a number of men, must be forever banished from the thoughts of women and from the thoughts of men that they can be so.
If women, when they arrive at their majority, are like men capable of self-maintenance, marriage or sexual relations would only be entered upon from motives other than making them a means of support. They will not surrender their freedom except for love, which should be the motive of all sexual relations.
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Thou sower of seed in humanity’s field, Have faith in thy work, thou art sure of thy yield. Though thou taste not its fruit, nor garner its grain, Think not for one moment thy labor is vain.
Still work for thy race, and in years yet to come, Thy name shall be hallowed in many a home, ‘Neath the roofs where love’s voice the sweetest is heard, Thy name shall be shrined as a household word.
Fight bravely thy battle, for conquer thou must, Defeat cometh not to a cause that is just; Thou art fighting for right, the weak against the strong. And ever to right doth victory belong.
Thou art sowing the seed in darkness and gloom, That the sunlight of truth shall bring into bloom; Thy mission is holy, be true to its need, And be true to thyself, brave sower of seed.
BUFFALO, N.Y., April 1, 1872.
[Page 14]
FORTY years ago a blooming young girl of sixteen married an old man of sixty for his money, expecting that he would soon die and leave her a wealthy young widow. Last week the lady died at the respectable age of fifty-six, leaving a husband age one hundred, and four children to mourn her loss.
[Page 14]
Mr. T. Winkle having married Miss Starr in Georgia recently, the Savannah “News” epithalamizes the pair with “T. Winkle, T. Winkle, little Starr.”
The choicest and cheapest relish that a gentleman can place upon his table is the Halford Leicestershire Table sauce. A pint bot[t]le is sold by your No. 1 grocer for only fifty cents.
Mrs. Lucinda H. Stone of Michigan, who is traveling in Syria with a party of young American ladies, gives the following graphic account of the condition of women in the Orient:
There is nothing in all this Eastern country that makes me more sick at heart than the terrible abuse of animals that I everywhere see, except the neglect and abuse of little children, and the most wretched and degraded condition of women, who yet cling to their shame as their highest glory.
“I no like the English,” said the sheik who conducted our party out to the pyramids of Sakara in Egypt, after he had been telling me about an English and American party, with whom he had encamped there for twenty days, who were making explorations.
“I no like the English.”
“And why do you not like the English?” I asked.
“Why, because the English, he have money, and the woman, his wife, she have money too; I no like the woman have money.”
“But don’t your wife have money?” I asked, (for he had before told me how many donkeys he owned, and that he had two good houses in Cairo.)
“No, no,” he answered with a scornful laugh, “my wife no have money. I have the money.”
“But don’t your wife sometimes go to market and to the bazaars to buy things that she wants?”
“No, no” he said, more scornfully still, “my wife go not out of the house, she wear veil, she cover her face to buy what she wants.”
Pursuing the subject, I asked, “And why does your wife wear a veil?”
“O, cause she shame,” he answered. “My wife is my shoe,” is the maxim of marital authority in this country; “haven’t I a right to kick off my shoe or do whatever I please with it?”
And the great difficulty in doing anything for these poor creatures is, that it is the women themselves who are the most opposed to any change. And so said the sheik, closing all his sentences with “My wife is satisfied.”
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“TENNIE” MY TRUE AND NOBLE SISTER: —I have just read your glorious effort of Friday evening last, and as I cannot clasp hands with you in any more tangible manner, at this time, hasten to do so through the medium of pen, ink and paper, for I cannot withhold the congratulatory feelings and deep sympathies constantly welling from the depths of my heart and soul for you, in the noble work of reform you are so valiantly stirring to achieve. God grant you strength to continue to thus “fight the good fight” to the end; fearing no opposing ill, for the Angel world are with you, my Sister, and they will prevail while you grow strong and brave for truly—
“They are brave who dare to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are brave who calmly choose, Hatred, scoffing and abuse. Rather than in silence shrink, From the truth they needs must think; They are brave who dare to be, In the right with two or three.”
Ever with thee in thy labors for the right, lovingly Thy Sister, CONNIE H. MAYNARD, 883 Seneca street
[Page 14]
FACTS FOR THE SINGLE.
A French philosopher has lately brought to light some curious social statistics compiled from the records of eleven years in France, Belgium and Holland, relative to the longevity of married and single men, which furnish fresh proof of the danger of living. It appears that married men between the ages of twenty-five and thirty years are far more apt to live than unmarried men, the ratio of deaths being in their favor as four to ten and a half in every thousand persons. Here is a powerful argument for early marriages if the law of self-preservation becomes their advocate; but a further development of the records shows that at the same age widowers die at the rate of twenty-two in every thousand, being twice as perishable as their unmarried brethren. When the age advances to between thirty and thirty-five years the case is reversed. Married men die at the rate of eleven and single men at the rate of twelve in every thousand. these figures open a wide field for drawing inferences and moral lessons. Evidently dangers edge about the life of man, but the chief and most apparent warning conveyed by the facts of the case is the necessity of a man carefully preserving the life of a wife, if he has one, since her loss increases by about fourfold the imminence of an end to his own career.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, after half a century’s experience, is still unable to get along without a man. She started for Fort Scott a week ago, and at State Line got on the Kansas Pacific train, instead of the Missouri River, Fort Scott and Gulf. She went some distance before she learned her mistake.
A GERMAN obtained a marriage license in Clinton County, Iowa, last October, and thinking the paper done away with the necessity of a ceremony, took his “intended” home with him, and they have been living happily together ever since.
A YOUNG woman delegate in the recent Ohio convention of women suffragists, plumply said: “For my own part, I love men, individually and collectively, better than women; and so, I am sure, does every one of my sex, if they like me, would utter their real sentiments. I am more anxious for man’s elevation and improvement than woman’s and so is every true woman.”
RECENTLY Henry Ward Beecher preached a sermon about profanity: “He was sorry to say that women swore—women of culture and eminent in society, women that he knew—and there is a tendency in that direction. He spoke of the alarming prevalence of the vice, and wondered that women, in whose name all that is pure and good is associated could become so degraded and loathsome; that a mother addicted to profanity would dare look upon her innocent children. Among children the evil was widely spreading, but he hoped he was mistaken in its extent.”
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On Sunday, April 6th, as the shades of evening were gathering, our former husband and later friend and brother, Canning H. Woodhull, escaped, after a week’s painful struggle, from his confinement in a material form, to the freedom of Spirit Life. This transition, though somewhat sudden, was not wholly unanticipated, either by him or us. Certain unhappy habits of life, with peculiarities of constitution, placed a not indefinite tenure upon the extension of his physical life. Some ten years ago he remarked, “I cannot expect to live longer than till 1875.” This prophecy was shortened by only three years, expiring in 1872 instead.
There are various circumstances connected with his life, and ours, some of which, having been snatched from us by the public, sometimes in an unmerciful manner, and at others by duplicity and treachery have placed us in an unfavorable light in the judgment of those who have had no means of justifying their opinions by personal acquaintance. To such, we now have no recriminations to offer, nor any unkind words to say. We leave them all to their consciences and their God, simply remarking that he has taken a departure, called hence by the uncontrollable powers of nature, which they would have had us hasten by leaving him, at the expense of our own sense of right, to abandon himself to his unfortunate habits.
It will scarcely be maintained by any, that all people are ushered into physical being, equally endowed with the germs of greatness and goodness, or their opposites. In other words, people are born to be what they are. There are those who are possessed of peculiarities, which they can never overcome. Even confirmed habits either for good or for ill are not always merely acquired; but usually grow out of inherent tendencies. Some people are constitutionally drunkards; while others, though as fully accustomed to drink, never become drunkards. In either case, there is neither merit or dismerit, since both are alike the result of circumstances and causes beyond individual control; and the former is only to be remedied by a better understanding of the laws of life and generation and the application in general experience.
It is in this sense that we regard the life of the deceased who has just left us. Our acquaintance with him began while yet we were quite young and very unpleasantly situated. Eleven years of unremitting, wifely devotion, tried by every possible species of worldly temptation, and testified to by him upon every occasion, terminated a condition which became unendurable. When he found us inexorable in the determination to separate from him, he made no objection. He permitted us to depart in peace, and never from that day did he either upbraid or complain of us; but on the contrary often wondered that we had not left him before. And we knew that he, though he felt the change severely, was just enough to rejoice in knowing that the changed conditions opened a wider field of usefulness and happiness to us, and in all our movements none were more gratified at our success, or more regretful for our seeming defeats than he. But with the cessation of our marital relation there were others that could not be so easily sundered as this had been. We had our children; for whom he had as warm a love as his nature could know. It was not in our heart to banish him entirely from them. Besides we owed him personally a duty, higher than that which any law can formulate or enforce. It was impossible for us to be indifferent to the needs and necessities of him to whom we had given so many years of our life, and though the world demanded that we should abandon him to all the exigencies of his unfortunate weakness, we thank Heaven that we had the courage to brave its judgments and to perform that which was no more our duty than it was our pleasure to perform He has always had a home with us whenever he has desired to occupy it.
We must confess, however, that this condition was one which, for a long time, we shrank from letting the public know, and it became the rod in the hands of unscrupulous persons, held in terror over our heads to compel us to do their bidding, and most cruelly and unrelentlessly did they make use of it. At length patience and forbearance ceased to be a virtue with us. The sequence has been heralded world-wide and used against us in every possible shape, until, in the minds of those who have had no means of correcting their judgment, we are held as little better than veritable demons. We trust the vindictiveness of the authors of all this, now that the stumbling-block is removed from their way, will cease, and the desperate energy they have devoted to effect our condemnation will be transferred to a nobler purpose.
But they found a fitting close to their career of insatiable vengeance, in endeavoring to convey to the public the impression that he whom we had sheltered and protected in defiance of public opinion, during his life had been foully dealt with by us, in his leaving of it. This cruelty was almost more than we could philosophically accept. It seemed to us that with death, such bitterness ought to have ceased. It did not however; but care was taken that the alleged suspicious circumstances of his decease should be telegraphed all over the world, so that in the next morning’s papers, it would be intimated that “one of Mrs. Woodhull’s husbands: had died suddenly, and the coroner was investigating the matter. The refutation of this infamous insinuation will never reach one half the people, who with avidity drank down the first news with a “didn’t I tell you so.”
Even some of the city editors had the malignity and maliciousness to state in the columns of their papers what the telegraph had conveyed to all the world beside. There is not an editor in this city; there ought not to be one in the country, who does not know the circumstances regarding Dr. Woodhull’s presence in our house. But notwithstanding this, there were some who could fall so far from their manhood as to resort to deliberate and malicious falsification for the sole purpose of embittering the public mind. We trust that all such will be satisfied with the part they played and feel no compunctions of conscience when they shall meet us hereafter.
It must not be inferred, however, that there were no good traits of character represented by the deceased. In spite of all his unfortunate habits, he was one of the most skillful physicians we ever knew. His presence in our family was a source of great satisfaction in this regard. He was ever ready at a moment’s notice, day or night, to attend to the ailments of any who required his services and no clearer nor better testimony of the deep regard, aye love, he had for our present husband, could be had than the care bestowed upon him during several violent attacks of sickness, and no better assurance of thorough trust and confidence on his part than that he would permit no other physician to prescribe for him. These two people were not rivals. They were brothers; and in spite of all the attempts made to make them enemies, they remained friends to the last, he who is still with us, watching over the death-bed of him who has gone, with all the sleepless anxiety that danger imparts to those who love. But Dr. Woodhull was one who desired no responsibility, not even of his children; he wanted a place of rest, and so far as we could, we relieved him from the first and ministered to the last.
We would not say we do not care for the good opinion of the world. But we must be permitted to first desire the good opinion of ourselves, and to endeavor to secure it. If that gain, that of the world, none can appreciate it more than we do. If in securing our own approval we gain the condemnation of the world, we are consoled by the knowledge that our conscience which God gave us for a monitor does not also condemn us.
We only regret that we awoke to this realization so late as we did. We know we previously failed in many duties to the departed, because we feared to do right. But they were deeds of omission instead of commission, for which we know he will, from his spirit home, regard us leniently and forgivingly. Of this we feel assured, since the last act performed for him by his mortal body was to smile upon us as if in perfect satisfaction and thankfulness that he was permitted to endure the struggles of physical death and spiritual birth in the presence of his only remaining friends on earth.
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When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
Twenty young ladies are now employed in the registry of deeds office in Portland.
Laborers are scarce at St. John’s, N.F., and women are employed on the wharves to load and unload vessels….
“My daughter Julia,” says the editor of the Seymour (Ill.) Times, “becoming disgusted with the roving printers we had to employ, determined to do all the work herself. She set every type in the current issue of the paper, including new advertisements, and had three columns left over for next week; besides which she did a big washing, read about fifty newspapers, and took two days’ recreation at the county fair.”…
“There is nothing new under the sun:” Who could have supposed however, that it would be our privilege, in this nineteenth century, to give a veritable extract from one of the Ante-Nicene fathers in condemnation of the monstrous fashions of our own day, aptly entitling it, “Tertullion on the Chignon?”… “Why is no rest allowed to your hair, which must be now bound, now loosed, now cultivated, now thinned out? Some are anxious to force their hair into curls; some to let it hang loose and flying….It has been pronounced that no one can add to his own stature. You, however, do add to your weight some kind of rolls, or shield bosses to be piled upon your necks. If you feel no shame at the pollution, for fear you are fitting on a holy and Christian head the slough of some one else’s head—unclean perchance, guilty perchance, and destined to hell….”
[Page 8]
EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE. WHAT IS THE ISSUE?
WEDDELL HOUSE, CLEVELAND, O., November 24, 1871
The present political issue is, plainly, the common right of self-government specially involving the right of woman to it. Self-government means either that people may govern themselves or have a direct voice in the election of those who shall frame the laws; that is, shall be represented in the law-making power. If a person be not represented in the law-making power, and is not himself a part of that power, then he has no self-government….
[Page 9]
ARE WE A CHRISTIAN PEOPLE? BUFFALO, Nov. 26th, 1871.
This may seem a strange query to ask in this advanced day and age. But if we are to base our pretensions to being so upon the exemplifications of the precepts and practices of the Man of Nazareth it is seriously to be doubted if we have any just right to that name. That we make great professions is very true, but what do we bring to the support of them, in our everyday lives ?
On every hand people live simply for self and seemingly absorbed in the things of the material world, as ends. Very few are they who regard their acquisitions of wealth in any other light than for personal comfort and gratification. Millionaires reside in sight of the starving and forget that they are their brothers and sisters, all owning a Common Parent.
And when we talk of an order of things that shall look to an equalization of comforts for humanity, those having them in greater abundance than they can in any way make use of, cry out against the “intended injustice,” and denounce us as desirous of disturbing the foundations of society, to introduce Communism.
If we mistake not, our great Master and Teacher and his disciples and their followers had all things in common. He even commanded “Go and sell all thou hast and give it to the poor.” The fact is there are no Christians. They are all the merest pretenders and shams/ They affect Christ and him crucified, and live the life of the Scribes and Pharisees. If there is a Godly Christian in the land who will not greedily take the wealth that a hundred laboring men create, toiling all their lives, let him call himself a Christian, since he renders justice; but that Christianity which permits a few favored people to grasp the entire proceeds of the million’s labor, and riot in it, while they barely exist, and at the end of a life find themselves possessed of no more than they begun it with, savors almost too much of hypocritical pretense to stand the test of a growing intelligence among the people.
It is a barefaced assumption for the Vanderbilts, Stewarts and Astors of the world to say that they are equitably possessed of their vast wealth, since it is well known that it has cost thousands of years of labor to produce it, and consequently that it is unjustly held. It does not matter how a person becomes possessed of the results of the labor of others, except he give equitable value therefor, whether by shrewd management, by sharp practice or by the aid of legislation, it is fraudulently held, and when tried by a perfect system of justice does not belong to him. And the time is rapidly approaching in which the laboring people will understand this fact, and act accordingly.
If we regard this generation in the light of the teachings of Christ, the accumulated wealth of the world is simply held in trust for the people; since He taught that we are all brothers, not merely in name but in the essence of the term. It behooves those who have been intrusted with the people’s wealth to begin to show that they are desirous of properly administering their trust.
“What profiteth it a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul.” And what happiness can the favored few feel when they knew that they have enough, which, if equitably and equally distributed, would make everybody rich, and yet detract nothing from their own enjoyment. Our Christianity is a vast bundle of the most intense selfishness ; seeking wealth in every possible way, without any reference whatever to the good that can be done with it, and caring not a whit who suffers by its obtainment, and even enforcing its possession at the expense of food, shelter and raiment for suffering women and children.
It seems to us that we have yet to learn the first principles of the Christian religion, the whole spirit of which was to equality in all things, and especially in the things of this life. How much better off humanity would be to-day if a spirit of brotherly love existed among them. Religion has been too idealistic; too far removed from everyday life; made too great a rarity by Sunday worship; brought too little home to the intercourse of men, and considered as something quite too far separate from their material wants.
It is a difficult thing for a person to worship God and feel Him to be a kind and loving father and a just ruler, when he sees his neighbor rioting in what his own hands produced, while he yearns for the bread to satisfy his hunger. All things must be done in their legitimate order. Before we can expect to save the souls of men we must effect their material salvation. Christianity has too little to do with the material wants of the people. It must descend into and elevate them from necessity and want, and introduce a system of divine justice in material things, and then we may legitimately expect to understand and appreciate a higher order of justice and morals.
It is in the power of the holders of the wealth of this country to introduce and perfect a system of society which shall utilize every element it contains. As a community we are fast approaching the condition that demands a true order of organization, which shall exemplify the fact that the human family is in reality one and indivisible, and that the interests of every member of it are best subserved when the best interests of all are maintained, and in which no single member can be left to suffer and the rest of the body be not affected by it.
Wealth should join hands with science, and set about this great work of organizing society upon a purely scientific basis. Every person who has wealth will be the happier and the better off for doing so. Where he now has earthly treasure he will gain that which “moth and rust do not corrupt,” and which should be the coveted wealth instead of that which can do no possible good when death shall call us to the land “where thieves do not break through nor steal.”
VICTORIA C. WOODHULL.
[Page 11]
THE BIBLE in schools is one of the controverted questions of the day. Protestants take the Bible in full, Catholics take the Bible in part–Jews, Atheists and Heretics and “sich” are of no account. The American Constitution ignores religion. Every man may worship as he pleases. Public schools are for the purpose of instruction in facts, not in opinions; even morals are not professedly the objects of public school instruction. In Long Island City there is an immense muss on the subject. Protestants, anxious to make political capital, insist on reading a book objectionable to Catholic citizens and tax-payers. The rule of “live and let live” seems to obviate the difficulty. But your zealot is not easily satisfied unless he be atop of the heap.
[Page 16]
WOMAN LABOR.
The belief of a certain class of men is, that in claiming equal rights the fair sex are merely dissatisfied with the duties or comforts–as the case may be–of their lot; and that in seeking the quality of payment for tasks carefully and faithfully performed they are but courting the excitement attendant on masculine employment and out-of-door life.
That the duties of father and mother both devolve on nine out of every ten women, not only in New York, but in the Christian world, is a fact that they cannot but perceive, but are unwilling to admit. If a man finds it impossible to keep a family of five in food and shoe leather on $8 or $10 per week, how in the name of common sense is a woman to do it? Yet thousands are compelled to keep the souls and bodies together of their little flock of starvelings on these amounts; and the very man who complains most bitterly of the expenses of his family and the smallness of his pay is usually the loudest in denouncing the claim to equal rights….
REGINA
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When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
Seven thousand women belong to the Belgian International.
A bill in the Illinois Legislature proposes that women shall not be debarred from any occupation except the military….
The world is a looking-glass, [it] gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly, kind companion….
Did you ever think how much in the aggregate one single New York party costs? Original cost of the entertainment—cards, supper, flowers and music—$1,000. Say there are 200 people present, their expenses will easily average for carriages, gloves and the like, twenty dollars—$4,000 more; amounting altogether to the neat little sum of $5,000, a fortune for a good many people….
[Page 7]
COST OF THE CREDIT SYSTEM.
That the credit system is getting to be a costly one to honest and solvent buyers of merchandise is every day becoming more apparent. To say that an individual’s, or a nation’s credit, stands high in the market, is considered a great compliment, as betokening an unusual degree both of thrift and integrity in the party so complimented…. But the commercial value of such a reputation is not always as great as generally supposed, and depends very much upon the uses to which it is put.
Good credit, and too much of it, have often in the end, proved the ruin of some of our smartest business men…. When the credit system generally is in bad odor, as at the present time, and business failures are heavy and numerous, it is no great boon for a man to be able to get trusted, since it is just then that he is obliged to pay the dearest for this privilege. He not only has to pay the highest market prices for whatever he buys, but in addition he has to help to pay for what other people buy and fail to pay for themselves….
Perhaps it may be said, that those who uphold this costly system need not care, so long as the actual consumer foots the bill. But they ought to care, since on the ground of self-interest alone there is abundant reason why the dealer in merchandise should not wish to increase its cost to the consumer than is necessary to yield the former a fair profit..
The sufferers by the credit system are generally those who leas suspect themselves to be victims of the robbery. They know that many people fail in business, and that their creditors are supposed to lose large sums of money; but, as long as none of these debts are due to them, they do not feel concerned. They know, also, that they are obliged to pay unreasonably high prices for many things; but they do not dream that there is any connection between these prices and the bad debts and bankruptcy resulting from this abuse of credits. But there is such connection, and the mass of consumers have to pay roundly for the folly and fraud of men who undertake to do an immense business with little or no capital, and who for a while pride themselves on the excellence of their credit….
THE SIGNS OF “THEIR” COMING.
Some time since we said there was an organized movement prepared in the spirit world to move upon and convince this mundane sphere that life and immortality are not away in the distant future, as old theology teaches, subject to a resurrection upon a given judgment day; but that they are in our very midst…. Some incredulous people ask: Why do not spirits do something worthy of heaven, if they do in reality communicate?… But they forget that nothing is perfected at once. Children begin with their A, B, C’s. We used to ride in the slow stage-coach, where we now fly in the railroad-car; and mail-coaches and ships once carried our messages to distant friends, requiring even months to make the passage, where now telegraph accomplishes the same thing in time calculated by seconds. So with spirit communication, the methods of which are still very meager and oftentimes even unsatisfactory; but we are rapidly approaching much more perfect and satisfactory things, when the whole spirit-world will be opened to our astonished vision….
Webmaster’s Note: These are actual extracts from the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. Sentences or paragraphs that have been removed are indicated with the ellipsis (….)
When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
The Sisters of Mercy in Russia are permitted to practice medicine….
Tennie C. hopes that Memphis will really permit her women to vote and not tantalize them with registration as New York did….
Philadelphia women protest against vivisection of animals by medical students. They don’t want animals. They don’t want animals tortured under the pretense of science….
In the Parkersburg (W. Va.) Times we find the following: …”Mrs. Woodhull, whatever the prejudiced world may say, is a lady of high attainments, and her object in trying to elevate her sex is a laudable one. We emphatically disagree with her in regard to woman suffrage; we are opposed to it; but while differing with her in that respect, her strong advocacy for the suppression of social evils, and the development of purer marital relations, instead of being hooted down by too zealous and prejudiced ministers, are deserving of the warmest praise. Mrs. Woodhull is a remarkable lady, and the world will yet be indebted to her for throwing light upon many subjects heretofore not touched by men.”…
[Page 7]
The Louisville Commercial dips into the Greek comedies and the Bible to prove that as there is nothing new under the sun, and as brave men lived before Agamemnon, so at some time or other there has been a woman like Victoria C. Woodhull. It may well be. We do not claim for her a monopoly of all intellect or goodness. She will be content if she can accomplish woman suffrage, and meanwhile we are obliged to the Commercial for its kind and appreciative notice.
[Page 13[
VIRTUE; WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT ISN’T.
BY TENNIE C. CLAFLIN
Words have different and sometimes contradictory meanings. They have different meanings in different ages or stages of development of the people by whom they are designed or used…. Notably does this happen in respect to the words free and virtue, as applied to men and to women. A free man is a noble being; a free woman is a contemptible being; a drab, a harlot, what you will. Freedom for a man is emancipation from degrading conditions which prevent the expansion of his soul into godlike grandeur and nobility, which it is assumed is his natural tendency in freedom. Freedom for a woman is, on the contrary, escape from those necessary restraining conditions which prevent the sinking of her soul into degradation and vice, which it is, all unconsciously, assumed is her natural tendency….
Insulting as this estimate is to our sex, it is the basis on which the whole question of social freedom is argued by the outside world. It is naively and continually assumed that if social restraints were removed all women, the mothers and sisters and wives and daughters of our virtuous male citizens, would immediately and incontinently go to the bad; in plain words, turn out strumpets and disgrace everybody connected with them…. It never seems to occur to either party [male or female] that the true woman’s soul would expand into a higher purity, in freedom, just as we recognize that the manly soul is exalted by the possession of that same precious boon; and that absolute freedom is even more essential to the birth and growth of a true womanhood than it is for the development of a true manhood….
In the same striking way the two uses of the word virtue tell the same sad tale of the popular estimate of the character of the two sexes…. Virtue, as applied to men, has risen to a higher degree of significance, and now means moral goodness; or a general conformity of the whole life to high moral ideas and purposes. But applied to woman it is confined to a narrow and insulting specialty. It means that woman has never been approached in a special way by a man; and nothing but just that. Apart from that question the woman may have all the nobler qualities of her sex, be a pattern of generosity, inspiration, religious emotionality even, and she is not virtuous and never can become so; but if she is “sound on the goose,” she may be a virago, a thief even, a fiend or a hag, but “she is perfectly virtuous,” the thing that “is praised above rubies.”
All this is simply damnable. It is degrading, insulting mockery, to define female virtue in this way; or n any way different from a man’s virtue…. This slavery to opinion must be abolished, women must vindicate their right to an absolute freedom and their own conduct, except that they have no right to encroach on others…. We cannot render the terms libertine and rake as opprobrious as men have made “strumpet” and “whore.” Let us then resort to the opposite tactics and take the sting out of these bad words by not shrinking from any imputation whatever. The world enslaves our sex by the mere fear of an epithet; and just so long as it can throw any vile term at us, which we cower before, it can maintain our enslavement. It is not free love alone, but every epithet intended to degrade, that woman must grow strong enough to defy before she will be free….
If the terrible epithets with which the world stabs the reputation and tortures and murders the souls of women were even justly distributed, according to the world’s own idea of justice, it would be some mitigation; but it is notorious that women in society who really offend most against the conventional idea of virtue often go through life unscathed, and with acceptance everywhere, and the reputation in a sort of Pickwickian sense of being immaculate, and that others who never dreamed of offending are branded and expelled.
Women must, therefore, be their own defenders; and what I recommend is to blunt the weapons of calumny by a complete indifference, where the strength can be summoned for such a course, to what the world says, one way or the other. Let your motto be, “My mind to me a kingdom is.” Satisfy your own ideal of right, propriety and purity, and defy Mrs. Grundy to do her prettiest. Those are my sentiments.
TENNIE C. CLAFLIN
Webmaster’s Note: These are actual extracts from the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. Sentences or paragraphs that have been removed are indicated with the ellipsis (….)
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Long absence makes the heart grow fonder—of some one else.
Detroit ladies are going to give up corsets. They will stay no longer.
Rouge has been accurately defined as the extreme unction of departed beauty….
The Marriage, Divorce and Prostitution topic excites attention everywhere. Some two years ago the city of St. Louis adopted, as an experiment, a system of legal and police supervision of the social evil, including registration, inspection, etc. There was and still is a great deal of opposition to this mode of treating the great moral cancer of the world, and the principal object urged is that law should never countenance any acknowledged evil by any attempt to regulate or lessen it. While there has been much said in favor of either system, St. Louis has boldly tried the experiment based upon the idea that until there is a radical change in human nature, prostitution cannot be entirely removed, and that it is better to adopt mitigating and reformatory measures and open the door through which fallen humanity may be restored to virtue and happiness. It has been said many times, that the experiment was resulting badly, but at the National Police Convention, held in that city, Mayor Brown, who presided, stated that he was at first strongly opposed to the St. Louis law, but observations of its working and its effects upon the cause of morality had radically changed his views and he now supports it. The St. Louis authorities testify that since its adoption there has been a marked decline of social vice. Mayor Brown stated that a reformatory institution would soon be built, designed to aid and benefit those women who may desire to return to better lives. It must be remembered, says a Boston paper commenting upon the subject, “that this represents the police view. It is not necessarily the moral, humanitarian or Christian view.” It is a deeply important subject and is still open for discussion. Its importance demands all the light that can be brought to bear upon it, and yet there are those who would stifle inquiry.
[Page 9-10]
[From the Hartford Times.] LETTER FROM VICTORIA C. WOODHULL.
HER STATEMENT OF DOCTRINES—”FREE LOVE” AND THE FREE LOVERS—THE ” PROGRESS OF THE AGE.”
GENTLEMEN—Trusting to your liberality and respect for fair play, I transmit to you, with this, a letter in reply to the late attack of the Hartford Courant upon me-respectfully asking for it a place in your columns, for the following reasons: My reply was forwarded to the Courant office, and after two or three days’ delay, is returned to me accompanied by a note from the Editor, in which the offer is made to “extract fairly such parts” of my letter as give my views on the suffrage question, the marriage question, and any editorial responsibility ; and, publish such “extracts”—or to give me space for a reply one-half as long as that which I have thought best to make. This is all perhaps which the Courant can afford to do. (I do not know its circumstances.) At any rate I do confess that is a quite fair offer to proceed from a source which does not hesitate to vilify and traduce others from differences of opinion with it.
I would not charge that the Courant’s “fair offer” is only a piece of ” gallant diplomacy ” to practically forbid me the hearing which is my right under its attack-but as I have expressed myself in my reply as I desire to be understood, in as short a manner as possible, to cover the whole ground, and preferring my own manner to any condensations of my reply by the Courant—I am obliged to decline its “fair offer;” and I write to ask of you the courtesy of publishing in an un-garbled form my reply to that paper, in order that it may be read by the immediate community into whose midst the Courant launched its late bitter and unwarranted attack upon me. Very respectfully yours, VICTORIA C. WOODHULL.
To the Editor of the Hartford Courant:
I seldom depart from the even tenor of my way to notice, or to attempt to answer or refute the abuse with which so many newspaper columns have been loaded since my advent as an exponent of the principles of Social Freedom. To abuse, I am indifferent. For all honest criticism, I am thankful. For all ignorant misstatement, I hope to be charitable. For wilful misrepresentation alone, do I care to render justice. A person who, out of pure malice or to injure a cause with which he does not agree, willfully, deliberately and intentionally lies, deserves the worst of all fates. Such a crime as that is as much worse than physical murder as the loss of that which is murdered by it, is more than the loss of life. A person who will publish to the world that a brother or sister is morally an abandoned person, when he can by no possibility know but celibacy itself is lived instead, is, to my mind, as much below the murderer in the scale of being as he is below the angel. The Hartford Courant regularly receives the paper which I edit, and you have no possible excuse for ignorance of what has appeared in its columns. If you are really ignorant of what has been said, time and again, you are still more culpable for your late attack upon me. But having stated my opinion of the various phases of tirade which it has pleased my most honorable brothers of the press to level at me, I do not propose to repay the Courant in its own coin, nor by any mere passage of words. But I do propose to place recorded facts side by side with your assertions, and then let the public decide which is the more “disreputable ” journal—the WEEKLY or the Courant.
We challenge you to produce a single editorial article from the columns of the WEEKLY that is immoral in its teaching; that is false and wicked in its social theories; that is ” blasphemy of religion and the exaltation of impiety;” or one to show that our “columns are open to anything, without regard to decency;” and I deny that the “editor practically or theoretically repudiates marriage.” These are the points of your impeachment, and upon their maintenance you must stand and prove us guilty, or fall and be condemned as set forth above.
To support your allegations you make a quotation from a correspondent, and hold me responsible for her statements. How disingenuous this is becomes palpable when I call to your mind that I have again and again stated editorially that I am only responsible for the sentiments and principles of articles appearing as editorial or without signature. I have often invited the most adverse opinions that I might the more pointedly compare the higher with the lower truth, And I now say, to make my position impossible of misconception, that the columns of the WEEKLY are open to the communications of even a Madam Restell [the abortionist] to advocate the beneficence of her institution, of which so many of my self-constituted judges have occasion to make use, and of which, if they were to tell the truth, as they feel it, they would be obliged to say it has been a blessing to them.
I should not, however, feel called upon to follow such communication with a lengthy editorial, lest I might be held as advocating the practice of abortion; since whoever has read the WEEKLY knows I hold abortion (except to save the lite of the mother) to be just as much murder as the killing of a person after birth is murder. This was made the subject of a special editorial in the number of date August 8, 1870, entitled, “When is it Not Murder to Take Life ?”
Neither should I feel especially called upon to give editorial dissent should a mistress of one of the fashionable houses of prostitution frequented by Doctors of Divinity, Medicine and Law, present the beauties of a life of prostitution in its columns, since I have too frequently endeavored to show that “prostitution is anarchy” to leave any doubt as to my position upon that question.
Therefore, when the Courant makes this single quotation, and bases its sweeping denunciations upon it, I am compelled to think it dishonest and desirous of unjustly prejudicing its readers against me. And with the more apparent candor and fairness the attempt is made, the more dishonest do I hold the intent; since you know you must make use of them the more completely to mislead your readers.
Lest it should be said that I shrink from the point you attempt to make against me by this quotation, I reproduce it entire :
“As far as any accusations of rebellion against the ordinances of society can be brought against me, I will wrench from my accusers their own weapons by acknowledging them all. If my ideas are to-day abominated and execrated, I must, as did my patron saint, Madame Roland, unflinchingly work on and appeal to posterity.
“How grandly you are laboring in the cause ! Angels are directing your every step. Have courage, sister ! The true women who are to come in the true age will call you blessed. What we have to suffer to-day is the natural lot of those who are before their age.
“From one imputation I desire to defend myself. I am aware that a certain lady said of me to you that I was a sensualist—attaching the low meaning to the word which is common to ordinary minds who see not the deeper and more spiritual significance of words. I am a sensualist in no other sense than that I worship the senses, as the only outward means by which the soul reaches perception ; but I am more sensuous than sensual. I love, like every poetic spirit, whatever is grateful to the senses and exquisite to the taste, the aromatous and luxurious deliciousness which nature offers to every appreciative consciousness.
“The gentleman to whom Miss McDowell refers in one of her notices of me I have known tor some time. I love and esteem him. He is one of the noblest and most cultivated persons it has been my good fortune to meet. If all men were as good as he, this world would be peopled by gods. The statement in regard to him is, to my knowledge, a tissue of libelous falsehoods, as the lady may learn by asking any one who knows the truth of the story. He never deserted his wife. She refused positively to live with him on account of his belief in Spiritualism and his friendship for a lady, which never exceeded the limits of the purest Platonism. So much did he, from a pure sense of honor, obey the conventionalism of continence, that he was true to it up to the age of thirty-seven, when his guardian spirit taught him its absurdity. In parting from his wife, he gave her every cent of money he possessed in the world, about two thousand dollars, and the income she now has was a deliberate gift from him, and not a legacy from his mother.
“For my part, I would rather be a true-hearted Magdalen of the most despised type, than a woman chaste as ice, but with so little charity, the only real virtue, as to defame by false statements in a public print. This chastity which Miss McDowell considers “the best gift of God’s Providence,” I consider the greatest curse of the Devil, Ignorance. Chastity is not a virtue. It is rather a crime against nature—
—feeding life’s flame will self-consuming fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies.
It is peevish, proud and made of self-love, the most inhibited sin in the canon. It is either want of capacity or opportunity, want of a heart or a bigoted prejudice, or else a mere sham and pretence, a cover for the grossest crimes against the body.”
The first paragraph is an exact statement of my own feeling. I do rebel against all the social ordinances by which society seeks a seeming it has not, and which would compel me to conform to ceremonies which I deprecate. But the desire evinced by the writer in the third paragraph to defend herself against the charge of being a sensualist, is evidence complete that the rebellion against ordinances does not in her mind, any more than it does in mine, cover justification for sensuality, or an acknowledgment of any charge of that character. And I join with her in her worship of the senses. They are our God-given means of happiness ; and he or she who cannot or will not discriminate between a high and low development of them is not fitted to sit in public judgment over those who have risen into their spiritual appreciation, in contradistinction to the merely animal….
You repeat, in substance, what the Springfield Republican some time since said : “The time came when the woman suffrage movement could not afford to carry this woman and her load of vicious thieves.” I am inclined to the opinion that this assumption was rebutted rather severely by a simple array of facts, taken from the public journals, a copy of which I shall take pleasure in handing you.
But your discretion passes all limit when you assert that the time came when the suffrage movement could not carry me. I pray you tell me when the suffrage movement ever carried me. But since you are as ignorant of facts as you are incapable of principles of freedom, I would take the trouble to inform you upon this subject.
The original Suffrage or Woman Rights movement has been in existence for about twenty years. Up to one year ago I was not known to the movement. It did not recognize me as belonging to it; and with the exception of Miss Anthony I was never even honored with the acquaintance of its leaders. Certainly the suffrage movement was not carrying me then. It became a duty that I owed to humanity, however, to go before Congress last winter with a demand for my rights as a citizen under the Constitution, guaranteed by the amendments. To that position thus first brought to the attention of Congress and the country the more intelligent part of the woman suffragists, in fact all except “the Boston exclusives,” have come. It has received the support of many of the best informed members of Congress, as well as decision in its favor by a chief justice of the United States Court, and the unofficial opinion of Justice Underwood, of Virginia, of the United States District Court. And to-day the suffrage movement owes the rapid advance it has made during the past year, as well as its present promising attitude, to this movement thus inaugurated by me in Congress. If this is being cast overboard as dead-weight by the suffrage movement, we hope the operation will be repeated frequently. A few times, with like results, will enfranchise women….
Of one thing, however, you may rest assured: It my enunc[i]ation of the principles of Social Freedom are illogical and untrue to the common order of the universe, they will come to naught. If, however, they are derived from the immutable laws of God, your worst denunciations of them and me will only assist in making them apparent to the world. But I trust you may see the propriety of addressing yourself to rebutting my arguments, rather than to traducing me for entertaining the ideas upon which they are based, which are as honestly and conscientiously mine as any that you hold are yours. It is this spirit of slander of which I complain as ungenerous, unmanly and cowardly. If I see propositions set forth which I feel conscious are erroneous and damaging to the public welfare, I do not denounce their holders as all that is bad, but fairly and squarely oppose argument to argument, quoting them and leaving my readers or hearers to decide for themselves which is truth and which error. I think the general press would make a better exhibition of the Cbrist-spirit which they so loudly profess to follow, were they to adhere a little more closely to the same rule. If a person lie, I do not hesitate to call his conduct by its right name, as I have in your case; but I will never descend to vile names to arouse prejudice, even if they are warranted. As much as in me lies, I desire to deal with others as I would be dealt by, and I have never made a personal attack upon anybody in the columns of my paper. I do not claim any credit—I only assert the power of principles—the power of the greater over the lesser truth—when I say that some of the most stubborn and bigoted opponents of the principles of Social Freedom have been converted into advocates, by my presentation of them; who were also men and women, the peers of the best people in the world. And I have not. the slightest doubt that even you would be compelled to admit their truth, if you would for once remove yourself from intolerance and examine them as you do other subjects. Truth is mighty and will prevail whenever admitted to consideration. And the greater the truth the later it comes for consideration. First was Religious Freedom; next Political Freedom, now Social Freedom; and each evolves by like means; while all constitute one General Freedom, which forms the basis of my religion. For its advocacy I have been dragged to the stake by my self constituted judges. True, I have not been burned by literal fire; nevertheless by a fire from which people shrink with quite as much dread as from that. And you have added fuel to the flame to increase my torments, but the manner in which it was done was cowardly and unworthy of a man holding your responsible position. You cannot justify yourself; but I intend that you shall make the effort and fail, as you have failed to damage the cause of a Common Equality, for which purpose you enlisted in this cause.
In conclusion, permit me to predict that you will be ashamed of this attack before the present decade is past, if indeed you are not so already.
Yours for the truth and right, VICTORIA C. WOODHULL. 44 Broad street, New York, Oct. 31, 1871. —Hartford Times, Nov. 7.
{Excerpts from a letter by Victoria C. Woodhull. Victoria’s letter was prompted by an October 1871 letter to the editor by “A Lady from Hartford,” believed to be Catherine Beecher. Catherine, a member of the famous Beecher family, was among the people in Hartford, CT, who attacked Victoria Woodhull’s character.}
Webmaster’s Note: These are actual extracts from the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. Sentences or paragraphs that have been removed are indicated with the ellipsis (….)
When this web site began in September 1999, there were no digitized copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly available online. Now you can find an almost complete run on the IAPSOP web site which has no affiliation with Victoria Woodhull & Company:
