Reddit mentions of Other Powers: the Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull

Loads! My favourite secondary source is probably this, Other Powers: the Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull. It's really easy to read and covers her full life. I found a lot of my best sources by following the references in it too.


There is a lot of good primary stuff just on the internet.

I'm not sure if this will work but this is a link to a biography of her that is written by the guy who's wife had the affair that Woodhull exposed, sorryfor explaining that so badly haha. It's such an interesting perspective I think. Basically, this super famous and popular minister, Henry Ward Beecher, had been rattling on about how abhorrent free love was constantly and pretty much equated Woodhull's ideas as the ultimate sin, whilst shagging about with loads of women in his congregation at the same time. One being Elizabeth Titlton, the wife of the man who authored the biography I just linked. Woodhull thought he was a massive bell end, which he was, so she published a story titled "The Beecher-Tilton Scandal Case" in the newspaper she ran with her sister (which was the first paper to publish Karl Marx in the USA too. She loves riling people). I'm doing a full chapter just on this incident because it so demonstrative of the attitudes people had towards women and religion and Victoria gender roles. My key argument is that the Protestant establishment had overwhelming control of society despite the emergence of dissenting reliigous groups and radical like Woodhull, and the case fits it very well. It was obvious to everyone that Beecher was in the wrong here but he emerged at the other side scot free, pretty much on the basis that as a white male clergyman he would be protected by the judicial system.

The internet archive also has some of her own work on it, not much though. The central text in for my dissertation is "And the Truth shall Make You Free: a Speech on the Principles of Social Freedom" which is just incredible. There is alot of controvesry over whether her work is her own or a combination of other people's but it's important not to let that cloud her message. Give it a read and see what you think. I believe her magic comes from the fact that rhetoric was filled will so many normal things about religion and 'American-ness' so that people were like "yeah, cool I feel ya" and were kind of subconsciously receptive to what she was saying. Once this had happen she would drop in all these radical ideas, framed in a way so that they seemed in a similar vein to the stuff people already identified with.  She was like a pioneer of the buzzword, constantly talking about freedom and liberty and stuff and then being like 'also, free love'. Although she never gained any real traction, she did frame everything in a way that forced people to doubt their own principles on some level if the disagreed with her. I LOVE HER.


If you just google around there is alot of stuff but unfortunately it's not vey good. She just isn't that well known, which makes me sad.