Victoria Woodhull was born in 1838 and was no minor figure during her lifetime. She was the 'Terrell Owens' of politics during her time. I find two things truly amazing about Victoria Woodhull. One, she surely must have been the first true 'hippie'. Everything about her fits the 1960's which came 100 years after her first run for President. She ran on a platform that called for a graduated direct taxation, the regulation of monopolies, laws to protect laborers, a civil service based on merit, equal rights for women including the right to vote, giving ownership of land mineral and water resources to the people, guaranteed employment to all, and the establishment of a universal government with international arbitration for wars. The second amazing thing about Victoria Woodhull is that the history books ignore her almost completely. Most Americans are not even aware she ran for President even though in her time she was one of the most well known figures in the country. President Grant once told her in his White House Office that "Some day you will be sitting in this Office".
Her resume is impressive. She dominated four major suffrage conventions, she ran for President twice (women couldn't vote back then but they could run for President), she was the first major female player on Wall Street (where she made a fortune), the first woman to be granted high level appearances before Congress, she became a major focal point in the national debate over pornography (jailed several times but each time a jury found her not guilty), the major public figure to confront the double standard for women in business and sex, and was the major publisher of a popular weekly newspaper.
She was raised in an age when spiritualism was rampant. Born in the poorest of families she was married at age 15 to an older medical doctor with whom she had two children. She then divorced him and married a Civil War veteran forming a family unit that consisted of herself, her former husband, her sister, her mother and father, her current husband, and her children. Her home was a virtual and perpetual open house. It was the place to go for stimulating discussions and to meet important people.
She was extremely attractive, very smart, and understood how the male world worked back then, and had the intelligence and beauty to manipulate men as they manipulated women. Her first area of attention was suffrage but she was nothing like like any of the other female suffrage leaders. They were prim and proper, laid back, and anything but sexy. Victoria took these conventions by storm. The leaders needed her money and she was generous with it. The suffrage leaders resented her deeply but they were trapped---Victoria had the money and a huge following. At first the male leaders in the country found her delightful, entertaining, and fun to be around. Then she announced she was running for President and challenged the status quo with a vengeance. It wasn't long before she was called Public Enemy #1. As the ensuing quotations show, she hit the status quo on all sides. She, in her outspoken but colorful way of speaking, said: "I believe it is my duty and mission to carry the torch to light up and destroy the heap of rottenness which, in the name of religion, marital sanctity, and social purity, now passes as the social system. It need be pointed out that women back then had few social or legal rights. In the 1870's, for example, 80 percent of men seeking a divorce stated as their reason the "failure of their wife to be submissive helpmates". The quotations below on sex need be viewed in the context of this background. In the end she was hounded so much by political and some religious leaders to the point she moved to England and spent the rest of her life there. Her husband perhaps summed her up best: "She was more alive than anyone I have ever met. Ordinary words don't describe her. When you were with her everything became so thrilling, so worthwhile. You looked at the world through her eyes and you saw miracles all around you. The commonplace, the dull, the everyday disappeared. She wanted people to be happy and she made them happy." Of course, since women couldn't vote, she never got elected President but said later, "I hardly expected to be elected. The truth is I am too many years ahead of this age, and the exalted views and objects of humanitarianism can scarcely be grasped as yet by the unenlightened mind of the average man." And of course, in hindsight she was right. Most of her political platform eventually came to be, and maybe the rest will some day too. For all the free love talk, which I think to most means something different than what she meant----for all that talk her own family consisted of a large extended family which stayed with her their entire life. No one ever fell by the wayside. To my knowledge, no friend, of her many friends, ever turned against her. I think that says a lot about Victoria Woodhull. One wonders, can those who labeled her a moral depravate be right if all her army of friends could never find anything morally depraved about her? What is truth? Victoria Woodhull made everyone think about truth. Below are some quotations from her:
"While others of my sex devoted themselves to a crusade against the laws that shackle the women of the country, I asserted my individual independence; while others prayed for the good time coming, I worked for it; while others argued the equality of women with man, I proved it by successfully engaging in business; while others sought to show that there was no valid reason why women should be treated, socially and politically as being inferior to man, I boldly entered the arena of business and exercised the rights I already possessed. I therefore claim the right to speak for the disenfranchised women of the country, and believing as I do that I happen to be the most prominent representative of the only unrepresented class in the republic, I now announce myself as candidate for the Presidency. I anticipate criticism; but however unfavorable the comment this letter may evoke I trust that my sincerity will not be called in question."
"Woman, no less than man, can qualify herself for the more onerous occupations of life."
"The American nation in its march onward and upward, cannot publicly choke the intellectual and political activity of half of its citizens by narrow statutes. The will of the entire people is the true basis of republican government, and a free expression of that will by the public vote of all citizens, without distinctions of race, color, occupation or sex, is the only means by which that will can be ascertained. As the world has advanced into civilization and culture; as mind has risen in its dominion over matter; as the principle of justice and moral right has gained sway....as the might of right has supplanted the right of might, so have the rights of women become more fully recognized."
It is the inversion (the topsi-ter-vi-ness) of our existing society that wealth, substance, mere material Bulk, is put above Thought, Science, Truth; that the buttocks of the community are upheaved, in an unseemly way, above its head. It is, then, part of my objective to reinvert the grand man; and set him on his feet, or to seat him on its legitimate posterior."
Is it right that the millions should toil all their lives long, scarcely having comfortable food and clothes, while the few manage to control all the benefits? People may pretend that is justice, and good Christians may excuse it upon that ground, but Christ would never have called it by that name. He would have given him that labored but an hour as much as he that labored all the day, but to him that labored not at all he would take away even that which he hath.... A system of society which permits such arbitrary distributions of wealth is a disgrace to Christian civilization....Christianity of today is a failure....the church has allied itself with money and power, when it should be speaking for the powerless....true religion will not shut itself up in any church away from humanity; it will not stand idly by and see the people suffer from any misery whatsoever...it is foolish for a Christian to say, 'I have nothing to do with politics'....It is the bounded duty of every Christian to support that political party which bases itself upon Human Rights, and if there is no such party existing, then to go about to construct one."
If Congress refuses to listen to and grant what women ask, there is but one course left then to pursue. Women have no government. Men have organized a government, and they maintain it to the utter exclusion of women. Under such glaring inconsistencies, such unwarrantable tyranny, such unscrupulous despotism, what is there left for women to do but to become the mothers of the future government?....We mean treason; we mean secession, and on a thousand times grander scale than was that of the south. We are plotting revolution; we will overslough this bogus republic and plant a government of righteousness in its stead, which shall not only profess to derive its power from consent of the governed, but shall do so in reality."
"I shall not change my course because those who assume to be better than I desire it. I have a consciousness within which is above all such petty malice, yet it grieves me that there should be anything to interfere with obtaining justice at the earliest possible moment. Some say they would rather never obtain it than that it should come from such a source as myself."
One of the charges against me is that I lived in the same house with my former husband, Dr. Woodhull, and my present husband, Col. Blood. The fact is a fact. Dr. Woodhull being sick, ailing and incapable of self-support, I felt it my duty to myself and to human nature that he should be cared for, although his incapacity was in no wise attributable to me. My present husband, Col Blood, not only approves of this charity, but co-operates in it. I esteem it one of the most virtuous acts of my life. But various editors have stigmatized me as a living example of immorality and unchastity....I was divorced from Dr. Woodhull for reasons which to me were sufficient, but I was never his enemy. He continued to need my friendship, and he has had it. My children continued to prize and to need his affection and presence, and they have had them."
"Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. I do not intend to be made the scape-goat of sacrifice, to be offered up as a victim to society by those who cover over the foulness of their lives and the feculence of their thoughts with hypocritical mouthing of fair professions, and by diverting public attention from their own iniquity and pointing the finger at me."
"Yes, I am a free lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or short a period as I can; to change that love everyday if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere. I am fully persuaded that the very highest sexual unions are monogamic, and that these are perfect in proportion as they are lasting. Now if to this be added the fact that the highest gratification comes from rendering its object the greatest amount of happiness depend upon whatever it may, then you have my ideal of the highest order of love and the most perfect degree of order to which humanity can attain...Love is that which exists to do good, not merely to get good....Contemplate this, and then denounce me for advocating freedom if you can and I will bear your curse with a better resignation."
"Oh the stupid blindness of this people! Swindled every day before their very eyes, and yet they don't seem to know that there is anything wrong, simply because no law has been violated. As Vanderbilt may sit in his office and manipulate stocks, or make dividends by which, in a few years, he amasses fifty million dollars from the industries of the country, and he is one of the remarkable men of the age. But if a poor, half-starved child were to take a loaf of bread from his cupboard to prevent starvation, she would be sent first to the Tombs and thense to Blackwell's Island. An Astor may sit in his sumptuous apartments and watch the property bequeathed him by his father, rise in value from one to fifty millions, and everybody bows before his immense power, and worships his business capacity. But if a tenant of his, whose employer has discharged him because he did not vote the Republican ticket, and thereby fails to pay his monthly rent to Mr. Aster, the law sets him and his family into the street in midwinter, and, whether he dies of cold or starvation, neither Mr Astor or anybody else stops to ask, since that is nobody's business but the man's. But it is asked, how is this to be remedied? I answer, very easily! Since those who possess the accumulated wealth of the country have filched it by legal means form those to whom it justly belongs---the people--it must be returned to them, by legal means if possible, but it must be returned to them in any event. When a person worth millions dies, instead of leaving it to his children, who have no more title to it than anybody else's children have, it must revert to the people who really produced it. These privileged classes of the people have an enduring hatred for me, and I am glad they have. I am the friend not only of freedom in all things, and in every form, but also for equality and justice as well."
"Declaring that imprisonment would not stop her, Victoria declared, "The old, worn-out, rotten social system will be torn down, plank by plank, timber after timber, until place is given to a new, true and beautiful structure, based upon freedom, equality, and justice to all---to women as well as men; the results of which can be nothing else than physical health, intellectual honesty and moral purity."
"I charge upon this government that it is a failure because it has neither secured freedom (and by this I mean the personal rights of individuals), maintained equality, nor administered justice to its citizens. The bondholders, money-lenders and railroad kings say to the politicians: If you will legislate for our interests, we will retain you in power, and, together (you with the public offices and patronage and we with our immense dependencies and money), we can control the destinies of the country, and change the government to suit ourselves; and now finally, comes in the threatened church power, and it says: If you will make your government a Christian government, we will bring all the 'Faithful' to your support;---and thus united, let me warn you, they constitute the strongest power in the world. It is the government, all the wealth of the country, backed up by the church against the unorganized mass of reformers, every one of whom is pulling his or her little string in opposing directions."
Victoria's most controversial speech: "Of all the horrid brutalities of this age, I know of none so horrid as those that are sanctioned and defended by marriage. Night after night, there are thousands of rapes committed, under cover of this accursed license; and million---yes I say it boldly, knowing whereof I speak----millions of poor, heart broken, suffering wives are compelled to minister to the lechery of insatiable husbands, when every instinct of body and sentiment of soul revolts in loathing and disgust....The world has got to be startled from this pretense into realizing that there is nothing else now existing among pretendedly enlightened nations, except marriage, that invest men with the right to debauch women, sexually, against their wills, yet marriage is held to be synonymous with morality! I say, eternal damnation, sink such morality! I say it boldly, that it is the best men of the country who support the houses of prostitution. It isn't your young men, but the husbands and fathers of the country, who occupy position of honor and trust. It is not the hardworking industrial masses at all, but those who have the money and the time to expend for such purposes who are really the old hoary-headed villains of the country. The young haven't money enough to support themselves. So when you condemn the poor women, whom you have helped to drive to such a life, remember to visit your wrath upon the best men of the country as well. I was married at fourteen, ignorant of everything that related to my maternal functions. For this ignorance, and because I knew no better than to surrender my maternal functions to a drunken man, I am cursed with this living death. So after all I am a very promiscuous free lover. I want the love of you all, promiscuously. I makes no differenced who or what you are, old or young, black or white, pagan, Jew, or Christian. I want to love you all and be loved by you all, and I mean to have your love. If you will not give it to me now, these young, for whom I plead, will in after years bless Victoria Woodhull for daring to speak for their salvation."
"A woman will lavish love and care and attention on a pet cat, or a prize poodle, and yet draw her skirts aside from the starving children in the gutter. The mew of the cat and the howl of the dog, to say nothing of the squeal of the 'tortured rabbit'---that figment of anti-vivisectionist imagination---are far more potent to loosen the purse strings of the sentimentalists than the wail of children."
Late in life she mused: "I feel a sad tired feeling---a lonesomeness. And a soul asking of what is life---wealth only shows you the falsity of life. They flock to me for material things---so different from those way back who came to me because they understood the truth and my mission. What does one gain if they get the world and lose soul power?
She died at the age of 88 and said she wanted to be remembered by a line from Kant: "You cannot understand a man's work by what he has accomplished, but by what he has overcome in accomplishing it." Victoria wrote shortly before her death: "I retain not one ill-will recollection. I gave America my youth. It was sweet and gallant and fruitful---its memories are buoyant....That excellencies pretended to misunderstand and undertook to impugn was their defect, not mine."
"By what right do you refuse to accept the vote of a citizen of the United States?
For a woman to consider a financial question was shuddered over as a profanity.
I and others of my sex find ourselves controlled by a form of government in the inauguration of which we had no voice.
I ask the rights to pursue happiness by having a voice in that government to which I am accountable.
I come before you to declare that my sex are entitled to the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I shall not change my course because those who assume to be better than I desire it.
I would like above any other place to go to Hartford. I want to face the conservatism there centered and compel it into decency.
If women would today would rise en masse and demand their emancipation, the men would be compelled to grant it.
It makes no difference who or what you are, old or young, black or white, pagan, Jew, or Christian, I want to love you all and be loved by you all, and I mean to have your love.
Let women issue a declaration of independence sexually, and absolutely refuse to cohabit with men until they are acknowledged as equals in everything, and the victory would be won in a single week.
My judges preach against free love openly, practice it secretly.
Rude contact with facts chased my visions and dreams quickly away, and in their stead I beheld the horrors, the corruption, the evils and hypocrisy of society, and as I stood among them, a young wife, a great wail of agony went out from my soul.
Suffrage is a common right of citizenship. Women have the right of suffrage. Logically it cannot be escaped."
