Harriet Hosmer: She "Knew Herself to be a Sculptor"

Harriet Goodhue Hosmer, American Sculptor (born 9 October 1830)

Harriet Hosmer, 
photo by Matthew Brady

The name of Harriet Hosmer came to my attention only recently--as part of the widespread protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, in particular, and to the growing resistance movement that addressed larger issues of police brutality, systemic racism, and social injustice. 

As statues honoring Confederate generals and white supremacy at long last began to come down, a monument that remained standing was Thomas Ball's Freedman's Memorial. 

While the intentions of those who worked to create a monument to Lincoln's emancipation of enslaved men and women may have been good, the memorial itself as long been a source of controversy: it might portray "the hopes, dreams, [and] striving" of those who constructed it, but it also represents the "ultimate failures of reconstruction."

Recognizing Ball's monument as a "problematic depiction of the fight to achieve emancipation," Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton has said that she will introduce legislation to have the statue removed.

While the "great emancipator" might remain secure on his pedestal, at least for the moment, Ball's sculpture has undergone a new round of criticism for its imagery--a white man "giving" freedom to the unclothed black man kneeling at his feet. (For Patrick Browne's excellent essay on this "misguided" monument, written long before the events of this year, click here.)

The sculpture was funded by freed slaves, and while Frederick Douglas spoke at the monument's dedication, he later made it clear that his feelings were complex--Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation only reluctantly. Lincoln was neither the "man" nor the "model" for the struggle of those who had been enslaved. Later still, Douglas noted his reservations about the Ball design for the sculpture: “What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man.” 

So that was the context in which I first heard Harriet Hosmer's name--because Thomas Ball's was only one proposal for the memorial, one that was selected after Harriet Hosmer's original design was judged to be too expensive. Or perhaps too controversial.

In fact, Harriet Hosmer's 1867 design for the sculpture had been accepted by the commission overseeing the building of the memorial. Her proposal was not for a sculpture with one submissive freed slave at Lincoln's feet. Instead, it was a monument that featured Black Americans--above a base that depicted scenes from Lincoln's life, and posted around a Lincoln lying in his casket, were to be four "colossal statues" that "display the progressive stages of liberation" of African Americans: an enslaved man for sale, a slave "laboring on the plantation," a Black man aiding Union soldiers, and, finally, a Black soldier. In describing this figure, David Cranor writes, "The latter figure, standing with eyes gazing forward in uniform and holding a gun, would be shown having gained freedom, legitimacy and power."

But white members of the commission overseeing the monument insisted on a redesign--Lincoln lying in his coffin had to be swapped out with a standing Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation in one hand. Below him were four allegorical figures (female, of course), representing liberty. The Black men were retained, but they were bumped down, farther out and below Lincoln and the Liberties.

Harriet Hosmer's redesigned
proposal for the Freedman's Memorial

Eventually, of course, Ball's design, with the "figure of a liberated slave crouching below . . . Lincoln" was substituted for Hosmer's.

So who was Harriet Hosmer?

When fundraising began for this memorial, Harriet Hosmer was a already a well-established artist. As a girl, she had not only been allowed to pursue her interests in art, but her father encouraged her interest in anatomy. Her studies were informal at first, but she traveled to St. Louis for private instruction in anatomy at the Missouri  Medical College.

After returning to Boston, she left for Rome in 1852 with the actress Charlotte Cushman. Once there, she earned a place in the studio of John Gibson (along with several other American women, including Edmonia Lewis and Emma Stebbins, disparagingly referred to by the novelist Henry James as the "white marmorean flock"). In Rome, Hosmer was not only surrounded by classical sculpture, she was also able to work with live models, a rare opportunity for women artists. She also began a relationship with Louisa, lady Ashburton, a relationship that would last twenty-five years.

Hosmer had a long and successful career. She eventually returned to the United States and died in the place of her birth, Watertown, Massachusetts, on 21 February 1908.

Hosmer's Zenobia in Chains,
Saint Louis Art Museum

Unlike many of the women I have written about here, there is a wealth of material--easily accessible--about the life and work of Harriet Hosmer, so you will be able to read widely and enjoy reproductions of her work. I find it particularly interesting that many of Hosmer's pieces are of figures of historical women, including Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, and Beatrice Cenci. And Hosmer knew several women who have made an appearance in this blog, including Susan B. Anthony, Lydia Maria Child, Phebe Ann Hanaford, and Fanny Kemble. And, hey! There is an entry for Harriet Hosmer in the Encyclopedia Britannica!!

The phrase she "knew herself to be a sculptor" comes from Maria Mitchell, the American astronomer and teacher. When she was in Rome, Mitchell met Hosmer, and her memoirs include a description of their meeting. 

Mary Jones and the Great Library War of Los Angeles

Mary Letitia Jones (born 29 June 1865)

Born on 29 June 1865, Mary Letitia Jones was the daughter of a minister, William R. Jones, and his wife, Jane, both of whom had immigrated to the United States from Wales. In the 1870 U. S. Census, four-year-old Mary is living with her family in Wisconsin; by the time of the 1880 Census, the family has moved to Nebraska. 

Mary Letitia Jones,
from the collection of the Los Angeles Public Library

Mary Letitia Jones graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1885 and then attended New York State Library School, founded by Melvil Dewey (of Dewey Decimal fame), where she graduated in 1892. 

After finishing her education and carrying with her a recommendation from Dewey himself, she returned to Nebraska, recruited by James H. Canfield, chancellor of the University of Nebraska. She was hired not only to head the library but to help in the planning of a new library building. By 1895, she was head of a staff of 10 and had doubled the size of the library's holdings. (She also converted the library to the Dewey Decimal system.)

After leaving the University of Nebraska, Jones worked at the University of Illinois and the State Library of Iowa, moving to the Los Angeles area by 1899 to join her family--her father had retired to Pasadena. 

She was soon hired by the Los Angeles Public Library, as an assistant librarian, working with city librarian Harriet Child Wadleigh. When Wadleigh retired, Mary Jones became the city's head librarian. As Nicholas Beyelia notes, Jones was "the first Los Angeles City Librarian working for the Los Angeles Public Library who was both a college graduate and a graduate of library school."

Despite Jones's qualifications and career accomplishments, all did not go well--just five years later, she was asked to resign so that the city of Los Angeles could replace her with a man. Jones refused, noting her reasons in a letter delivered to the library's board of directors:

At first it was my inclination immediately to yield to the request relayed upon me by the president. But, upon reflection, I have concluded that it would not be fitting for me to tender my resignation as the head of a department where only women are employed. When such a resignation is tendered solely on the grounds that the best interests of the department demand that its affairs no longer be administered by a woman. Ever since the adoption of the present city charter, the library has been presided over by a woman with a staff of assistants composed exclusively of women.

Since Jones refused to resign, she was fired. Her firing set off the "the Great Library War." (I love this statement that Jones made to the Los Angeles Times, when she was asked about why she had been replaced by a man: “Those directors seem as crazy after a man as though they were a board of old maids.”)

This "war" certainly demonstrates sexism and misogyny--but there is a healthy bit of nepotism and favoritism as well, and of course the usual chicanery, harassment, espionage, and bureaucratic finagling. It engulfed the city, but the war went beyond the city's limits, eventually bringing Susan B. Anthony to town!

Susan B. Anthony, "laying down the law,"
Los Angeles Herald, 13 June 1895

After she was fired, Jones left Los Angeles, at least temporarily. She went next to Berkeley, where she taught at the university for two years, then headed to Bryn Mawr, where she was head of the library for six years. In 1920, she returned to Los Angeles, where she helped to set up the Los Angeles County Library system. During the first world war, she helped to create a library on a local military base, Camp Kearney. Jones remained in Los Angeles after retiring and died, age 80, in 1946. 

I could write much more here--I always tend to write more than I plan to write! But, truth be told, I would be taking information from the incredibly readable, detailed blog of Nicholas Beyelia, who has posted a four-part series. That's where you need to go to read much more of this incredible story! For the first part of Beyelia's account of the Great Library War ("Have You Met Miss Jones?"), click here.

You may also be interested in Susan Orlean's The Library Book, which tells of the 1986 fire in the Los Angeles Public Library that destroyed 400,000 books (and damaged 700,000 more). Orlean also writes about the library's history, including the story of Mary Letitia Jones. 

Alice Bunker Stockham, Dress Reform, and "Karezza"

Alice Bunker Stockham (died 3 December 1912)

I first came across the name of Alice Bunker Stockham in connection with the Rational Dress Movement--a nineteenth-entury reform movement that I knew nothing about. (Which shouldn't be surprising, since, in my academic life, I was [I guess I still am] a medievalist--the nineteenth century is usually way too modern for my taste.)

Alice Bunker Stockham

Anyway, the movement to reform women's dress--to free women from the unhealthy and constrictive clothing in which they were imprisoned--began in the United States and in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century, arising at the same time as and in connection with the suffrage movement.

It also involved many of the same women, including, in the United States, Sarah Grimké, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, for example.

The aims of the reformers were to free women from the dictates of fashion (which didn't--and doesn't--seem to have been successful, at least if you spend any time at all looking at the women in music videos, on the red carpet, or, for that matter, in college classrooms), but especially from the devastating physical effects of corsets and "tight lacing." 

Throughout history, western women have engaged in various ways of shaping their torsos through corsets and lacing--at the turn of the sixteenth century, in the lessons she writes for her daughter, Anne of France is already warning Suzanne about the dangers of tight-lacing, which, she says, is not only ridiculous but will damage her health! And lest you think we are way past that today, check out all the five-star Amazon reviews for this "double steel boned," heavy-duty "waist-trainer" corset--with its "26 . . . steel bones," "4 rigid steel bars," and “waist tape for waistline support."

Perhaps the most well-known name associated with the efforts to reform women's clothing is that of Amelia Bloomer (1818-1894), who in 1849 introduced her trouser-like "bloomers" in order to free women from the excessive weight of their crinolines--the combined weight of a woman's skirt and petticoats meant that pounds, perhaps as many as thirteen pounds, were hanging off of a woman's waist. The development of the caged crinoline in mid-century did serve to reduce that weight (in 1857, Bloomer adopted it in favor of the garments she had devised), but that did not end the efforts to reform women's clothing. 

Despite the ridicule and hostility directed at those who had worn bloomers, a National Dress Reform Association was organized in the United States in 1856, advocating various modified, more freeing and "hygienic" dress styles for women. (Though even these reformed styles meant women were still wearing several pounds' worth of undergarments.) The group ultimately disbanded, since the idea of trousers seemed to present an insurmountable object.

But the reform movement reignited in the 1870s, principally in reaction to the introduction of the bustle, adding an iron cage and looped fabric in yet another distortion of the natural female body. In London, the Rational Dress Society was formed in 1881, promoted by Florence Pomeroy, viscountess Harberton, and the New Zealand feminist Eliza Mary King. Its stated goals:

The Rational Dress Society protests against the introduction of any fashion in dress that either deforms the figure, impedes the movements of the body, or in any way tends to injure the health. It protests against the wearing of tightly-fitting corsets; of high-heeled shoes; of heavily-weighted skirts, as rendering healthy exercise almost impossible; and of all tie down cloaks or other garments impeding on the movements of the arms. It protests against crinolines or crinolettes of any kind as ugly and deforming. . . . [It] requires all to be dressed healthily, comfortably, and beautifully, to seek what conduces to birth, comfort and beauty in our dress as a duty to ourselves and each other.

(For a report on King's visit to Canada and the United States in 1884, reported in the New York Times,click here--the story is found on page 5, along with other important news like "Hot Days in Saratoga," "Chicago's Summer Races," and "A Priest's Study Robbed").

Now to Alice Bunker. Born in Ohio in 1833, she was certainly an advocate for dress reform--as I said, it was in the context of the nineteenth-century dress reform movement that I first ran across her name. But, wow! Reading just a bit about her, reforming women's clothing is the least of her many efforts on behalf of women.

Alice Bunker enrolled in and graduated from Olivet College in Michigan, founded in 1844 by Congregationalists and dedicated to promoting education to students regardless of sex, race, or financial means. (It was, at first, denied accreditation because of its support of the cause of abolition.)

Bunker then attended Eclectic Medical College in Cincinnati, where she earned her M.D. in 1854, the fifth woman in the United States to become a doctor. ("Eclectic medicine" was a recognized branch of American medicine that promoted botanical remedies and physical therapy.) She married G. H. Stockman in 1857, then received more training at the Chicago Homeopathic Medical College, which opened in 1876. 

In her Chicago medical practice, Stockham focused on gynecology and obstetrics. Her 1884 Tokology, a Book for Every Woman (the title, tokology, from the Greek word for "obstetrics) was a practical book for women that recommended a high-fiber diet and exercise for pregnant women, that recommended pregnant women abstain from sex (such "continence" is good for their health), and that denounced women's corsets. 

Stockham acknowledged women's natural sexuality and denounced the sexual double standard:

When woman only is taught that virtue is the brightest jewel in her crown, when the popular verdict is that womanliness and modesty are synonymous for repression, when she lives in fear of maternity and believes restraint on her part prevents vitality of life germs, when, too, erroneous habit pervert every function, how can we tell what is natural for her?

Then, on the other hand, when man is taught that virtue is not synonymous with manliness, when the passions are stimulated by unnatural habits of living, by impure conversation, thoughts, books and practices, can we say this strength of passion is purely natural and healthy?

Stockham was also an advocate of masturbation as healthy for both men and women.

Stockham distributed her privately printed book to poor women and to prostitutes in order to promote their well-being and, if possible, to reduce unwanted pregnancies. Each copy of her book came with a certificate that entitled a woman to a free gynecological exam at Stockham's clinic. Stockham's book was translated into French, Finnish, German, and Russian (with a preface by Leo Tolstoy).

Her book also included lots of practical advice for women, including recipes, patterns for baby clothing, and lists of items necessary for childbirth, including an "abundant supply" of soft rags, "large and clean," as well as "two yards of rubber cloth for protecting the bed, a fountain syringe, a hot water bottle, safety pins, antiseptic, absorbent cotton, glycerine, arnica, ammonia, carbolic and castile soap, calenduline, olive oil and cosmoline."

In 1896, she published Karezza: Ethics of Marriage (the title, karezza, from the Italian word for carezza, "caress"), in which she laid out "a theory of conjugal life, in which there is a love communion between husband and wife from which results a mastery of the physical": "Karezza signifies 'to express affection in both words and action,' and while it fittingly denotes the union that is the outcome of deepest human affection, love's consummation, it is used technically throughout this work to designate a controlled sexual union." It is not a matter of self-control, but of mutual control. Karezza did not necessarily result in orgasm ("Unless procreation is desired, let the final propagative orgasm be entirely avoided"); rather, the goal was sexual desire and pleasure.

Stockham developed her ideas after a trip to India and her own study of Tantric sex. The goals of karezza, as she devised her plan, were to help women control their reproduction without mechanical methods of birth control, to promote women's equality (women were not to be reduced to passive objects who had to submit to their husbands' sexual desires), and to result in marital pleasure and fidelity.

In 1905, when Stockham was seventy-two years old, she was arrested on obscenity charges by Anthony Comstock, the U.S. Postal Inspector.* Under the Comstock Law, passed in 1873, 

whoever, within the District of Columbia or any of the Territories of the United States . . . shall sell . . . or shall offer to sell, or to lend, or to give away, or in any manner to exhibit, or shall otherwise publish or offer to publish in any manner, or shall have in his possession, for any such purpose or purposes, an obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, drawing or other representation, figure, or image on or of paper or other material, or any cast instrument, or other article of an immoral nature, or any drug or medicine, or any article whatever, for the prevention of conception, or for causing unlawful abortion, or shall advertise the same for sale, or shall write or print, or cause to be written or printed, any card, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind, stating when, where, how, or of whom, or by what means, any of the articles in this section . . . can be purchased or obtained, or shall manufacture, draw, or print, or in any wise make any of such articles, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof in any court of the United States... he shall be imprisoned at hard labor in the penitentiary for not less than six months nor more than five years for each offense, or fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than two thousand dollars, with costs of court.

Under this law, Comstock pursued all those who, like Stockham, distributed any kind of material about reproductive health--even anatomy books could be kept from distribution by mail.

Although she was defended by no less an advocate that Clarence Darrow, Stockham was convicted and fined, her books were banned, and the publishing house she had established was forced to close. 

  

Although Stockham did not promote the use of contraceptives, her theory of karezza was condemned in a series of letters and attacks by the Catholic church, culminating in the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office's 30 June 1952 monitum, or "solemn warning," published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, which condemned what it called "a reserved embrace."

The Sacred Congregation forbade the faithful to practice and priests and spiritual directors even to suggest that "a reserved embrace" was acceptable. Karezza was condemned because promoted “hedonism outside of a true marriage act." 

For an account of women's clothing and the efforts to "reform" it, the topic that drew me to Alice Bunker Stockham in the first place, I recommend Patricia Cunningham's Reforming Women's Fashion, 1850-1920: Politics, Health, and Art.

*Update, 30 July 2023: For Grace Haley's informative piece on the Comstock Act and the way it is being deployed by forced-birth activists and politicians today, here is a link to the essay, published at Jessica Valenti's Abortion, Every Day.

Lucretia Mott, American Activist

Lucretia Coffin Mott (died 11 November 1880)

I have mentioned Lucretia Mott's name in this blog more times than any other--you can click on the label "Lucretia Mott," below, to see where and when her name has come up in the last eleven months.  

Born on Nantucket Island in 1793, Lucretia Coffin Mott would play an integral part in key social movements for more than fifty years. 

In 1804, Lucretia Coffin entered a Quaker boarding school in New York, where she became a follower of Elias Hicks, an abolitionist. She would eventually become a teacher at the school, where she learned that women were paid less than men. And while at the Nine Partners school she met and married a fellow teacher, James Mott, in 1811.

By 1821, she had become a Quaker minister, speaking out on behalf of reform within the Society of Friends. She also became increasingly public in her opposition to slavery. But however close she became to abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, she had to face the reality that women were formally excluded from abolitionists groups. So, in 1833, she became one of the founders of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.

In 1837, as we have seen, she helped to organize the First Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women--along with women like Angelina and Sarah Grimké, she addressed audiences of men and women, and for all these women, speaking "promiscuously" caused a great deal of public opposition. Two further conventions followed, one in 1838 and another in 1839. There was so much opposition--not only were women organizing and speaking, but the convention was integrated, including black and white women and men--that a mob rioted and destroyed Pennsylvania Hall during the 1838 convention.

In 1840, Mott attended the international World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, one of six female delegates--the male delegates, however, opposed opening up their convention to women and voted to exclude their participation, so Mott was recognized only as a visitor, not a delegate. While there, Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another unseated woman delegate, decided that, on their return to the United States, they would organize a convention for women's rights. Their decision culminated, eight years later, in the Seneca Falls Convention. 

Mott spent the rest of her life advocating for the social causes she believed in. A committed pacifist, she opposed war with Mexico and the Civil War, attended meetings of the New England Non-Resistance Society, and was vice president of the Universal Peace Union, founded in 1866. In 1870, she was elected president of the Philadelphia Peace Society.

She attempted to heal the breach between suffragists after the Civil War, when the question of whether black men should gain the vote before women did, fractured the movement. 

She was elected the first president of the American Equal Rights Association, advocating for universal suffrage. Along with Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, she helped to create the National Women Suffrage Association. 

In 1876, at the time of the American Centennial, she presided at the National Women Association meeting in Philadelphia; two years later, she was at the thirtieth-anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention.

In assessing the totality of Lucretia Mott's life and work, Nancy Unger writes, "Lucretia Mott spoke frequently on the underlying unity of the various reforms she advocated": 

Mott refused to claim the moral superiority of women but was instead dedicated to achieving equality for all of America's disadvantaged and disenfranchised, including Indians, women, slaves, and free blacks. Increasingly libertarian in her religious interpretations, Mott grew to believe that a new spirit was at work in the world that demanded active involvement in reform. An enormously inspirational speaker and a tireless organizer, Lucretia Mott was one of her country's earliest, and most radical, feminists and reformers.

For Unger's essay, for American National Biography Online, click here (unfortunately, subscription is needed for access). For Mott's biography at the National Women's Hall of Fame, click here, and for the entry on Mott at the National Women's History Museum, click here.

There are several full-length biographies, but I like Carol Faulkner's biography of this "radical egalitarian": Lucretia Mott's Heresy: Abolition and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America.

The First National Women's Rights Convention

The National Women's Rights Convention (23 and 24 October 1850)

Earlier this year, we looked at the two-day convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. (If you missed those posts, click here and here.) Less well known is the first National Women's Rights Convention held in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1850.

Harriot Kezia Hunt
addressed the National
Women's Rights Convention
on the medical education
of women

About 300 people had attended the Seneca Falls Convention, which famously approved the Declaration of Sentiments. Two years later, there were 1,000 attendees for the first of what would eventually be twelve national conferences. (The tenth took place in 1860--the conventions were suspended during the years of the Civil War, the eleventh held in 1866. A gathering in Washington, D.C. was called the "twelfth National Convention" was held in January 1869.)

Many of the prominent organizers and speakers at the first convention--including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott--were still active in the 1869 gathering. Over nearly two decades, the issues remained the same: equal wages, access to education, access to work and careers, property rights, marriage rights, and, always, voting rights. Susan B. Anthony would later say that it was reading the text of the speech given by Lucy Stone that drew her to the suffrage movement.

Speakers included the abolitionist and suffragist William Lloyd Garrison, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass. (You can see the entire program and read the speeches by clicking here.) Interestingly, however, while one of the major themes of this first convention was opening the medical profession to women, physician Elizabeth Blackwell, who, she says, has "read through all the proceedings carefully," had deep reservations--"I feel a little perplexed by the main object of the Convention--Woman's Rights."

While Blackwell does express "respect and sympathy" and says she is prepared to do what she can, she also is clear that her "energy" is reserved for other causes. There were certainly deeper criticism and outright mocking from members of the press and the public. I thought I'd include here a section from the New York Herald's convention coverage, the paper's summary of "the actual designs of that piebald assemblage called the Women's Rights Convention":

1. abolish the Bible;

2. abolish the constitution and the laws of the land;

3. reorganize society upon a social platform of perfect equality in all things, of sexes and colors;

4. establish the most free and miscellaneous amalgamation of sexes and colors;

5. elect Abby Kelley Foster President of the United States and Lucretia Mott Commander-in chief of the Army;

6. To cut throats ad libitum [at their pleasure];

7. To abolish the gallows.

What struck me about this list, so fearful of women's "designs," is how closely it resembles Pat Robertson's view of feminism, from a 1992 fundraising letter (he was running for President). The "feminist agenda," he claimed, was not about equal rights: "it is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

Those women! Always wanting stuff, like equal rights. 

Lucy Stone, with a quotation from the
speech she made at the 1850 convention

Victoria Woodhull: First Female Candidate for President

Victoria California Claflin Woodhull (born 23 September 1838)

Victoria California Claflin Woodhull Blood Martin lived an extraordinary life--spiritual medium and fortuneteller, supporter of free love, advocate for women's rights, stockbroker, founder and editor of a newspaper, and the first woman to run for president, the 1872 nominee of the Equal Rights Party.

Victoria Claflin Woodhull, 1870,
photo by Matthrew Brady

But she had an inauspicious start in what became an extraordinary life--she was one of ten children born to Reuben Buckman Claflin, a one-eyed conman accused of theft, counterfeiting, and arson, a man who "could see more deviltry to do with that one eye than any two men with their four eyes." Her mother, Roxanna Hummel Claflin, was illiterate, a "religious zealot" given to praying--and cursing--loudly. 

While Victoria had almost no formal education, she was successful in her father's most lucrative business--she acted as a medium, sold various elixirs, told fortunes, and helped to "cure" all kinds of ailments. (Her sister Tennessee was once indicted for manslaughter after her patient died!)

Victoria Claflin married Canning Woodhull when she was fourteen, had two children with him, and divorced him eleven years later. She then married James Harvey Blood, probably about 1866--she would be divorced from him in 1876. Beginning in 1872, she had a long-term relationship with Benjamin Tucker, a proponent of anarchism and free love, a social movement that rejected traditional notions of marriage as a kind of slavery.

In the mean time, Victoria Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, opened a successful brokerage firm on Wall Street, Woodhull, Claflin & Co., becoming the first female stockbrokers. Then they founded a newspaper, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly. Victoria Woodhull became involved with the suffrage movement in 1869; on 11 January 1871 she became the first woman to testify before a Congressional committee--she addressed the House Judiciary Committee, arguing that women had already won the right to vote with the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

On 10 May 1872, Victoria Woodhull was nominated by the Equal Rights Party at their convention held in Apollo Hall, New York. (Frederick Douglass was nominated as vice president, but he did not attend the convention or acknowledge the nomination.) Woodhull would run again for president in 1892.

Later, however, Woodhull would lose the support of suffrage activists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton--her personal and professional life had just become too scandalous. After she divorced her second husband, Victoria Woodhull left for England.

Once in England, she continued lecturing. She married John Biddulph Martin in 1883 and turned again to publishing. Under the name of Victoria Woodhull Martin, she produced The Humanitarian, a magazine that included features about literature, politics, spirituality, and science--especially eugenics--a publication that continued from 1892 until 1901.

Woodhull retired in 1901, after her third husband's death. She died in England on 27 June 1927.

There are many biographies--but, as a place to start, I'll link you here (oops—see below) to the National Women's History Museum website, where you'll find a biography, bibliography, and links to other online resources. 

Update, 23 September 2017: Two years after writing this entry, I checked the links again, only to discover that Woodhull has been disappeared from the National Women's History Museum website! I thought that was worth noting . . . For once I'll suggest looking at the entry for Woodhull in Wikipedia--it's quite good! An excellent place to head for all of the biographical and bibliographical details, with links to primary source material.

Update, 23 September 2022: She's back! Mariana Brandman's biography of Victoria Woodhull was posted to the National Women's History Museum website this year. To access it, click here.

Update, 13 September 2025: Eden Collinsworth has just published a new biography of Woodhull, The Improbable Victoria Woodhull: Suffrage, Free Love, and the First Woman to Run for President (click here).

Seneca Falls Convention: Day Two

Seneca Falls Convention (second day, 20 July 1848)

The second day of the Seneca Falls convention saw the unanimous approval of the Declaration of Sentiments, introduced to the convention the day before, on the first day of the proceedings. Before the vote, the abolitionist Frederick Douglass spoke, as did other men, particularly to the question of women's property rights.

One of the interesting questions raised was whether men's signatures should be included--ultimately it was decided that their names should be included, but that there would be two sections, with women's signatures listed first.

The resolutions were again read and discussed, with the ninth--the one about women's voting rights--being regarded by some as the most problematic. Douglass argued that he, as a black man, would not accept the vote if women could not vote. 

For the rest of today's post, I'll include the text of the resolutions (I've set in boldface the controversial resolution on women's suffrage: 

WHEREAS, The great precept of nature is conceded to be, that "man shall pursue his own true and substantial happiness." [Sir William] Blackstone in his Commentaries [on the Laws of England] remarks, that this law of Nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this, and such of them as are valid, derive all their force, and all their validity, and all their authority, mediately and immediately, from this original; therefore,

Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way, with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of Nature and of no validity, for this is "superior in obligation to any other."

Resolved, That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of Nature, and therefore of no force or authority.

Resolved, That woman is man's equal—was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.

Resolved, That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, nor their ignorance, by asserting that they have all the rights they want.

Resolved, That inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual superiority, does accord to woman moral superiority, it is pre-eminently his duty to encourage her to speak and teach as she has opportunity, in all religious assemblies.

Resolved, That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.

Resolved, That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill-grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her appearance on the stage, in the concert, or in feats of the circus.

Resolved, That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.

Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

Resolved, That the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities.

Resolved, therefore, That, being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities, and the same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking, by any instrumentalities proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be held; and this being a self-evident truth growing out of the divinely implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be regarded as a self-evident falsehood, and at war with mankind.

As Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper would write in their four-volume History of Woman Suffrage, published in 1881:

The only resolution that was not unanimously adopted was the ninth, urging the women of the country to secure to themselves the elective franchise. Those who took part in the debate feared a demand for the right to vote would defeat others they deemed more rational, and make the whole movement ridiculous.

But Mrs. Stanton and Frederick Douglass seeing that the power to choose rulers and make laws, was the right by which all others could be secured, persistently advocated the resolution, and at last carried it by a small majority.

  

If you're looking for an overview on the Seneca Falls Convention, I recommend the excellent entry in West's Encyclopedia of American Law, available by clicking here.

Phebe Ann Hanaford: Minister, Writer, Activist

Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford (born 6 May 1829)

Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford

Over the course of her long life--she died in on 2 June 1921, just two months after her ninety-second birthday--Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford accomplished a great deal. 

Born in Nantucket, she was a wife and mother, roles expected of most women of her day. But she also was well educated (taught by an Episcopalian minister who offered the girl a curriculum that included mathematics and classical languages), and she went on to become a writer, a teacher, a minister, a public speaker, a chaplain for the Connecticut legislature, and an important, if now little recognized, figure in the women's suffrage movement. 

Phebe Hanaford is also a significant figure in gay and lesbian history, identified as the "earliest certifiable lesbian minister" in the United States.

One reason for the obscurity of Hanaford today may, in fact, be due to her sexuality. According to Lisa M. Tetrault, a split at the Universalist Church of the Good Shepherd in Jersey City, after her three-year term as minster, may have been the result not of her activism on behalf of women's suffrage, as it has been conventionally explained, but because of her lesbian identity:

After separating from her husband (whom she never officially divorced), Hanaford had begun living with a woman named Ellen Miles. Newspaper clippings preserved in Hanaford's scrapbook reported that the disgruntlement among congregation members was, in fact, over Hanaford's liaison with Miles, whom the papers called the "minister's wife." Hanaford, it seems, was not simply asked to cease her women's rights activities, but more specifically, to "dismiss" Miss Miles. The split in the Jersey City congregation, then, actually appears to have been over Hanaford's intimate personal life. While we cannot know for certain the exact nature of Hanaford and Miles's relationship, their letters testify to a deep and abiding affection. The two remained life-long companions, separated after forty-four years together only by Miles's death in 1914.

Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford's published writing includes anti-slavery tracts, an 1865 life of Lincoln (it was the first biography of Lincoln to be published), and a volume of poetry.

And unlike so many of the women she had worked with to secure women the right to vote--Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Julia Ward Howe, among them--Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford lived long enough to see the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

When she died, her family buried her in an unmarked grave in Orleans, New York.

As a result of the efforts of Loretta Cody and the Reverend Sarah Barber-Braun, there is now a grave marker, funded by the New York State Universalist Convention.

There is an excellent biography: Loretta Cody's A Mighty Social Force: Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford, 1829-1921. But you might want to start with Tetrault's essay, "A Paper Trail: Piecing Together the Life of Phebe Hanaford," written for the Nantucket Historical Association.

Clara Barton, "Angel of the Battlefield"

Clara Barton (died 12 April 1912)

Born on Christmas Day in 1821, Clarissa Harlowe Barton--who preferred to be called Clara--was an active professional woman throughout her life. 

Clara Barton, c. 1865,
photographed by Matthew Brady

Barton's first career was as a teacher; beginning in 1838, she taught in various schools for twelve years, where she demanded--and received--wages equal to those of male teachers. In 1852, after two years of academic work at the Clinton Liberal Institute, she opened a school of her own in Bardentown, the first "free" school in New Jersey. (As a free school, there were no fees assessed students--the school was paid for by the public.) 

Frustrated by a board that hired a man to run the school (because it was inappropriate for a woman to hold an administrative position), Barton turned to a new career--in 1855, she moved to Washington D.C. and went to work for the U.S. Patent Office--at first she worked as a recording clerk and was paid the same wages as her male colleagues. But because of opposition to a woman holding a "man's" job and receiving a "man's" salary, Barton's position was reduced and, in 1857, she and other female employees were dismissed. 

Barton returned to Washington and the patent office after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1861. But she entered into the profession for which she is most well known during the Civil War, where she gained permission in 1862 to do more than just send bandages to the front lines (a typical, though essential, job for women, who organized themselves into societies to provide supplies for soldiers and to do some caring for the sick and wounded). Barton became a nurse on the front lines of battle, working in a number of field hospitals.

In 1865, after the end of the war, Barton set up the Office of Correspondence with the Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army, where she received the queries from the family and friends about missing loved ones; by the time the office was closed, she had responded to more than 60,000 letters and helped to locate information about 22,000 missing men. She also helped in setting up a cemetery at Andersonville Prison, a notorious prison of war camp in Georgia.

During a trip to Europe in 1869, Barton was introduced to the International Red Cross and worked under its auspices in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War. After she returned to the United States, Barton began her efforts to create an American branch of the Red Cross. She was ultimately successful, and she became the first president of the newly formed American Red Cross in 1881. She led the organization for the next twenty-three years.

During these years she also worked as a superintendent for a woman's "reformatory prison" (in Massachusetts) and gave speeches on behalf of women's suffrage (she was a friend of Susan B. Anthony), not only attending suffrage rallies but also giving speeches.

Clara Barton in 1904,
as she ended her term as president of
the American Red Cross

Barton published her own accounts of the Red Cross in two separate volumes, The Red Cross In Peace and War (1898) and The Story of the Red Cross: Glimpses of Field Work (1904). She published an autobiography, The Story of My Childhood, in 1907.

Barton's home in Glen Echo, Maryland, where she lived for the last fifteen years of her life, is now a National Historic Site. You can take a virtual tour, access biographical material and timelines, see full transcripts of primary-source documents, and download a variety of images, including the ones used in this post, by clicking here.

Although there are many biographies of Barton written for children, there seems to be no recent full-length biography for adult readers. Copies of Elizabeth Brown Pryor's Clara Barton, Professional Angel (1987) are still in available, however. Stephen B. Oates's work on Barton during the Civil War is also available: A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War (1994). In addition to the information available via the Clara Barton National Historic Site web page (above), there is an excellent entry at the American Red Cross website.

For information about Barton's Office of Missing Men, click here. 

The Clara Barton National Historic Site

Susan B. Anthony, Founding Mother

Susan B. Anthony (born 15 February 1820)

Abolitionist, suffragist, and social reformer, Susan Brownell Anthony campaigned tirelessly for the betterment of others. Early in her life, she was involved with her family's anti-slavery and temperance activities. She began her work on behalf of women's rights after she met Elizabeth Cady in 1851. She worked for more than fifty years to secure the vote for women--when she died on 13 March 1906, there was still more than a decade ahead for the campaign for women's suffrage.

In my last year of teaching, I listened as a young woman explained why she hadn't been in class for a week, why she didn't have her assignments complete, and why she couldn't possibly finish her work when it was due. 

"I have activism fatigue," she said. Her participation in various campus "social justice activities" meant she was just so tired and run down she had to take a break and rest. She thought her excuse was good.

It was not.

When I heard it, I thought about Susan B. Anthony's lifetime dedication and lifelong service.

She never quit work to complain that she suffered from "activism fatigue."

A tribute to Anthony: Women leave
"I voted" stickers on her tombstone

Caroline Seymour Severance, Activist and Organizer

Caroline Seymour Severance (born 12 January 1820)

Abolitionist, suffragist, social reformer and political organizer, Caroline Seymour Severance is less well known than many of the American women with whom she worked during her lifetime, women like Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony.

Caroline Severance in California,
c. 1910

Born in New York and educated in several female academies, the young Caroline Seymour was a teacher before she married Theodoric Severance in 1840.

Between 1841 and 1849, she gave birth to five children--and although we might expect her time to be fully occupied with her family, Severance later wrote that her marriage had freed her: "I was under bondage to authority, dogmas and conservative ideas until I married." 

Her husband may have been a banker but, she said, he was "very concerned with great movements to reform society, rather than simply bemoan its decaying state." She credits her marriage and family life with helping to shape her as a social reformer.

In their Cleveland home, the Severances welcomed abolitionists and women's rights activists: "We . . . became very active in the woman's rights movement of the time, attending our first convention in Akron in 1851. I was asked to prepare a tract for the Ohio Woman's Rights Association in 1853 arguing for equal property rights, and delivered it proudly at the state convention, in spite of the hooting and laughter from many of the disreputable sort who had infiltrated the audience."

The Severance family relocated to Boston in 1855 and to Los Angeles in 1875. In that Southern California city, she continued her dedication to political activism and social causes: she and her husband created the First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles in 1877, while Caroline herself worked to bring the kindergarten movement to Los Angeles, helped to establish the Los Angeles Women's Club, dedicated to improving the lives of homeless children, and founded the Los Angeles Public Library. She also helped develop the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, worked to found a local branch of the University of California (UCLA), promoted historic preservation, and opened an employment bureau.

Although she died before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, the indefatigable Severance lived long enough to see the state of California extend the suffrage to women in 1911, and she voted in the 1912 presidential election in California. She died in November 1914.

Ella Giles Ruddy's 1906 "appreciation" of Severance, The Mother of Clubs: Caroline M. Seymour Severance, is available for free at Google Books; to read or download, click here.(I linked to an Internet Archive copy, above.) California historian Virginia Elwood-Akers's 2012 full-length biography, Caroline Severance Seymour, is available at Amazon. 

Caroline Severance's grave,
Angelus Rosedale Cemetery,
Los Angeles

Update, 12 January 2023: A primary source here was Connecticut History on the Web, but that is a source that no longer exists. I've left the information in, but I’ve removed the dead links--I’m hoping that the account will be back online at some point . . . 

Update, 12 January 2025: Some of the information from Connecticut History on the Web is still accessible, thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Here is a link Constance Severance’s letter about her life, quoted above, and from this preserved capture of the now-disappeared site, you can still find a few more resources about her.