The advent of Mrs. Woodhull on the woman suffrage platform created a wide-spread commotion.  The old cry of “free love” was redoubled, the enemies exulted loud and long, the friends censured and protested.  Regarding this matter, Mrs. Hooker wrote: 

My sister Catharine says she is convinced now that I am right and that Mrs. Woodhull is a pure woman, holding a wrong social theory, and ought to be treated with kindness if we wish to win her to the truth.  Catharine wanted me to write her a letter of introduction, so that when she went to New York she could make her acquaintance and try to convince her that she is in error in regard to her views on marriage.  I gave her the letter and she is in New York now.  When she sees her she will be just as much in love with her as the rest of us.  Imagine the Dahlgren coterie when they get Catharine to Washington to fight suffrage and find her visiting Victoria and proclaiming her sweetness and excellence.

The rest of the story is told in a subsequent letter:  “Sister Catharine returned last night.  She saw Victoria and, attacking her on the marriage question, got such a black eye as filled her with horror and amazement.  I had to laugh inwardly at her relation of the interview and am now waiting for her to cool down!”

The men especially were exercised over the new convert to suffrage and flooded the ladies with letters of protest.  To one of these Mrs. Stanton replied: 

In regard to the gossip about Mrs. Woodhull I have one answer to give to all my gentlemen friends:  When the men who make laws for us in Washington can stand forth and declare themselves pure and unspotted from all the sins mentioned in the Decalogue, then we will demand that every woman who makes a constitutional argument on our platform shall be as chaste as Diana.  If our good men will only trouble themselves as much about the virtue of their own sex as they do about ours, if they will make one moral code for both men and women, we shall have a nobler type of manhood and womanhood in the next generation than the world has yet seen.

We have had women enough sacrificed to this sentimental, hypocritical prating about purity.  This is one of man’s most effective engines for our division and subjugation.  He creates the public sentiment, builds the gallows, and then makes us hangmen for our sex.  Women have crucified the Mary Wollstonecrafts, the Fanny Wrights, the George Sands, the Fanny Kembles, of all ages; and now men mock us with the fact, and say we are ever cruel to each other.  Let us end this ignoble record and henceforth stand by womanhood.  If Victoria Woodhull must be crucified, let men drive the spikes and plait the crown of thorns.

[Autograph:  Lucinda Hinsdale Stone]