November 25, 1871

[Page 14]

WOMAN ITEMS.

The authorities of Harvard College have refused the application of a Nashua lady, who desired to attend the law school….

A young lady—Miss Kitty Anderson—voted at the recent election in Taylor County, Iowa. The Bedford Southwest says the judges of election decided that she had a legal right to vote, by virtue of the Fourteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

In England, a majority of the persons signing the marriage register of the parish make their mark. A clergyman explains in a newspaper that this is not due to illiteracy wholly, but that one in five of the persons who thus sign themselves in his parish, do so because they are too drunk to write….

NEW SOCIETY.—Louisville has a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Wives. Upwards of thirty members have been enrolled, and they propose to raise a fund to be used in enforcing the law to its fullest extent against wife beaters. If this does not effect a cure, the offender is to be treated on homeopathic principles. Whenever a man is known to be guilty of whipping his wife a warning notice is to be sent to him, and a repetition of the offense will insure him the kind attention of the society.

A good deal of attention has lately been attracted to the number of applications for divorce, or rather legal separation, in France, so that the following statistical statement is not without interest: In 1869 the petitions for separation rose from 2,999, which was the number in the previous year, to 3,056….

The English workingman’s wife is, in nine case[s] out of ten, a woman of very imperfect or of no education, who knows next to nothing of domestic economy. Her principal idea of cooking is to take a joint to the neighboring baker and have it baked in his oven without trouble to herself. She does not know how to make soups, broths, stews or savory dishes, or how to convert a pound of meat, by the aid of vegetables and condiments, into a dish satisfying alike to the palates and stomachs of three or four or even half a dozen people….

[Page 8]

THE NEW YORK TIMES OPEN TO THE FAIR PRESENTATION OF ALL SUBJECTS.

The following letter speaks for itself :
THE RIGHT OF WOMEN TO VOTE—A PROTEST FROM MRS. WOODHULL.
To the Editor of the New York Times :

I have been refused the right of voting by the Democratic inspectors of my district, the Republican dissenting and desiring to receive my vote. Under the election laws of the State, the inspectors are, or I am, “guilty of felony,” since either they prevented a legal voter from voting, or I attempted to vote illegally ! and either they or I shall be convicted of the crime.

Section 1, article 2, of the State Constitution provides :
” All male citizens, &c., &c., shall be entitled to vote.” Section 1, article 1, provides : ” No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen, unless by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers.”

I am a member of the State, and no law has been enacted to di-franchise or deprive me of any right or privilege secured to other citizens. Nevertheless, I was deprived of the greatest of all rights—the right to vote. Moreover, if a single citizen of the State of New York has the right to vote, every other citizen has the same right, with the exceptions referred to. The point involved can by no possible stretch be made to cover the right of the State to exclude women citizens from suffrage, since no law is better established than that a right secured by positive terms cannot be taken away by implication ; and to take away the rights secured by article 1, section 1, of the Constitution in such terms by article 2, section 1, because it fails to provide for female citizens in terms, would be to take away “rights ” by implication. The Constitution of the United States is also equally clear in securing the right to vote to all persons. The Fourteenth Amendment, section 1, provides :
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States….

So much has been said in the daily press about my claim being ” a farce,” while journals persistently shut their columns to all rebutting arguments, that I trust you may do your women readers the justice to publish this outline of the position by which it is claimed that women are legal voters under both the State and Federal Constitutions. One-sided and dogmatic journalism is too common, and I shall hail the day when a free press may be inaugurated.

VICTORIA C. WOODHULL.
No. 44 Broad street, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 1871.

[Page 7]

AN exchange remarks: “If the next generation of women do vote, will they be educated to the proper standard to do so intelligently? They seldom or never read political newspapers, history or works on political economy. It may be said that young men do the same. That may be; but from their earliest days they hold [conversational] intercourse with men, or hear them talking on such topics. Young women have no such opportunities; how, then can they, as a class, be educated up to a true voting standard? It would be well for female reformers to look to this.”

[This is bosh! Practically and in the way our elections are managed no one but a few politicians and wire-pullers know anything of the personal merits of the candidates. They are elected not because they are good citizens, but through going partisans. As to the average young woman, she is as intelligent as the average young man. She studies history and grammar and algebra just as he does, and in private life the woman actually does take a lively interest in politics. Else whence all the stories about woman’s patriotic devotion during the war and her earnestness in times of political excitement.]

[Page 4]

FROM the Baltimore Sunday Telegram of October 29 we clip the following: “It is Victoria Woodhull who has been pronounced insane. Queen Victoria has only rheumatism in the foot.”

We feel the same in regard to Mrs. Woodhull’s insanity as the Irishman did about his friend’s sickness: Pat’s friend being drunk, and after coaxing him till he was tired, he resorted to rather rough measures to get him home, an old lady who was passing remonstrated with him for treating a sick man in such cruel manner. Pat, looking at her with a cunning grin, said, “Be gorra, it’s miself that would loik to have half his sickness.”

Let me here add that I think it would be a great benefit to the world if more of our women had half Victoria C. Woodhull’s craziness.

E.G.G.

Webmaster’s Note:Victoria Woodhull attempted to vote one year before Susan B. Anthony’s famous attempt. It wasn’t until 1920 with the 19th Amendment that the right to vote could not be denied on account of sex.

These are actual extracts from the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. Sentences or paragraphs that have been removed are indicated with the ellipsis (….)

JAN	FEB	MAR
January 20, 1872 January 27, 1872	February 3, 1872 February 10, 1872 February 17, 1872 February 24, 1872	March 2, 1872 March 9, 1872 March 16, 1872 March 23, 1872 March 30, 1872
APR	MAY	JUNE
April 6, 1872 April 13, 1872 April 20, 1872 April 27, 1872	May 4, 1872 May 11, 1872 May 18, 1872 May 25, 1872	June 1, 1872 June 8, 1872 June 15, 1872 June 22, 1872 June 24, 1871
JULY	AUG	SEPT
July 1, 1871 July 2, 1870 July 8, 1871 July 15, 1871 July 22, 1871 July 29, 1871	August 5, 1871 August 12, 1871 August 19, 1871 August 26, 1871	September 2, 1871 September 9, 1871 September 16, 1871 September 23, 1871 September 30, 1871
OCT	NOV	DEC
October 7, 1871 October 14, 1871 October 21, 1871 October 28, 1871	November 2, 1872 November 4, 1871 November 15, 1873 November 18, 1871 November 25, 1871	December 2, 1871 December 9, 1871 December 16, 1871 December 23, 1871

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:

Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly at IAPSOP

In early life the boy masters his opportunities, while the girl generally misses hers….

It is popularly believed that an item not to be forgotten in arranging for a fashionable party in New York, this season, is a generous supply of cigarettes for the ladies’ dressing room….

One of the reliable physicians of Chicago states that he has the means of knowing that 500 children were born on the prairie and on the streets during Monday and Tuesday nights, at Chicago during the fire….

A speaker at the recent meeting of Pittsburg Woman Suffrage Association remarked that “man is only an imperfectly developed woman.'” At this an old lady, who sat in a corner, sprang to her feet, and in an excited manner said she “hoped to gracious he wouldn’t be developed any more then, for there were too many women in the world now.”…

[Page 6]

THE NEWSPAPER—THE PEOPLE’S BIBLE

BY A.G. SPALDING

That most ancient and venerated document, entitled the Holy Bible, is idolized by the church-going world, and, claiming to come direct from Heaven, it is considered the book of books, and the source of all wisdom and perfection to mankind. Our schoolmaster in past generations, it is now getting so old that, like the deciduous tree, its sacred leaves are fast falling to the ground, and its trunk and branches are withering with age and decay. As a natural result, its pupils are now rapidly graduation out of the old Bible into the new, styled the newspaper, or people’s Bible.

The old Bible is losing respect everywhere, and in the best society, being seldom used except on funeral occasions and our Sunday worship, and sometimes in family prayer, it is read only as a very solemn duty, having reference to preparation for death. Then it is laid away on the dusty shelf.

But the new Bible—the newspaper—is a daily and hourly visitor and companion, welcomed by all—old and young, grave and gay, church members and non-church members. It is found in parlor and kitchen, in store and shop, in city and country, and in every man’s pocket. It is our guide and instructor, our preacher and lecturer, our lawyer, doctor and farmer.

All the very best things in the old Bible are copied into the new, leaving out only the mythical and traditional, and the rubbish and old fogeyism, about war and slavery, murders and seductions, polygamy and concubinage, and woman’s subjugation, also the great frightful devil, the awful brimstone hell and everlasting damnation. But so much as relates to truth, right, love, justice, humanity, and brotherhood are most carefully preserved…..

[Page 14]

Outcast Children—Ten thousand human beings under the age of fourteen years are adrift in the streets of New York. Four fifths of them are confirmed vagrants, and the majority are growing up in ignorance of everything but the depravity which is gleaned from the city slums, and all of them are being pushed by the relentless force of untoward circumstances into criminal practices in which many have become adepts in the dawn of their blighted lives. The major portion are boys rapidly preparing for the almshouse, prisons and gallows; but hundreds are girls, who have before them the dark horror of prostitution, as well as those appliances of civilization for the care or repression of the pauperism and lawlessness which it creates. It is this juvenile army of vagabondage and crime hanging upon the flanks of society and occasionally starting it from its propriety by manifestations of immeasurable capacity for mischief, which is a prominent peril and the most sorrowful of the nether aspects of the city.—Edward Crapsey.

Why the women of the Oneida Community wear the short dress is explained by the circular: “The short dress belongs to us chiefly because it is a badge of freedom, of freedom from the tyranny of fashion. . . . The first deep motive of woman’s adornment, it is generally assumed, is to attract the love and admiration of man. Every thoroughly candid woman, it is said, will confess this. . . . It is for the love of man that woman, in following the vagaries of fashion, sacrifices peace of heart with mental improvement, and health and comfort and convenience. But the women of the community do not find it necessary to sacrifice these things to gain the affections of the men. They have the love of the men in the short dress, and much more of it than if they were disguised by fashion. There is no dearth of magnetism between the sexes in the community. . . .

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:

Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly at IAPSOP

November 15, 1873

EUTHANASIA.

Among the many new problems that the mental activity of the age is forcing to the front for immediate solution, that of the right of voluntary retirement from life is the newest and most startling.

The question may be stated thus: Has man the right to terminate his existence when, from any cause, it becomes a burden; and may society exercise that right for causes other than the punishment of the crime?

The practice of suicide is as old as the race, and although seldom esteemed as a virtue, was never by the ancients regarded with that horror and disapprobation that has ever attended its practice among Christian nations.

The causes that have led to this abhorrence of what all Christians agree in calling a crime, and of the consequent resentment of society against its practice, as shown by the statutes existing against it in different countries, is the belief in the dogma of an overruling Providence which shapes our individual ends, and against which the suicidal act is deemed an act of treason; as if death by one’s own hand might not be as much an investigation of that overruling agency as if it had bee caused by the bite of a reptile or by the forces of Nature!

Nevertheless, as a seeming protest against the justness of the law, and as a rebuke to the public opinion on which it is founded, the crime (so-called) has never ceased from among men, and is today demanding to be recognized, not as a crime, but as a social necessity, and on the part of society as a humane and beneficent act.

Hitherto, all discussion of the subject has been estopped by a “thus saith the Lord”; but since the decadence of the theological idea of a personal God and of all the other anthropomorphic conceptions growing out of that old belief, the door is open for a discussion on the bases of reason and common sense.

If, as is now generally conceded, the universe is governed by law, and that the existence of human beings is not determined or foreordained by a will outside of and independent of the law of causation, does it not follow that the same law that determines the fitness of any other form of matter to exist, applies equally to man? And as man has the right and the power to make, or at least destroy, all forms of matter, why should he not exercise that right in the matter of the disposal of his own life?

No one doubts his right over the life of all animals lower in the scale than himself, subject, of course, to the laws of necessity and utility. Can any good reason be assigned why, subject to the same laws, he should not possess the same right over himself?

Again, human life is not so inviolable that it cannot be destroyed by agencies which are not subject to man’s control. The lightning blasts, the waters drown and the earthquakes engulf him; all the forces of nature have power to destroy him; the meanest reptile that crawls can terminate his existence. Should, then, a power be withheld from him which is not denied to the most insignificant insect in creation?

It does by no means follow, however, that the possession of the right and power to terminate one’s life imply their indiscriminate and unreasonable use.

Man has his morals as well as physical limitations. He cannot ignore his duties to his family, and he is under obligations to society which he is not a liberty to disregard without sufficient cause.

All that is claimed is, that he must be the sole judge between the duties he owes to society and the circumstances which impel him to lay down the burden of life; and the presumption always is, that the existence of that right to prima facie evidence that the circumstances warranted the act, because all our instincts are in favor of life and against its destruction. “We rather bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.”

The mere fact that an individual has overcome the natural and powerful instinct to live, implies either a degree of temporary insanity that renders him unaccountable for his act, or a degree of mental anguish, depression of spirits, or some secret physical suffering as would render him unfit to discharge his obligations to society.

It is easy to conceive of cases, were not history full of them, wherein the best and noblest thing a man could do was to die; cases wherein “It is more worthy to leap in ourselves than tarry till they push us”; as, for instance, in cases of incurable diseases which would inevitable result in insanity and endanger the lives or destroy the happiness of those we love; or in anticipation of an inevitable and more horrible death by torture; or under circumstances which impelled the noble Brutus to fall upon his sword after the Battle of Phillipi, and of the Egyptian Queen by the bite of an asp after the battle of Actium.

But it is argued that “man has no right to take that which he cannot give.” This objection is based solely on the old theological conception which we have assumed is no longer tenable. Besides, it is not strictly true, and if true, it proves too much. We know that man, so far as his own species is concerned, is a direct and indispensable agent in the reproduction of his kind, and that without his agency, the race would speedily become extinct. But the objection has far greater force against man’s admitted right of dominion over the lives of the lower animals; for while he can procreate his own species, he has no power to reproduce any other the forms of inferior life which he daily destroys, either for the promotion of his own comfort or the gratification of his appetite.

It is thus apparent to all, that there exists in the public mind a great confusion of ideas in reference to the right of each person over his own life, as witness the diverse views and feelings of men in reference to the same act performed under different circumstances. The man who voluntarily sacrifices his life to save another is esteemed as a hero, and his right to do so is never questioned.

The soldier who rushes to certain death in the bloody arbitrament of battle, to uphold a political or religious opinion, no matter whether his cause bet that of the “blue or the gray,” is honored for his courage and devotion to principle; but toward the man who, “rashly importunate,” ends his existence, and who may have had motives that influenced his judgment just as strong as those that impelled the patriot into the “eminently deadly breach,” no such lenient judgment or friendly approval is manifested, although the act is the same and the motives that impelled it may have been as irresistible and unblamable in the one case as in the other.

Now, as it regards the right or rather the duty of society to terminate life for causes other than the punishment of crime, there can be no question if its action toward man is governed by the same rules of utility, necessity and mercy that influence its practice in dealing with brute creation. If a dumb beast is injured past the hope of recovery, society in obedience to a humane instinct, causes it to be put speedily out of its misery; why should it not do as much for a man under similar circumstances? Where is the sense or utility of allowing a mortally wounded man, who, in his agony begs to be put out of existence, or a hospital, or other patient who is dying by inches with an incurable malady, whose every moment of life is worse than death; or the helpless and senseless paralytic, whose mental and physical condition is such as to render his life of no use to the world, and a burden to himself; or the criminal condemned to die by a barbarous and cruel method if we will never learn to put them to a better use)—I say, for what cause, and by what reason does society refrain from dealing with such as kindly and mercifully as it does to animals lower in the scale?

The attitude of society toward the dangerous and incurable lunatics and confirmed and confirmed idiots is also open for the same critics. Of what earthly use does the conservation of such a class of abnormal and diseased humanity serve? If there was a shadow of hoe that they might be cured and restored to society, there might be a valid excuse for the wealth, time and labor expended on their care; but in the absence of such a hope or expectation it is a needless cruelty to prolong a useless and dangerous life, and a misapplication of effort to keep in existence abortive and diseased specimens of the race, which in all the lower forms of life nature, by a law of rigid economy, remorselessly destroys. The “survival of the fittest” is nature’s universal law. Why should a maudlin sentimental affectation of humanity reverse her decision and subvert her order?

I know that it is the boast of Christianity that it first introduced into society the sentiments of pity and kindly feeling toward its weak, suffering and helpless members—sentiments little known to the Roman and Grecian civilization, notwithstanding that in the sterner virtues of patriotism, courage and self-sacrifice they have never been excelled.

While it cannot be denied that the doctrine of human brotherhood inculcated by Christianity has in some measure softened the asperities of human nature, it is also true that the sentiment has been carried to such an extreme as in a measure to defeat its end. As the gospel inculcation of the duty of indiscriminate alms-giving will inevitable increase poverty and mendacity, so the unmethodical and blind sentiment of pity for the weak and suffering has rather increased the great army of weaklings and imbeciles by a misdirection of means and labor in spending effort on cases of individual cure which should have been applied to prevention.

Thus society, while expending millions in the care of incurables and imbeciles, takes little heed of or utterly ignores those laws by the study and obedience of which such human abortions might have been prevented from cumbering society with their useless and unwelcome presence. Grecian and Roman civilizations were, it is true, deficient in the gentler virtues, the excess of which in our day is hindering the progress of the race rather than helping or ennobling it. They, by crushing out the diseased and imperfect plants in the garden of humanity, attained to a vigor and physical development which has never been equated since. And in so doing they were entirely in accord with nature, whose mandate is inexorable, that the “fittest” only shall be permitted to live and propagate. She is a very prodigal in her waste of individual life, in order that the species be without sport or blemish.

Not so our modern civilization, which rather pets its abortions and weaklings, and complacently permits them to procreate another race of fools and pigmies as inane and useless as themselves. We seem utterly to ignore the law of causation in the matter of human procreation.

The beginning of life and its early surroundings, which we should know are the crucial period of life and the stage at which all reformatory effort should commence, are the very ones that are entirely overlooked and neglected. We act as if we thought that good fruit might be expected from an “evil tree,” that moral, intellectual and physical perfection could spring from vicious parentage and low and squalid surroundings.

We permit the conditions of disease and imperfections to attain and when the harvest is ripe we straightway proceed to strangle some that might be reformed and made of use by society, while the incurables and the misbegotten are gathered into asylums, for whose cure millions are hopelessly expended, which it applied at the initial of life in establishing right conditions would have produced a nobler and healthier crop of human beings.

I know that these views will be deemed heartless and cruel, and will be denounced as the results of infidel or heathen philosophy. That they are not Christian views I admit; but since they have the endorsement of reason and the approval of nature, we can dispense with the sanction of the church. That they are heartless we deny, except as the surgeon’s knife is cruel, and their application is as necessary to the welfare of the great organism of humanity, of which man is but a minute cell, as is the operation of the surgeon to the health of the body.

It will be objected by some that these innovations of old-time custom and law are entirely inadmissible by reason of their great liability to be abused. That there are ever great temptations to violate the sanctity of human life we know; but no important reform has or ought to be denied because of its liability to abuse. That law, institution or custom does not exist, no matter how beneficent in its character, of which it can be said, it cannot be perverted. Of course it will be necessary to surround the taking of life by society with every safeguard that judicial wisdom can devise, in order that its beneficent intent shall not be perverted by cupidity and malice.

Signed: H. B. Brown, New York, 1873.

Webmaster’s note: This article is not indicative of Victoria Woodhull’s views on euthanasia. Her columns were open to debate on many controversial issues. This is one of those controversial columns.

JAN	FEB	MAR
January 20, 1872 January 27, 1872	February 3, 1872 February 10, 1872 February 17, 1872 February 24, 1872	March 2, 1872 March 9, 1872 March 16, 1872 March 23, 1872 March 30, 1872
APR	MAY	JUNE
April 6, 1872 April 13, 1872 April 20, 1872 April 27, 1872	May 4, 1872 May 11, 1872 May 18, 1872 May 25, 1872	June 1, 1872 June 8, 1872 June 15, 1872 June 22, 1872 June 24, 1871
JULY	AUG	SEPT
July 1, 1871 July 2, 1870 July 8, 1871 July 15, 1871 July 22, 1871 July 29, 1871	August 5, 1871 August 12, 1871 August 19, 1871 August 26, 1871	September 2, 1871 September 9, 1871 September 16, 1871 September 23, 1871 September 30, 1871
OCT	NOV	DEC
October 7, 1871 October 14, 1871 October 21, 1871 October 28, 1871	November 2, 1872 November 4, 1871 November 15, 1873 November 18, 1871 November 25, 1871	December 2, 1871 December 9, 1871 December 16, 1871 December 23, 1871

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:

Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly at IAPSOP

November 4, 1871

[Page 14]

WOMAN ITEMS.

Germany has nineteen female editors.

Widowers never die of grief. Just let them alone! They’ll soon re-wive….

Money is said to be the sinews of war. It is equally the sinews of marriage. Without it no couple can carry the war on….

Dr. Beecher says: “I do not believe there’s such a thing as he-work and she-work. I never saw a woman do a man’s work handily, but I liked her all the better for it.”…

An instance of female heroism, which has recently been given in Ireland, recalls the story of Grace Darling. The brig Manly was wrecked on Drogbeda bar, in plain sight of the life-boatmen, who refused to go to their assistance in consequence of the violence of the gale. Six men were carried off the hull by the surf and drowned. At last a lady put off from shore in a small boat, and, at the risk of her own life, saved that of one of the men left on board the vessel….

A distinguished ex-Governor of Ohio, famous for story-telling, relates that on one occasion, while addressing a temperance meeting at Georgetown, District of Columbia and depicting the misery caused by indulging too frequently in the flowing bowl, his attention was attracted by the sobs of a disconsolate and seedy looking individual in the rear part of the room. On going to the person and interrogating him, he was told the usual tale of woe, among other sad incidents that during his career of vice, he had buried three wives. The Governor having buried a few wives of his own, sympathized with the inebriate, and consoled him as much as was in his power. Said he: “The Lord has indeed inflicted you.” The mourner sobbingly replied: “Yes, yes, he has,” and pausing a moment, and wiping his nose, he continued, “But I don’t think the Lord got much ahead of me, for as fast as he took one away, I took another.”

[Page 6]

THE SOCIAL EVIL.

Ladies and Gentlemen: I am here because I was asked to be, and for the same reason I arise to address you. No reluctance from indifference to this subject controls me; but in the presence of this momentous question, I frankly say I don’t know what to do. When asked to speak of it, I don’t know what to say. The fact that I am permitted to discuss it at all to such a numerous and variously constituted assemblage as this, marks a most important change in the public temper in reference to it. Six weeks ago he would have been a bold man who should dare to appear before a mixed or unmixed crowd and venture upon its discussion; and the woman who has brought this thing to an issue is something more than a heroine. Knowing this thing, so daintily called, ‘the social evil,’ as greater than the sum of all other human evils, as reaching further and striking deeper, we must appear as not knowing it. A nod of the head, a distinct wave of the hand, is all the allusion that has been permitted to it. And now we are brought to face it, to struggle with it, directly and seriously, as best we can.

This is no new thing; if it was we might deal with it. It is as ancient as antiquity. It commenced with the first outbreak of man’s passion and woman’s folly; and is incident to every phase of human society, whether barbarous or semi-civilized. It stained man’s savage life, and curses his highest civilization. Old philosophy knew no remedy for it, and the principles of Christianity, as we practice and apply them, have not eradicated. What can be done with it? What shall be said of it?

Exact the ten commandments and your courts cannot enforce them; attach penalties to the mandates of the later scriptures, and give your police courts jurisdiction over them, and they remain as now unheeded.

There are things that cannot be dealt with by law, and he is wise who will not attempt it rashly.

I have no names and no denunciation for the more guilty of either sex involved in this sin. I am willing to think that both are often the victims of unhealthy conditions of society, inherited weakness and passion, and of temptations strong as necessity . None can measure for none can know the degree of crime that attended a first fall. We only know that society has awarded unequal punishment to offenders at most of equal guilt. In the nature of things, we know that woman cannot be the chief criminal; and yet whatever may be the punishment adjudged her by our common judge, society supplements it with a final irrevocable doom, that all men and all women conspire to execute.

A daughter goes down, and forever, in the whelming flood, to be no more named; a son, reeking and dripping, comes up out of it, to be received and welcomed. We wonder why this should be. The solution is easy. Woman left to the impulses of her nature, in her horror of such impurity, would banish both, guilty men as guilty women; men, more largely involved, make common cause—they shield and shelter each other, and decree that woman shall receive all men alike, with little reference to morality. And as they make, they enforce the law, and woman submits. Men have not the hardihood to ask her to receive their less guilty paramours, and she does not.

Think, then, of this loss of woman. Men perish by accident, by the hand of murder, in deserts, go down in the liquid swirl of stormy seas; but their memory lives and is cherished. Even the sea shall give up its dead. But she who is lost in a great town, who perishes amidst the hands and helps, and in the broad glare of Christian day, and Christian churches, is left to sink and rot in the stews and slums of infamy—places that men declare are necessary, and treat with ribaldry whoever dares reach a hand to pluck the fallen back—

“Pluck up drowned honor by the hair.”

The woman is fallen—the man escapes, sore, leprous and diseased, to poison and blast the present and future generations.

Of all the courses of vice, none visits upon its votary such awful consequences as the race of sensual license. When once a man falls under the sway of this passion it subordinates all the elements of his nature to its purpose. Intellect, instinct, ambition, aspiration, physical energy and vitality are all corrupted and made its pimps and ministers. He lives but tor one purpose ; restraint, morality and religion are less than names. God vanishes from the heavens and his soul perishes within him. For him woman performs but one office. His brain is rotten, his imagination distempered, his heart dead, and he is but a breathing, diseased, physical mass, filled with the larvæ of every foul passion and appetite, from which swarm an obscene brood of vices and crimes.

Don’t say to me that woman, through any sin, can fall below man; and if there can remain in him elements that claim sympathy and toleration, how much more should we hopefully seek tor them in the person of his victims.

I don’t care to dwell upon the causes of this evil; all that ever existed are now in full force, strong and vigorous in our stimulating modes of life.

This world of ours is a queer thing, and when it goes wrong it visits its sins on the most helpless, and often the least offending of its children ; and never dreams of mending its own ways; declares that it can’t in the very nature of things.

Men are born into it, to find all the homes and food and warm clothes already appropriated, nothing left for them ; and when the boy begs for education and food and clothes, the world tells him to work; and when he holds up ready hands, that is refused him ; and when in starvation he steals to live, this world sends him to the penitentiary as logically as can be.

When the child girl raises her meek face and lifts weak hands for help and sustenance, and with mute tears appeals, she is thrust into the gutter; and when starved and broken she crawls to the brothel, her only shelter, the world sends an organized band of police “to raid,” as it is so sententiously called, her only retreat.

Some imprudent, not impure woman, becomes the theme of gossip; her name is lightly pitched from tongue to tongue, till she is certainly and surely forced into the path that goes to infamy.

The world dooms woman—the whole sex—to wifehood and motherhood, and if through no matter what perfidy of men she is betrayed to the last without the first, no angel can save her and mortals scarcely weep for her.

Who can speak of the victims of seduction—and they appear on both sides sometimes.

The world wants churches and it builds them.

It also wants these numberless places of sin and it builds them, and men declare they are necessary. If it would be rid of them let it extinguish this want, and this generation shall not pass away, ladies, until all you labor for shall be fulfilled.

But what can we do? Who shall do it? Where shall we commence ? Who will help; who will give money and sympathy; who will dare to oppose?

It is said that our municipal authorities have decreed that the haunts of this sin, the only refuge of these banned and exiled outlaws, shall on a given night be set upon by the armed police. I shrink from this. It used to be said by the apostles of slavery that spreading it did not strengthen, but only diffused it. I was never in favor of this diffusion of slavery, and I am opposed to the diffusion of this thing.

So cruel and cowardly does this “raiding” seem to me, that, were I an officer and received an order to set upon the miserable abodes of these helpless outcasts, and to break in upon them and seize and hurry them off to noisome station-houses, and then in the morning to parade them through the streets to the police court, and there present them in the presence of the ribald, blasphemous, reeking throng that crowd that stew, to receive justice—as we call it—I would resign.

“Regulate this thing; regulate it,” exclaim voices never heard in opposition to any wrong. Yes, regulate it; it needs it, and then regulate the regulators, mayhap. “License these places,” men say. No doubt a revenue could be raised from them, but what could be done with such money? We are pointed to St. Louis and told to copy the example she borrowed from Europe.

Oh, this is an awful phase of this dreadful subject, requiring a few direct words, that must be spoken even here. It has in it the bitterness of death and the mockery of the grave; and ribald scoffing may not compel silence, or squeamishness forbid utterance. Things unfit to be spoken of good are unfit to be.

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 (….)

JAN	FEB	MAR
January 20, 1872 January 27, 1872	February 3, 1872 February 10, 1872 February 17, 1872 February 24, 1872	March 2, 1872 March 9, 1872 March 16, 1872 March 23, 1872 March 30, 1872
APR	MAY	JUNE
April 6, 1872 April 13, 1872 April 20, 1872 April 27, 1872	May 4, 1872 May 11, 1872 May 18, 1872 May 25, 1872	June 1, 1872 June 8, 1872 June 15, 1872 June 22, 1872 June 24, 1871
JULY	AUG	SEPT
July 1, 1871 July 2, 1870 July 8, 1871 July 15, 1871 July 22, 1871 July 29, 1871	August 5, 1871 August 12, 1871 August 19, 1871 August 26, 1871	September 2, 1871 September 9, 1871 September 16, 1871 September 23, 1871 September 30, 1871
OCT	NOV	DEC
October 7, 1871 October 14, 1871 October 21, 1871 October 28, 1871	November 2, 1872 November 4, 1871 November 15, 1873 November 18, 1871 November 25, 1871	December 2, 1871 December 9, 1871 December 16, 1871 December 23, 1871

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:

Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly at IAPSOP

November 2, 1872

[Page 15]

GRANT OR GREELEY – WHICH?

In the absence of an electoral ticket of the Equal Rights Party [Victoria Woodhull’s party], we suppose that most men who would have voted for the candidates of that party, will vote for one or the other of the parties whom the men standing at the head of this article represent. If it were the man merely who is to be voted for, on account of his personal fitness, it seems to us that no person can be at a loss as to whom he should support. General Grant is, at heart, favorable to many of the reformatory movements; especially is he favorable to the cause of woman. He, as well as Mrs. Grant, believes that women ought to vote when they want to. Mr. Greeley believes that women are good cooks, and that cooks ought not to be voters. In a word, Mr. Greeley is utterly opposed to any reform in favor of women. This, so far as personality is concerned, should secure him the opposition of every woman who thinks she is as capable of self-government as man; and the support of every woman who thinks she was created to be ruled by men.

But it is not a fact that it is Grant or Greeley for whom votes are to be cast. It is for the parties which those men represent, and this puts an entirely different face upon the question as to which should receive the support of reformers. That ought to be determined without reference to the candidates, since, whichever will be elected, will be the slave of the party which elects him. General Grant acknowledged that he could not do what he wanted to do for woman, which was what was done for the Negro by his urging upon Congress the legislation in his behalf. Now, the question for women to decide in the support of these men is, which party is the more likely to do them justice.

Most of the leaders in the woman movement are advocating the election of Grant on account of the reference made to women in the platform of the Republican party. We differ from them as to the honesty of that reference. . . .The “respectful consideration” which is spoken of in that platform, it seems to us, could more fittingly have been bestowed when it was sought from Congress, which had the power to grant it, but did not. We believe that every hope women find in the fourteenth plank will prove a deceit. That plank could not possibly have been framed so as to seem to say more and really mean less. . . .

When we think of it, however, we cannot help repeating the Teacher of Nazareth’s parable of the Two Sons, recorded in St. Matthew XXI:28-31:

But what think ye! A certain man had two sons, and he went to the first and said: “Son, go work today in my vineyard.”

He answered and said: “I will not”; but afterward he repented and went.

And he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said: “I go,” and went not.

Whether of the twain did the will of his father. They said unto him, the first. Jesus saith unto them, ‘Verily, I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you.”

Now, may it not be barely possible that this teaching of Jesus is applicable to the present situation The Liberal party which said it would not go work in the vineyard for woman may do it; while the Republican party which said it would work in the vineyard for women may not do so. At all events, we always prefer an outspoken opponent like the Liberal party, to a deceitful friend which we fear the Republican party is. Besides, this new party will find itself absolutely compelled to take up some new issue if it think to remain a party. It must have some point of cohesion which it has not got at present, and which it will not have unless it be successful, which does not now seem probably; therefore, we believe that the opposition party to the present administration, will be the one that will adopt woman suffrage.

But we do not urge the support of either of the candidates. We simply state our conviction, and if too much confidence be not placed in the “professed love” of the Republican party, its representatives may be riduculed into doing justice to the interpretations put upon the language of the Philadelphia platform.

There is another reason why we do not believe that Republicans endorse what the Philadelphia Convention said of the woman question as committing the party to suffrage. What party organ of any consequence has said that the Republican party is committed to the doctrines of woman suffrage, or has urged the election of its candidates because their success will insure the consideration and settlement of this question? It is true we find all the papers treating the women very courteously, and encouraging them to advocate General Grant’s election; but what one has said that the obstruction to woman suffrage must be cleared out of the way by Congress? On the contrary, like the party leaders, the papers have heretofore, almost universally, said that Congress has nothing to do with the citizen’s right to the ballot. We listened with great care at what the women said a few
nights ago at Cooper Institute in favor of General Grant, but neither one of them even hinted to these things which we consider the weak points in the professed adoption of the suffrage question by the Republican party.

Webmaster’s note: The election of 1872 had two major candidates—incumbent President Ulysses Grant (Republican Party) and Horace Greeley (Liberal Republican Party and Democratic Party). Victoria Woodhull was a third party candidate (Equal Rights Party). This article was part of the issue that led to the arrest of Victoria Woodhull, Col. Blood, and Tennie C. Claflin on a trumped of charge of sending “obscene” literature through the mail. Fortunately, Woodhull, Blood, and Claflin foresaw the government’s actions and secured some of their plates so they could reprint articles from this issue months later.

Download a PDF of the complete, suppressed scandal issue at IAPSOP.

JAN	FEB	MAR
January 20, 1872 January 27, 1872	February 3, 1872 February 10, 1872 February 17, 1872 February 24, 1872	March 2, 1872 March 9, 1872 March 16, 1872 March 23, 1872 March 30, 1872
APR	MAY	JUNE
April 6, 1872 April 13, 1872 April 20, 1872 April 27, 1872	May 4, 1872 May 11, 1872 May 18, 1872 May 25, 1872	June 1, 1872 June 8, 1872 June 15, 1872 June 22, 1872 June 24, 1871
JULY	AUG	SEPT
July 1, 1871 July 2, 1870 July 8, 1871 July 15, 1871 July 22, 1871 July 29, 1871	August 5, 1871 August 12, 1871 August 19, 1871 August 26, 1871	September 2, 1871 September 9, 1871 September 16, 1871 September 23, 1871 September 30, 1871
OCT	NOV	DEC
October 7, 1871 October 14, 1871 October 21, 1871 October 28, 1871	November 2, 1872 November 4, 1871 November 15, 1873 November 18, 1871 November 25, 1871	December 2, 1871 December 9, 1871 December 16, 1871 December 23, 1871

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:

Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly at IAPSOP

October 28, 1871

[Page 10]

THE BOSTON EXCLUSIVES AGAIN.

People who do not stand upon principles and guide all their actions by them are always found contradicting and stultifying themselves. People who tell lies must resort to habitual lying in order to be consistent and not expose themselves; but such persons are, sooner or later, certain to be detected, since it is natural for people to speak the truth rather than to lie; and sometimes they will forget themselves and act in accordance with their natural inclination.

We are forcibly reminded of this general rule of life from comparing the present attitude of some of the “Boston Exclusives” with that assumed by them in past time. Last week was presented the protest against marriage laws made by Lucy Stone, who is most vehement against us for now advocating their amendment; This week we contrast the position of the editor-in-chief of the organ of the Exclusives with that she occupied in 1869.

On the 15^th of July, at a Woman Suffrage Convention at Plano, Ill., Mrs. Livermore, then a resident of Chicago, made the following speech upon the proposition that “the men and women most forward in this movement are of immoral character,” are such as we do not most desire to pin our teeth to: “Mrs. Livermore,” says the Aurora Herald, “denied the above in toto. She was herself President of the Woman Suffrage Association in the west, and Mrs. Jane Willing, of Rockford, was the Secretary. The well-known advocates of the cause were of the purest morality. No purer girl lives than Anna Dickinson? No more tender mother than Mrs. Cady Stanton; no truer woman Susan B. Anthony; and hosts of the great and good men throughout the land.”

“But what difference does it make to the hungry man whether his food comes to him on a dish of gold or silver, or of wood? In either case it satisfies hunger as well. What difference does it make who buys it? And so with the truth—whether presented by an angel or a devil, the truth is all the same; and blind is the man who cannot see that. Is Woman Suffrage right? That is the question. What matters it who advocates it, whether Free Lovers, Spiritualists, or the Methodists, orthodox or heterodox? It makes no difference. ‘Truth is truth wherever we find it.’” The Herald afterward says: “To Mrs. Livermore was tendered the thanks of the Convention for her instructive speeches, accompanied by a roll of greenbacks.”

Mrs. Livermore at that time belonged to the class who were the objects of abuse, who were called all sorts of bad names by the then “respectables.” But a change has come over the spirit of her life. She has contracted the disease of respectability and can abuse as vilely as the most pious of former times. Then Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony were good women and true. Now they are not fit for the prae [sic] excellent Bostonians to mingle with at all; indeed, they will have nothing to do with anything that either these ladies associate with. They are even doing the cause “great injury,” according to the paper Mrs. Livermore edits, because they hold more advanced social ideas than are considered admissible by the clique of which she is chief. But Mrs. Livermore considered the truth of suffrage to be acceptable even from Free Lovers and Spiritualists then, while now they are not even to be permitted to so much as approach the pla5tform upon which “the immaculates” stand. They are even so discourteous as to tell them in a call for a convention that they are not wanted. We presume Mrs. Livermore and the rest of her set are not as hungry for suffrage now as she was then, since they will not accept it through anything that has a taint of Wood about it. Suffrage must be tendered to them on golden plates; and be most graciously offered by satin-clothed servants; their tastes have so improved upon what they were that anything short of this will not agree with their present delicate sensibilities….

For our part we should be very glad to have the movement for suffrage receive the support of all persons who are honest advocates of it; but we maintain now, as Mrs. Livermore did in 1869, that whoever rejects aid, let it come from whatever source it may, is not for suffrage but against it; and Mrs. Livermore and all the rest of that clique know it is so. And when they say that the 150,000 readers of a paper which advocates suffrage earnestly and persistently, are not representatives of the movement, and, in fact do not belong to it at all, simply because they patronize that paper which advocates Lucy Stone’s former marriage theory in preference to the Journal, they know they speak a lie of which they are liable to convict themselves, whenever the spirit of truth predominates over their assumed policy of falsehood.

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 (….)

JAN	FEB	MAR
January 20, 1872 January 27, 1872	February 3, 1872 February 10, 1872 February 17, 1872 February 24, 1872	March 2, 1872 March 9, 1872 March 16, 1872 March 23, 1872 March 30, 1872
APR	MAY	JUNE
April 6, 1872 April 13, 1872 April 20, 1872 April 27, 1872	May 4, 1872 May 11, 1872 May 18, 1872 May 25, 1872	June 1, 1872 June 8, 1872 June 15, 1872 June 22, 1872 June 24, 1871
JULY	AUG	SEPT
July 1, 1871 July 2, 1870 July 8, 1871 July 15, 1871 July 22, 1871 July 29, 1871	August 5, 1871 August 12, 1871 August 19, 1871 August 26, 1871	September 2, 1871 September 9, 1871 September 16, 1871 September 23, 1871 September 30, 1871
OCT	NOV	DEC
October 7, 1871 October 14, 1871 October 21, 1871 October 28, 1871	November 2, 1872 November 4, 1871 November 15, 1873 November 18, 1871 November 25, 1871	December 2, 1871 December 9, 1871 December 16, 1871 December 23, 1871

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:

Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly at IAPSOP

October 21, 1871

[Page 8 – about the Great Chicago Fire]

DIES IRAE.

If sympathy avail aught against the overwhelming calamities of this life, Chicago has the deep commiseration of all cities in the New World and the Old. They lament with her in her great sorrow. Theirs will be no meaningless woe—it will resolve itself into action.

Meanwhile, let individuals remember that it is individuals who suffer. Public misfortune means personal affliction. The pressure is fearful. Let all whose hearts are not dead to human feeling remember that food, clothing shelter are required—the most urgent, most absolute needs of our common nature. Leave off wringing of hands and crying aloud. Give liberally, according to your means; but, be it little or be it much, bethink yourself that “now” is the time. Stand not on the order of your giving, but give at once.

[Page 10]

WHAT A GREAT COUNTRY THIS IS.

Everyone knows that the city has been robbed. Millions of dollars spent in furnishing furniture that never knew saw, hammer nor nail; nine millions spent on carpets that never passed through the loom, and so on; Accounts of these robberies in every hand, the items in every mouth. The public speculators denounced and pointed at, but nothing done; nothing can be done. The Seventy may rage, but the wicked do not even tremble.

The [Tammany] Ring is not busted yet. It is assailed, but it is intact. By the fearful and wonderful provisions of our laws and charters we have a set of public servants who, being once appointed, cannot be discharged. They must be impeached before they can be removed. If they have only backbone enough to stand fast, and are thick-skinned enough to defy the slings and arrows of an outraged public, they may keep where they are; for do they not hold the impeaching power in their breeches pockets. The Wynans business settled that point. Injunctions against the issue of bonds amount to little; they only mean that the city creditor shall not be paid, but not that the defaulters may not create new debts. There is one drop of comfort in this cup of misery. The contrast with Democratic-New York and Republican Washington. While the city has gone on piling an Ossa of expenses on a Pelion of debts, the National Administration goes on reducing expenses and paying off debts, not as wisely or as considerately as it might do, perhaps, but still doing the work appointed. The government high officials are men of moderate fortunes, which they can for the most art trace back to private, not official sources; in other words, they are in the main honest—live cleanly and die decently. Our civic dignitaries are in possession of enormous fortunes—they toil not neither do they spin. Producing nothing, their business is to live sumptuously, to wear fine linen and diamonds, and to work the wires.

Is there no remedy for this monstrous state of affairs. None, while the people are content; while each is more intent on his own daily gains than on the welfare or morality of the community; If reputable men felt they owed a duty to their country, and in place of dreary Fourth of July preachments about the value of freedom would only recognize the copybook maxim that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance; in short, if knowing their duty, they would turn to d and do it,, there might be some hope. As it is, the honest being inactive the rogues and their satellites have it all their own way; Nor is there any hope of change until some enormity so intolerable that it breaks even long-suffering patience. Then the people may perhaps rise and drive all before them, like chaff before the wind. But this means revolution, and out of revolution comes for the most part one man power.

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 (….)

JAN	FEB	MAR
January 20, 1872 January 27, 1872	February 3, 1872 February 10, 1872 February 17, 1872 February 24, 1872	March 2, 1872 March 9, 1872 March 16, 1872 March 23, 1872 March 30, 1872
APR	MAY	JUNE
April 6, 1872 April 13, 1872 April 20, 1872 April 27, 1872	May 4, 1872 May 11, 1872 May 18, 1872 May 25, 1872	June 1, 1872 June 8, 1872 June 15, 1872 June 22, 1872 June 24, 1871
JULY	AUG	SEPT
July 1, 1871 July 2, 1870 July 8, 1871 July 15, 1871 July 22, 1871 July 29, 1871	August 5, 1871 August 12, 1871 August 19, 1871 August 26, 1871	September 2, 1871 September 9, 1871 September 16, 1871 September 23, 1871 September 30, 1871
OCT	NOV	DEC
October 7, 1871 October 14, 1871 October 21, 1871 October 28, 1871	November 2, 1872 November 4, 1871 November 15, 1873 November 18, 1871 November 25, 1871	December 2, 1871 December 9, 1871 December 16, 1871 December 23, 1871

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:

Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly at IAPSOP

October 14, 1871

[Page 5]

OUR CHILDREN.
BY M.S.K.

DEAR WOODHULL AND CLAFLIN: Among the current items of this week’s Ledger, I find the following: “A man in West Albany, Vt. lately whipped one of his boys till the flesh was lacerated from the small of the child’s back to his knees. He was complained of by a neighbor for cruelty to the boy, and the Justice of the Peace before who he was brought fined him two dollars. The father paid the money, remarking that he thought it was cheap. The indignant neighbors thought so too.”

Cheap! Yes, it was indeed cheep, pecuniarily speaking, to that brutal fiendish father, but how dear to the poor boy, God and the angels only can know. Cheap for the father, but how dear must it have been for that mother, who doubtless, through fear, was forced to silence, while her darling boy was enduring such inhuman treatment. My soul is filled with deepest sympathy for her and for the child, and I can but ask, When will parents learn to train and govern their children by kindness and love, and not by harsh treatment and fear? When will they learn to spare the rod , and save the child?

Again: Is this man, or, rather, this fiend in human shape, qualified to be a father, or a husband?…

The minds of many great and noble men and women have been, and are yet, greatly exercised about cruelty to animals. Papers have been published, many able articles have been written and eloquent lectures given upon that subject, but what has been said about cruelty to children? What paper has been published vindicating the rights and privileges of the little ones of our land? Are they not of as much importance as the beasts of the field? Does the above extract not show that man may abuse his power in regard to his child, to a certain degree, if not to the extent that he does toward his animals?…

No matter how much deformed and diseased a man may become a father. So a woman may be diseased and deformed—as nearly all fashionable women are—and yet she may become a mother. A man may chew tobacco, get drunk, swear and debauch to the fullest extend, and still he feels himself at perfect liberty to become a father, and to transmit and entail upon his child all the above-named evils; and because it commits a fault he has a right and the power to whip it till its flesh is all mangled and lacerated, as per extract. This supposed right is sometimes carried to the extent of maiming, or even of taking the child’s life, as in the case of the minister who, a few years ago, whipped his child till it died because it would not pray….

[Page 10]

MRS. WOODHULL INTERVIEWED AND CRITICISED.

[Correspondence of the Troy Whig.]

I went yesterday to see Mrs. Woodhull—prompted, I confess, by the most vulgar curiosity, just as I might walk a block to see Jim Fisk, Beelzebub, or a two-headed monstrosity. I had never been more violently prejudiced against any person, man or woman. It was not alone that I considered her impure in character. Private immorality may be viewed with pity, sometimes with contempt. But accepting, with Stuart Mill and Beecher, the principle of Woman’s Rights, I loathed Mrs. Woodhull for disgracing a good cause for brazenly hitching this cause, as I supposed, to the business card of a tramping broker. A thousand things in the general press, and some things in that chaotic sheet, WOODHULL & CLAFLIN’S WEEKLY, seemed to justify this conviction. On reaching the lyceum hall of the Spiritualists, I found that Mrs. Woodhull had just finished her remarks to the Convention, and had retired with some friends to an ante-room. Seeing an editorial acquaintance, I asked him to stroll with me into the room and point her out. I refused an introduction, thinking at first that, in Mrs. Woodhull’s case, it would answer to forget the manners of a gentleman, and simply stare at her. But, once in the room, this attitude became ridiculous, and so I was presented to her.

Doubtless no person in America has lately been so misjudged as this young woman. Everybody has written harshly of her. I have done so with the rest. But as Tilton heads his biography of Mrs. Woodhull, “He that uttereth a slander is a fool.” I had not even taken the trouble to read Mr. Tilton’s article, until after I saw his heroine. But I now think that in telling the sad story of her life, he has done the American people a noble service.

Mrs. Woodhull is certainly not what is called a “well balanced mind.” To use the common word—she is “crazy”—a little so, but in the same sense in which Joan of Arc and Swedenborg were “out of their heads.” But she is not coarse, not vain, not selfish; she is not even self-conscious in the meaning of ordinary egotism. She has just the reverse of all these qualities. She is simply an enthusiast—the most rapt idealist I have ever met. In conversation she never seems to think of herself, and scarcely of her listener; she is entirely lost, absorbed heart and soul, in the ideas she advocates. Her very financial schemes seem a crusade against Wall Street, rather than endeavors to prosper by its vicious gambling.

Mr. Tilton’s description of her person is accurate. Her face is not sensuously attractive, but its intellectual beauty is much more than remarkable. I know of no other public character with such a transparent expression of impassioned thought. Even Anna Dickinson, whose moral earnestness is almost the whole secret of her power, has an inexpressive face compared with this sibyl of politics and Spiritualism.

I should hesitate a long time before joining the Victoria League.” The country can probably do well without Mrs. Woodhull for President. She would be scarcely superior in that position to Horace Greeley himself. But that she believes implicitly in her destiny, feels that she was born for a great work, is evident at the glance of an eye.

Tilton thinks she occasionally writes English—whether by aid of her spirit, “Demosthenes,” or otherwise—”not unworthy of Macaulay.”

A passage is given for example, eloquent enough, but rather “spiritual” in vocabulary, and treating, among other things, of “consonant harmony.” Such figures of speech I don’t remember to have seen in Macaulay, and I doubt that “Demosthenes” ever used to employ them in his more careful Greek orations. No, Mrs. Woodhull is not nicely cultivated in her diction, and Demosthenes loses elegance when she speaks English for him. She is such an intense nature, however, that I presume she sees visions—as many angels as Saint John, perhaps, as many devils as Luther. Had she been carefully trained from childhood, I must think she would have been a wonderful scholar, poet and thinker. As it is, she is an abnormal growth of democratic institutions—thoroughly sincere, partly insane and fitted to exaggerate great truths, like self-denying love, into theoretical free love and some practical mischief.

But now that Mr. Tilton has shown her personal character to be as pure as that of any woman married after divorce; now that the story of her two husbands has been exploded, in all but the most generous pity and charity for the outcast Woodhull, American editors should heal the wound they have caused by their ignorant slanders. If the press of this nation has not settled into a hopeless oligarchy of gossips, a “coward’s castle” filled with blackguards, it will make the atonement that common decency demands.

E.H.G.C.

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 (….)

JAN	FEB	MAR
January 20, 1872 January 27, 1872	February 3, 1872 February 10, 1872 February 17, 1872 February 24, 1872	March 2, 1872 March 9, 1872 March 16, 1872 March 23, 1872 March 30, 1872
APR	MAY	JUNE
April 6, 1872 April 13, 1872 April 20, 1872 April 27, 1872	May 4, 1872 May 11, 1872 May 18, 1872 May 25, 1872	June 1, 1872 June 8, 1872 June 15, 1872 June 22, 1872 June 24, 1871
JULY	AUG	SEPT
July 1, 1871 July 2, 1870 July 8, 1871 July 15, 1871 July 22, 1871 July 29, 1871	August 5, 1871 August 12, 1871 August 19, 1871 August 26, 1871	September 2, 1871 September 9, 1871 September 16, 1871 September 23, 1871 September 30, 1871
OCT	NOV	DEC
October 7, 1871 October 14, 1871 October 21, 1871 October 28, 1871	November 2, 1872 November 4, 1871 November 15, 1873 November 18, 1871 November 25, 1871	December 2, 1871 December 9, 1871 December 16, 1871 December 23, 1871

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:

Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly at IAPSOP

“IMPOSSIBLE? No such word in the soldier’s dictionary,” said Napoleon. And it is true. The impossibilities of today are the common-places of tomorrow.

[Page 14]

WOMAN ITEMS.

The Nebraska men voted down infant education and woman suffrage, while they upheld free liquor. Do our readers take the idea?

An Atlanta paper has the following statistics: “Of the sixty-nine young ladies who fainted away in Atlanta during the summer, fifty-seven fell into the arms of gentlemen, eleven fell on the floor, and one into a water bucket.

[Pages 3-6, third day p. 6]

OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE EIGHTH NATIONAL CONVENTION—THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SPIRITUALISTS.

…Thursday—Third Day.

…Evening address by Mrs. Woodhull, on “The Constitutional Right of Women to Vote.” Addresses by Mrs. Middlebrook, Moses Hull, and closing remarks by Mrs. Brown, retiring President.

Introducing her speech Mrs. Woodhull said:

I thank the Troy Times for the opportunity it has given me to say a word to this Convention, which has honored me so highly. Agitation of thought is the beginning of wisdom. Hence I like it. Whatever others may think of it, I know that the social question lies at the base of all reform. It is the great question, and we can’t shirk it if we would, and I wouldn’t if I could, but our friends of the press cry Free Love. But it doesn’t frighten me one bit, for I have never known any other love than free love; they may be acquainted with some other kind. We have laws that give the lie to it, but for all that sensible people know that it is the law that lies and not love. I spoke to you yesterday of children. I now add that we can never have perfect children born in hateful conditions, and we might just as well meet this question right here and now as to delay it, since it must be met sooner or later. I have boldly proclaimed these doctrines ever since we started our paper. The Times may call them “nastiness,” but I call them my religion, and I am as ready to die for it as were the early martyrs for their religion. If proper generation is not a good religion to preach, what will you say for regeneration, which is so widely discussed? I tell you, my friends, that they are afraid that their occupation will be gone. If I am asked, do you believe in promiscuous intercourse for the sexes, I reply I don’t believe anything about it. I know that it exists to an alarming extent; and more, I know that a great many of those editors who write me down are among its best representatives. But if you ask me if I believe such a condition a high one, I will say, I think it to be that which the Times calls “nastiness.” I hope it does not view my doctrines through colored glasses. I believe promiscuity to be anarchy, and the very antithesis of that for which I aspire. I know that there are all degrees of lust and love, from the lowest to the highest. But I believe the highest sexual relations are those that are monogamic, and that those are high and spiritual in proportion as they are continuous. But I protest, and I believe every woman who has purity in her soul protests, against all laws that would compel them to maintain relations with men for whom they have no regard. I honor that purity of life which comes from the heart, while I pity the woman who is pure simply because the law makes her so. If to hold and practice such doctrines as these is to be a deep Free Lover, then I am a Free Lover.

Mr. E. S. Wheeler submitted the following resolution, which was enthusiastically adopted:

Whereas; We have lost all hope in existing political parties for the purification of the political atmosphere and restoration of the government to Republican principles and usage; and
Whereas, An Equal Rights Party has been organized;
therefore
Resolved, That we hereby declare our firm adherence to its interests, and pledge our support to its able candidate for the Presidency.

The Association, after eight sessions; adjourned to meet at the call of the Board of Trustees next year. This was one of the largest and most enthusiastic meetings of the Association.

[Page 7]

MRS. MARGARET CADY, widow of the late Judge Daniel Cady, and a daughter of General James Livingston of the Revolutionary army, died at Johnstown, N.Y. on the 16^th instant, aged eighty-seven years. Mrs. Cady was an accomplished lady of the old school, and in her prime remarkable for dignity and grace, and for brilliant conversational powers, and the hospitality she dispensed among a large circle of friends, her mansion being a ways crowded with guests. She was related to many of the distinguished old families of the State besides the Livingstons, as, for instance, the Schuylers, the Clintons and the Ten Broecks. She was the aunt of Gerrit Smith and of Major General A.B. Eaton, Commissary General of the United States Army. She was very kind and liberal to the poor, and was an exemplary member of the Presbyterian church more than seventy years. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton writes as follows: “I grieve to inform you of the death of my dear mother. She was a grand, brave woman. Her name has led the largest petition sent to the last Constitutional Convention of the State of New York asking to have the word ‘male’ stricken from the State constitution. She has said for years that she hoped to be enfranchised before entering the kingdom of Heaven; but the wheels of progress moved too slowly for her earnest wish to be gratified, although she had watched and waited eighty-seven years.”

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 (….)

JAN	FEB	MAR
January 20, 1872 January 27, 1872	February 3, 1872 February 10, 1872 February 17, 1872 February 24, 1872	March 2, 1872 March 9, 1872 March 16, 1872 March 23, 1872 March 30, 1872
APR	MAY	JUNE
April 6, 1872 April 13, 1872 April 20, 1872 April 27, 1872	May 4, 1872 May 11, 1872 May 18, 1872 May 25, 1872	June 1, 1872 June 8, 1872 June 15, 1872 June 22, 1872 June 24, 1871
JULY	AUG	SEPT
July 1, 1871 July 2, 1870 July 8, 1871 July 15, 1871 July 22, 1871 July 29, 1871	August 5, 1871 August 12, 1871 August 19, 1871 August 26, 1871	September 2, 1871 September 9, 1871 September 16, 1871 September 23, 1871 September 30, 1871
OCT	NOV	DEC
October 7, 1871 October 14, 1871 October 21, 1871 October 28, 1871	November 2, 1872 November 4, 1871 November 15, 1873 November 18, 1871 November 25, 1871	December 2, 1871 December 9, 1871 December 16, 1871 December 23, 1871

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:

Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly at IAPSOP

THE LAW’S injustice is proverbial. It is seldom that a more grievous outrage occurs than that recorded in the case of Peter Hitchens an Englishman. He was sentenced to the treadmill and compelled to work with thieves and malefactors. All because he objected to his child being vaccinated.

[Page 14]

WOMAN ITEMS.

…Mr. Beecher thinks it high time girls were taught a little practical natural history, and so shamed out of screaming and half fainting at the sight of a worm, toad or snake….

There is a woman in Washington who, having kept a vile house for years, and amassed a fortune of $150,000, after reserving for herself an annual income of $500, devoted the rest of her money to the cause of female moral reform….

Can girls stand a college course of study? Mrs. Stanton thinks they can, and says: “I would like to see you take 1,300 young men and lace them up, and hang ten to twenty pounds’ weight of clothes on their waists, perch them up on three-inch heels, cover their heads with ripples, chignons, rats and mice, and stick ten thousand hair pins into their scalps; if they can stand all this they will stand a little Latin and Greek.”…

[Page 6]

PUBLIC EDUCATION.

While we would not do away with private schools if we could, we certainly must admit that, for a Republic like ours, public schools, where the children of the masses can be educated together, are an absolute necessity. Under the same roof they bring together boys and girls representing every shade of religion and nationality, and in the hearts of these little ones they drop the seeds of a friendship which continue to grow and to blossom until maturity is reached, and, as a result, they go out into the world strong men and women, entirely free from prejudices common to those educated in sectarian schools. Thus they are made good citizens, and, as such, may always be relied upon as unflinching opponents of the one thing which above all others this country has most reason to fear—a union of Church and State. Anything, therefore, which promises to improve and extend our system of public education is a blessing to the country, and as such we hail the New York School Journal, a weekly paper, published in this city by Messrs. Stout and Coughlin, in the interest of free education. It is the only weekly education journal, we believe, in the United States, and, as its columns indicate, its editors do not believe that in order to be instructive all sprightliness must be buried under a mass of solemn stupidity. We are glad to notice it is meeting with success everywhere, except with the City Hall Ring and some of the members of the Board of Education who are but the Ring’s creatures….

[Page 14]

A GIRL AS GOOD AS A BOY.—The following is an extract from a speech of Mrs. E.C. Stanton, delivered at San Francisco recently: