Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull by Barbara Goldsmith

Author:Barbara Goldsmith [Goldsmith, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307800350
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-08-17T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE WORST GANG

TWENTY-THREE years had passed since Seneca Falls and the first glimmering of woman’s rights. To celebrate that anniversary, the National Woman Suffrage Association scheduled a weeklong convention to begin at New York’s Apollo Hall on May 11, 1871. And once again the American Woman Suffrage Association announced a simultaneous convention at Steinway Hall. The previous year, the NWSA had been virtually ignored or dismissed while the AWSA received glowing press coverage. This time, however, their organization would not be overlooked, for Anthony, Stanton, and Hooker had aligned themselves with Victoria Woodhull, a woman no one could ignore.

For the forces behind Victoria Woodhull, the NWSA convention provided an opportunity to promulgate their views and develop a greater constituency for her bid for the presidency. Stephen Pearl Andrews drew up twenty-five articles to be presented to the convention, representing his own vision of a utopian world. The first article dealt with woman’s rights, but the rest advocated such wide-sweeping reforms as a revised civil and criminal code, government control of public enterprises, public ownership of mines and waterways, distribution of public land to settlers, high taxes on income and property. As Andrews was completing this list, his wife, Esther, died. Stricken, he locked himself in an upstairs bedroom of Woodhull’s house and said he would remain there until Esther informed him that she had “safely made the journey to Summerland.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton stepped into the breach and stayed at Victoria’s house to help complete the final arrangements for the convention.

Ever since her arrival in New York, Mama Roxy had been openly hostile to visitors and “that damn scoundrel Blood,” who had stolen the daughters who were her livelihood. Her daughter Polly’s husband, Dr. Benjamin Sparr, had moved into the house and soon became Roxy’s ally in trying to extort money from her daughters’ acquaintances. The final rift came when Roxy confided to Tennie that, just as they used to do, a letter had been written to “a certain gentleman” that should yield them lots of money. When it arrived they could go back to Ohio to begin life anew. Tennie bristled. “What have you done?” she demanded of her mother. “Never, never will I go back to that life.” It was one of those blackmail letters—she knew it. And worse, she made her mother admit that it had gone to Commodore Vanderbilt. Then and there Tennie knew that she had lost the Commodore as a patron. Vanderbilt didn’t care what people said about him, but he had trusted Victoria and Tennie. Now that trust had been irrevocably broken and Tennie knew that no matter what she did or said he would never forgive them.

Tennie, as always, was unable to cope with this woman who had emotionally enslaved her. Instead, she turned her rage on Dr. Sparr. This was his doing. Three days before the convention, Roxy and Buck Claflin and the Sparrs were banished from the house on East Thirty-eighth Street, but Tennie paid the rent for her parents at a comfortable boardinghouse.

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