Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria WoodhullBarbara Goldsmith's portrait of suffragette Victoria Woodhull and her times was hailed by George Plimpton as "a beautifully written biography of a remarkable woman" and by Gloria Steinem as "more memorable than a dozen histories." A highly readable combination of history and biography, Other Powers interviews the stories of some of the most colorful social, political, and religious figures of America's Victorian era with the courageous and notorious life of Victoria Woodhull--psychic, suffragette, publisher, presidential candidate, and self-confessed practitioner of free love. It is set amid the battle for women's suffrage, the Spiritualist movement that swept across the nation in the age of Radical Reconstruction following the Civil War, and the bitter fight that pitted black men against white women in the struggle for the right to vote. Peter Gay found Other Powers "Irresistible...this is a biography guaranteed to keep the reader reading." And Gloria Steinem called it "A real-life novel of how one charismatic woman...turned women's suffrage, the church, New York City, and much of the country on its ear." |
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accused American Anna Dickinson Anthony Comstock asked Beecher-Tilton began Benjamin Butler blackmail Boston Brooklyn called Catharine Chicago City Claflin Colonel Blood committee Commodore Comstock Congress convention daughter December diary ECS & SBA Elizabeth Cady Stanton Fisk Frank Moulton free love Harper Henry Bowen Henry Ward Beecher Horace Greeley husband Ibid Isabella Beecher Hooker January John knew later letter Lib Elizabeth Lib Tilton live Lucy Stone marriage Marshall Martha Coffin Wright Mary mother never newspaper night November NWSA October paper Plymouth Church political preacher president prostitution Public Library Scrapbook Reel Reid replied reporter Republican Roxy scandal sexual sister social society speech spirits Spiritualist Stephen Pearl Andrews Street Susan Tennessee Theodore Tilton tion told Tribune Vanderbilt VCWM Vickie Victoria Woodhull Victoria Woodhull Reader vote Weekly wife Wilkeson Woman Suffrage woman's rights women Woodhull's wrote York Public Library
Popular passages
Page 97 - i. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce
Page 42 - (“But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence”), and The
Page 181 - Think of Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung, who do not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic, who cannot read the Declaration of Independence or Webster's spelling book, making laws for.. . the daughters of Adams and Jefferson. . - women of wealth and education.
Page 346 - I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.. . - And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that ‘resistance to tyranny is obedience to God,
Page 245 - forgiveness, and I humble myself before him as I do before my God. He would have been a better man in my circumstances than I have been. I can ask nothing except that he will remember all the other breasts that would ache. I will not plead for myself. I even wish that I were dead... HW
Page 182 - their children are torn from their arms and their brains dashed out upon the pavement; when they are objects of insult and outrage at every turn; when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads; when their children are not allowed to enter schools, then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own.
Page 46 - it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.
Page 46 - He stood there like an African Prince, conscious of his dignity and power, grand in his physical proportions, majestic in his wrath, as with keen wit, satire, and indignation he portrayed the bitterness of slavery, the humiliation of subjection to those who in all human virtues and capacities were inferior to himself.
Page 242 - December 30, 1870 Wearied with importunity and weakened by sickness I gave a letter implicating my friend Henry Ward Beecher under the assurances that that would remove all difficulties between me and my husband. That letter I now revoke. I was persuaded to it—almost forced—when I was in a weakened state of mind. I regret it and recall all its statements. ER
Page 181 - in fifteen states of the Union. When women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities of New York and New Orleans; when they are dragged from their houses and hung upon