Ever Victoria!

Part 9

Victoria’s appearance in Washington marks another first for her and the country: the first time a woman has spoken directly to Congress. The effort and the attention it receives vault her to the van of the women’s movement. “Mrs. Woodhull is taking a short, direct, business-like and constitutional way to obtain for women the full rights of citizenship,” the New York Star declares approvingly. “For twenty years the strong-minded sisters have talked, harangued and circumlocuted. They have called conventions, declaiming concerning the wrongs and oppressions inflicted on them by the tyrant man, and passed volumes of resolutions, which have served no better use than to benefit the paper trade and encourage the art of printing.” Suddenly comes Victoria Woodhull. “The National Woman’s Suffrage Convention, sitting this time at Washington, has had the wind completely taken out of its sails by that lively little yacht Mrs. Woodhull, who has sailed in between it and the august body whose port it intended to bring its guns to bear upon. She has in a logical and consistent manner set forth her claim to the right of franchise, basing it on the wording of the Constitution and on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Under the broad shadow of her Memorial, the Biblical argument, logical argument and aerial asseverations of the pioneers dwindle into insignificance.”

The New York Tribune is more ironic but no less astonished by Victoria’s coup. “All the past efforts of Miss Anthony and Mrs. H. B. Stanton sink to insignificance beside the ingenious lobbying of the new leader and her daring declaration of political powers under the present provisions of the Constitution,” the Tribune declares. “What joy could be greater than that of the organizers of the convention”—of the National Woman Suffrage Association—“when, lumbering up heavily to Washington upon their venerable hobby of the Sixteenth Amendment, they found waiting in the shape of the Fifteenth Amendment a mettlesome spirit, that is to bear them straight to the White House. What slave was there with soul so dead that could resist the temptation of listing under a captain capable of originating so grand an idea, and more than that, capable of subscribing $10,000 to the cause if she wanted to?”

Susan Anthony isn’t ready to enlist under Victoria, but she is willing to embrace her. Anthony insists that the National Association make room on its convention schedule to hear Victoria explain how women already enjoy the right to vote, if Congress will simply read the Constitution correctly. Anthony anoints Victoria as a worthy comrade in the struggle for women’s rights. She recounts to the convention her first impression of Victoria—and Tennie—in a meeting at their Wall Street brokerage. “I, with the thousands of others who, out of curiosity, went to see these daring maidens, wended my way to their offices to ascertain for myself their chances among the motley crew that operates on ’change. I found two bright, vivacious creatures, full of energy, perseverance, intellect and pluck, and I said to myself, ‘Here are the elements of success.’ I addressed myself to them upon the subject in which we are so deeply interested. I asked them how they stood on suffrage. They said, ‘We are all right. Just wait until we get ourselves firmly established in our business, and we will show you what we will do for the rights of our sex.’ I went away feeling that we could rely at least upon their cooperation.”

In fact, Anthony says, the movement has received far more than cooperation. “When I arrived here to attend this convention, I found we had been preceded by them, and that one of them, a poor lone woman, without consultation even with any of those who had labored for years in the great cause of female suffrage, had already presented her petition to Congress, asking them to pass a declaratory act that would define the rights of our sex under the Fourteenth Amendment. This was something we had not expected. We, that had labored so long, had expected to labor on in the old way for five, ten, fifteen or perhaps twenty years to come, to secure the passage of another amendment to the Constitution, known as the sixteenth amendment, but we were too slow for the times.” Victoria Woodhull, by contrast, has put her finger on the pulse of the era. “In this age of rapid thought and action, of telegraphs and railways, the old stage coach won’t do, and to Victoria C. Woodhull, as well as to her partner, perhaps, Tennie C. Claflin, who caught up the spirit of the age and made this advance movement, we owe the advancement of our cause by as many years at least as it would take to engineer through the various ramifications of an amendment to the Constitution.”