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,