Notorious Victoria Page 8

  A writer chronicling Washington, D.C., at the time called Butler “the best abused, best hated man in the House,” though he admitted that “Butler’s big head contains a good share of the brains” in that chamber. Butler was a shrewd politician and formidable orator who was outspoken in his support for an eight-hour workday, women’s suffrage, and Irish nationalism. “Butlerism” to some was a hateful byword for politics of the people.

  It was this man who began advising Victoria on the political course women might take to win the vote. The two would have been an odd pair. Butler was as ugly as Victoria was lovely. He was short and stout, with spindly legs and a large bald head, ringed with a fringe of oily curls, that was perpetually bent forward as if its weight were too great for his neck. His brow was massive, his eyelids heavy and downturned like his drooping mustache. But most odd about his strange appearance were his eyes. A writer at the time said, “It was literally eye, not eyes, for the right eyeball seemed to be engaged in some business of its own, as if relieved from regular duty, while the spirit of the man when he looked at you seemed to crouch at the other, and glare out keenly and wryly.”

  Under this legislative gnome’s tutelage, Victoria, in the article declaring a startling annunciation, delineated her “discovery” that no new constitutional amendment was required to give women the vote because that protection already existed. She wrote, “The question is forever settled by Article IV of the Federal Constitution, Sec. 2, first clause, which says: ‘The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.’” Women in Wyoming had been allowed to vote in the election that November and the article reasoned that meant all women had the right to vote unless a convention was held to amend the Constitution otherwise. She concluded, “Until a denial is accomplished in this manner woman has now and will retain the right of suffrage in every State and Territory of this Union.”

  It was a first stab at a new way of looking at the vote issue, but it was convoluted and there were too many possible counterarguments. Victoria and Butler got back to work. By Christmas they had it right. On December 22, 1870, the Congressional Globe announced that Victoria C. Woodhull had submitted a memorial to Congress declaring that women already had the right of suffrage under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The memorial was ordered printed and sent to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees for consideration.

  The argument was simple. The Fifteenth Amendment declares that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged,” and the Fourteenth Amendment declares that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.” Therefore, according to Victoria and Butler, all such citizen persons, including women, have a constitutional right to vote. Further, the Fourteenth Amendment makes clear states’ duties by declaring that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” The logic seemed unarguable and, if accepted, would quickly and decisively end the long suffrage fight.

  Butler said he would ensure that the petition was read out loud in Congress, but Victoria wanted to be the one to read it. No woman had ever addressed a congressional committee, despite years of requests from the women reformers who annually brought their appeals to Washington. Victoria left no details about how she finally persuaded Butler to win her an invitation to address the committee, but only a cryptic one-line note among her papers that read: “I went at night and asked him to open [the] committee for me.”

  He did.

  PART THREE

  For you no sooner set up an idol firmly than you are sure to pull it down and dash it to fragments.

  —CHARLES DICKENS

  After launching her brokerage firm, her newspaper, and her political career, Victoria further scandalized society by cutting her hair short and having her clothes tailored mannishly. (Collection of the New York Historical Society, ca. 1871)

  WASHINGTON, D.C., JANUARY 1871

  At precisely the hour appointed Mrs. Woodhull was in her seat in the committee room, awaiting the appearance of the legislative body that had declared itself ready to hear any or everything she had to say pertaining to why she should not be allowed all the ‘privileges and immunities belonging to citizenship,’” The Press of Philadelphia reported. “The Judiciary members were rather slow in getting to their seats. At half past ten, Mr. Bingham might have been seen in his chair, his hands pinned closely to the back of it, and his expressive face aglow with manly patience. On the opposite side of the table sat Judge Loughridge of Iowa, leaning listlessly on his hand, his keen, good natured eyes alive with expectation. Judge Loughridge is fully committed to the movement, but as he is a single man, he is able to be responsible for any amount of mischief. Mr. Cook of Illinois, and Mr. Eldridge of Wisconsin, only were in their places. As time would not wait for laggard members, and the precious morning was slipping way, Mrs. Woodhull was reminded by Mr. Bingham that she could proceed. At this time the room was sparsely filled, and nearly all present were women, friends to the movement, and the majority were people from different states.”

  On January 11, 1871, Victoria Woodhull made history once again by becoming the first woman to address a congressional committee, even if there wasn’t a battalion of legislators on hand to witness it. She had taken the women reformers by surprise. They had gathered in Washington that week for their annual convention, whose “single aim” was to “awaken Congress and, through it, the country, to the fact that a sixteenth amendment is needed.” But Victoria and Tennie had been in Washington since late December “industriously pulling wires,” as one newspaper reported. They had joined the legions of female lobbyists who swelled Washington’s population each winter without notifying or consulting the women’s suffrage leaders. On the morning of January 9, when the suffragists read in the newspaper that Victoria was to appear before the committee and that they had been upstaged by the chronically independent female broker, they met quickly to plot their strategy.

  Isabella Beecher Hooker said she was at the Capitol when she heard of Victoria’s coup. “I was astonished. I had never heard of Mrs. Woodhull,” she recounted later. “I met Mrs. Susan B. Anthony and told her.” The two women deliberated for three hours over the best course to take regarding Woodhull’s upcoming appearance. Anthony was in favor of attending the committee hearing, but Mrs. Hooker, who had organized the women’s convention with money borrowed from her husband, was not.

  Though Hooker claimed she had never heard of Victoria prior to that January in 1871, that was hardly likely. Hooker’s family was intimately linked to the New England women’s rights contingent, which was thoroughly distrustful of Woodhull, disapproved of her activities—both professional and personal—and questioned her “antecedents.” Hooker was the renegade among the women in the Beecher family, but she would not easily go against her older sisters and publicly embrace this questionable new woman.

  Hooker said she and Anthony finally determined to “find this woman and ascertain all about it.” The two reformers met with Victoria and discussed her memorial for hours, but still Hooker said she was not convinced she should show so much support for Victoria as to attend the hearing. At this point, Senator Samuel Clarke Pomeroy from Kansas interceded. Hooker was staying at the senator’s home and he told her and Anthony that their concerns were counterproductive. “This is not politics. Men never could work in a political party if they stopped to investigate each member’s antecedents and associates,” he said. “If you are going into a fight, you must accept every help that offers.”

  The reformers were duly chastised and agreed to attend the hearing, but they also wanted to be able to speak. Isabella Beecher Hooker said they hastened to the committee room to say they wanted to be heard on the subject of the vote and they were promised time to testify following Mrs. Woodhull’s address.

  THE PRESS OF PHILADELPHIA reported
the scene in the congressional committee room on the morning of January 11, 1871: “At the head of the class stood Mrs. Beecher Hooker—her soft, fleecy curls tied down with orthodox precision; the curling feathers of blue harmonizing with her peachy complexion. Her elegantly-fitting coat was embroidered with steel beads. . . . Susan B. Anthony snuggled close beside her, clad in a smart new dress of black silk, with velveteen overskirt and fancy basque. Her spectacles clung close to her nose and she had that longing, hope-deferred look, which humanity always wears when it has been centered for half a century upon a single idea. Then came Paulina Davis, her face surmounted by her beautiful snowy curls, then Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing, the noblest woman in the land. Rev. Olympia Brown peered modestly at the ‘Wall-street firm,’ for both the members were present, and distinguished from the other women in the room by dress and other characteristics.

  “The firm of Woodhull & Claflin are clad precisely alike, and call each other ‘sister.’ Their costume consists of . . . a ‘business suit,’ because they are strictly business women. These costumes are made of blue naval cloth, skimp in the skirt. The basque or jacket has masculine coat-tails behind but the steeple-crowned hats are the towering triumph of this most picturesque outfit. The high sugar-loaf hat has a peculiar brigandish dash to it, and the clipped hair underneath seems to have nipped all the feminine element originally possessed by this flourishing ‘firm.’”

  One reporter in depicting the scene was particularly taken by Tennie: “She is young, pretty, interesting and quick as a bird both in movement and speech. The contour of her face is like a boy’s and her hair being cut short and surmounted with a distinctively boyish hat, gives her the appearance of a frisky lad, ready for mischief of any kind. But there is a peculiarly smooth tone to her voice,” The Evening Star wrote on page one in its article about the event. “A jerky movement of her face and arms would appear unladylike in any one else, but in Tennie C. Claflin it lends a positive charm to her conversation and gives an emphasis to her speech that makes her logic irresistible.”

  The congressmen who had assembled around the committee table—those who had decided to give the women the respect of a hearing—were equally amused by their company. Women were nothing new to Washington. Since the Civil War, women had been employed as lobbyists, in part because they could not be shaken off as rudely as were men and, when bribes failed, could always resort to seduction. But to see the earnest band assembled before the House Judiciary Committee was something new. One reporter noted that “Eldridge, of Wisconsin . . . seemed to regard the whole thing as a good joke, and kept smiling all the time as if he intended to encourage the women in their work.”

  By the time Victoria was ready to address the committee, a few more lawmakers had trickled into the room, bringing their number to eight, including Ben Butler. Victoria stood, removed her hat, and set it on the table. She apologized for any hesitancy in her manner, but said it was the first time in her life that she had attempted to deliver a public address. She proceeded to read her memorial, which was no doubt largely written by Butler, referring to herself in the third person: “That she was born in the State of Ohio, and is above the age of twenty-one years; that she has resided in the State of New York during the past three years; that she is still a resident thereof, and that she is a citizen of the United States, as declared by the fourteenth article of amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

  “That since the adoption of the fifteenth article of amendments to the Constitution, neither the State of New York nor any other State, nor any Territory, has passed any law to abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote, as established by said articles, neither on account of sex or otherwise.

  “That, nevertheless, the right to vote is denied to women citizens of the United States by the operation of election laws in the several States and Territories, which laws were enacted prior to the adoption of the said Fifteenth article, and which are inconsistent with the Constitution as amended, and therefore are void and of no effect; but which, being still enforced by the said States and Territories, render the Constitution inoperative as regards the right of women citizens to vote:

  “And whereas article sixth, section second, declares ‘That this Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and all judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution and laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding:

  “And whereas no distinction between citizens is made in the Constitution of the United States on account of sex, but the fourteenth article of amendments to it provides that ‘no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States,’ ‘nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws:’

  “And whereas Congress has power to make laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution all powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, and to make or alter all regulations in relation to holding elections for Senators and Representatives, and especially to enforce by appropriate legislation, the provisions of the said fourteenth article:

  “And whereas the continuance of the enforcement of said local election laws denying and abridging the right of citizens to vote on account of sex, is a grievance to your memorialist and to various other persons, citizens of the United States, being women:

  “Therefore your memorialist would most respectfully petition your honorable bodies to make such laws as in the wisdom of Congress shall be necessary and proper for carrying to execution the right vested by the Constitution in the citizens of the United States to vote, without regard to sex.

  “And your memorialist will ever pray,

  “Victoria C. Woodhull, New York City, December 19, 1870.”

  Giving one of her blandest smiles, Victoria bowed to the committee.

  Aunt Susan, as Anthony was known by the younger women in the movement, was sitting behind Victoria while she delivered her address, smiling graciously and marking off pauses with a movement of her finger, as if conducting the oration. When Victoria was seated, Anthony took the floor and said that although she had hurried as fast as railroad speed would allow from Kansas the previous winter, she had been unsuccessful in getting a petition before the committee. But she said she was, after all, glad that “Wall Street had spoken.”

  It was a public benediction for Victoria C. Woodhull from one of the pillars of the women’s rights movement and a signal that Victoria was welcome to join the cause.

  “Other speeches were made,” wrote the New York Herald, “but Woodhull had captured the committee, and the others were not needed.” The secretary of the women’s convention said, “Mrs. Woodhull spoke with power and marvelous effect.”

  When the hearing was over, the excited women rushed up to the congressmen to plead their cause individually: “Mr. Cook of Illinois, who had manifested a rather heretical tendency during the proceedings, was taken in hand by several ladies at once, and, driven to bay in a corner, [where] he had much sound doctrine pounded into his ears. Gen. Butler was smiled upon endlessly, and the gallant Judge Loughridge of Iowa became a tall target for complimentary attention.”

  The committee announced it would report back—favorably, Anthony predicted—by Friday morning. The women left Capitol Hill triumphant.

  LINCOLN HALL IN Washington, D.C., was nearly filled when the women’s rights convention finally got under way that afternoon. There was an excitement in the air that, after years of working in the shadow of the Capitol, women had finally taken a seat at the table. The secretary of the convention, Mrs. Josephine Griffing, said the Woodhull memorial had changed the focus of the movement from complaints about “man’s rights and women’s wrongs” to a matter of simple justice before the law. It had elevated the argument.

  But the swellin
g crowd was also eager to see the new messenger. Despite her timidity on the platform, Victoria was a woman who intrigued because she added the spice of danger and the promise of scandal to the otherwise rather staid petticoat brigade.

  Isabella Beecher Hooker called the assembly to order and, after a prayer, introduced Mrs. Woodhull to her new audience of appreciative women. Victoria was terrified by the prospect of speaking to the group and needed Hooker’s arm to help her steady herself as she advanced to the platform. Victoria’s voice trembled when she apologized again for her lack of experience and said she could do nothing more than reread the memorial she had delivered that morning. “Although it would seem that a Wall-street experience would fit a woman to face the worst,” commented one reporter in attendance, “yet Mrs. Woodhull’s heart went pit-a-pat and the blood rose and fell from her cheek as fortunes go up and down on ‘change.’ Mrs. Woodhull read anew her petition to the Judiciary, and this being her solitary ewe lamb, after its presentation there was nothing left to do, and she quietly took a back seat.”

  The faint and tremulous creature who so meekly addressed the group provided the powerful new momentum that the suffragists had so long been threatening. When the convention reconvened that night at eight o’clock, the crowd was so large there weren’t enough chairs. Ushers scrambled to find extra seats, but still men and women were left to stand along the periphery of the room.