Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly was an American weekly newspaper first published on May 14, 1870, by sisters Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin. It was among the first publications to be published by women. [1] It lasted until June 10, 1876.
Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly was an American weekly newspaper first published on May 14, 1870, by sisters Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin. It was among the first publications to be published by women. [1] It lasted until June 10, 1876.
Following the success of Woodhull and Claflin's stock brokerage, the sisters founded Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly using funds from that endeavor. After the weekly's scandals in 1872, landlords refused to rent and the publication briefly ceased circulation. [2] At its height, the publication had national circulation of 20,000. [3]
The Weekly published a variety of articles on such topics as women's suffrage, spiritualism, vegetarianism, free love, and socialism. [4] [5] [6] [7] Most content was written by Woodhull, Claflin, Colonel James Harvey Blood, and Stephen Pearl Andrews. [8] [9]
The publication initially carried four pages of advertising, but by 1872, advertisers began dropping off despite threats. The Weekly also blackmailed celebrities and politicians, justifying the articles by saying women must protect themselves if laws and the justice system wouldn't. [10]
Throughout its run, the publication chiefly promoted Woodhull's political and reform ambitions, making it the primary propaganda vehicle for Woodhull when she ran for president in 1872. [7] [11]
On December 30, 1871, the Weekly was the first in the United States to publish Karl Marx and Frederich Engels's The Communist Manifesto , in English. Woodhull and Claflin felt that the document was important in the context of the progress that the International Workingman's Association was making at the time. [8] [12]
On November 2, 1872, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly published a story featuring Henry Ward Beecher's affair with Theodore Tilton's wife, Elizabeth Richards Tilton. The article made detailed allegations that America's most renowned clergyman was secretly practicing the free-love doctrines that he denounced from the pulpit. The story created a national sensation, and issues were said to have changed hands at 40 dollars apiece. Later that day, Woodhull, Claflin and Col. Blood were arrested and charged with publishing an obscene newspaper and circulating it through the United States Postal Service. In the raid, 3,000 copies of the newspaper were found. It was this arrest and Woodhull's acquittal that propelled Congress to pass the 1873 Comstock Laws. On May 17, 1873, the entire Beecher article was reprinted. [10] [13] [14] [15]
In 1874, Woodhull, Claflin and Col. Blood were brought to court again and sued for libel against Luther C. Challis who was also featured in the same issue. The wealthy broker who knew the women when they were on Wall Street was accused of seducing two young girls. The trial lasted ten days and the trio were found not guilty by the jury. [10] [16]
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because she was younger than the constitutionally mandated age of 35.
The 1872 United States presidential election was the 22nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1872. Despite a split in the Republican Party, incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant defeated Democratic-endorsed Liberal Republican nominee Horace Greeley.
Henry Ward Beecher was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, known for his support of the abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God's love, and his 1875 adultery trial. His rhetorical focus on Christ's love has influenced mainstream Christianity through the 21st century.
The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed on May 15, 1869, to work for women's suffrage in the United States. Its main leaders were Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was created after the women's rights movement split over the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, which would in effect extend voting rights to black men. One wing of the movement supported the amendment while the other, the wing that formed the NWSA, opposed it, insisting that voting rights be extended to all women and all African Americans at the same time.
George Francis Train was an American entrepreneur who organized the clipper ship line that sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco; he also organized the Union Pacific Railroad and the Credit Mobilier in the United States in 1864 to construct the eastern portion of the Transcontinental Railroad, and a horse tramway company in England while there during the American Civil War.
Events from the year 1872 in the United States.
Anthony Comstock was an American anti-vice activist, United States Postal Inspector, and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), who was dedicated to upholding Christian morality. He opposed obscene literature, abortion, contraception, masturbation, gambling, prostitution, and patent medicine. The terms comstockery and comstockism refer to his extensive censorship campaign of materials that he considered obscene, including birth control advertised or sent by mail. He used his positions in the U.S. Postal Service and the NYSSV to make numerous arrests for obscenity and gambling. Besides these pursuits, he was also involved in efforts to suppress fraudulent banking schemes, mail swindles, and medical quackery.
Theodore Tilton was an American newspaper editor, poet and abolitionist. He was born in New York City to Silas Tilton and Eusebia Tilton. On his twentieth birthday, October 2, 1855, he married Elizabeth Richards. Tilton's newspaper work was fully supportive of abolitionism and the Northern cause in the American Civil War.
Isabella Beecher Hooker was a leader, lecturer and social activist in the American suffragist movement.
Woman's Journal was an American women's rights periodical published from 1870 to 1931. It was founded in 1870 in Boston, Massachusetts, by Lucy Stone and her husband Henry Browne Blackwell as a weekly newspaper. In 1917 it was purchased by Carrie Chapman Catt's Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission and merged with The Woman Voter and National Suffrage News to become known as The Woman Citizen. It served as the official organ of the National American Woman Suffrage Association until 1920, when the organization was reformed as the League of Women Voters, and the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed granting women the right to vote. Publication of Woman Citizen slowed from weekly, to bi-weekly, to monthly. In 1927, it was renamed The Woman's Journal. It ceased publication in June 1931.
Lady Tennessee Celeste Claflin, Viscountess of Montserrat, also known as Tennie C., was an American suffragist best known as the first woman, along with her sister Victoria Woodhull, to open a Wall Street brokerage firm, which occurred in 1870.
The National Equal Rights Party (NERP) was a United States minor party during the late 19th century that supported women's rights. The party was notable for nominating two female presidential candidates: Victoria Woodhull in 1872 and Belva Lockwood in 1884 and 1888. Woodhull and Lockwood are generally considered the first women who ran for president in the U.S. Although women could not vote in federal elections at the time, there were no laws prohibiting women from running for president. Their platform focused on equal rights for men and women.
Sir Francis Cook, 1st Baronet, 1st Viscount Montserrate was a British merchant and art collector.
Griffith Gaunt, or Jealousy is an 1866 sensation novel by Charles Reade. A best-selling book in its day, it was thought by Reade to be his best novel, but critics and posterity have generally preferred The Cloister and the Hearth (1861).
The Independent was a weekly magazine published in New York City between 1848 and 1928. It was founded in order to promote Congregationalism and was also an important voice in support of abolitionism and women's suffrage. In 1924 it moved to Boston, Massachusetts.
The International Workingmen's Association (IWA) in the United States of America took the form of a loose network of about 35 frequently discordant local "sections," each professing allegiance to the London-based IWA, commonly known as the "First International." These sections were divided geographically and by the language spoken by their members, frequently new immigrants to America, including those who spoke German, French, Czech, as well as Irish and "American" English-language groups.
Angela Fiducia Heywood (1840–1935) was a radical writer and activist, known as a free love advocate, suffragist, socialist, spiritualist, labor reformer, and abolitionist.
Annie Nowlin Savery was an American suffragist and philanthropist based in Des Moines, Iowa. She is known as a pioneer feminist and activist for woman suffrage. She began taking part in the woman suffrage movement in the 1860s, and became a leader in the county and state, speaking widely and helping establish organizations to support it.
Elizabeth Monroe Richards Tilton was an American suffragist, a founder of the Brooklyn Woman's Club, and a poetry editor of The Revolution, the newspaper of the National Woman Suffrage Association, founded by woman's rights advocates Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Tilton also served on the executive committee of the American Equal Rights Association.
