all this and more on this memorial day weekend, three days of booktv, television for serious readers. for more information and this weekend's television schedule visit us online at booktv.org. >> booktv continueues. myra macpherson recounts the lives of sisters victoria ward hall and tennessee class of, whose professional pollutes pursuits challenge the mail status quo. this is about 40 minutes. >> i am supposed to be wired for sound. one of my dear friends when i did my last book on i s stone, he used to say is there any sex in this? and a little louder, i just had sex and scandal. i really hate -- it used to make me so incredibly nervous but i got a lesson once when i was speaking to a group, a rather large group and there was a woman in the front end she was smiling like this. so i found myself playing to her. you all remember jeff, 95% of voting, wondered who was the other side person. i was playing to this woman because everyone else was being nice. i got the end of the q&a and maybe this will mean something and the woman next to her said she is from germany, she hasn't understood word you said. so the only response, you are all from another country. this does tie in with "the scarlet sisters" because they were the most incredible female lead jurors of the time, and at the beginning they almost fainted when they started to speak and i kept thinking this is an interesting story to see that after developing this amazing skill and being able to speak without the mike or anything, one little person, on a cute stage, the youngest was 64, she sold 7,000, they were really an amazing duo. people ask me how i got interested in them and the beginning was in 2008 when everybody was saying there was a possible historic figure of a white woman, african-american male. so this thing had been done before. 133 years before, in 1872 when victoria woodhull ran on this remote third-party ticket, frederick douglass, a former slave and or greater, i found out about her sassy younger sister tennie, she was totally an untamed colt, out there very fast. when she ran for president, tennie ran for congress. nothing in the constitution said anything against a woman running for office. and they thought quality in the boardroom, the bedroom and even on the battlefield, tennessee "tennie" claflin became the only woman ever to be a kernel of a regiment of the african-american new york regiment. before i get into this i do want to say who they were because this was an era where women had no power, they couldn't leave of marriage if they wanted to, if they got a divorce they couldn't have children -- get the children, they were -- came from the trashy is background possible. their father was a con artist snake oil men who put them into fake fortune telling at a very young age, at the age of 11. tennie was selling fake fortunes, and they both climbed out of this background, an abusive family situation and decided they wanted to have power and they wanted to have freedom and they pursued it, the kind of pursued very few people and certainly women, they were very beautiful and great self promoters and the first thing they had to do was get known before they could run for president of congress, then they became the first women to own firms on wall street and they were bankrolls, this didn't happen again for another hundred years. bankrolled by cornelius vanderbilt, the richest man in america who was known to be the lover of tennie, at least all the books say that. they got to him because he believes in spiritualism and they were clairvoyant and decided that -- there was a genuine force in what they could to and also a lot of fake involved and they would be issue or to get is long dead mother talking to him. they managed -- it was so amazing that more than 2,000 stockbrokers came out just to see them on opening day. they came in and they dress alike, they were 7 years apart in age but they had two colts pins behind each year, they cut their hair short, they were just audacious in everything they did and so after that they kept on going and victoria became the first woman ever to address congress, she was trying to prove that because the constitution said citizens and because it said people and because nowhere except in the fourteenth amendment does it ever say mail, that was a throwaway, the second amendment of the fourteenth amendment, the second article which was to make sure no african-americans women could vote and that was -- until then there hadn't been anything so they are cute and she went to speak before congress and gave this freely enormously intelligent concept of why women should not get the vote and all the mail congressman just shot it down and she said i am a citizen, he says you are not a citizen. what am i? he said you are a woman. within next 50 years whatever kind of citizens we were, women work, they couldn't get the votes. and they had a radical newspaper and became fiery lecturers shocking audiences, to 6,000 reviews on divorce, prostitution, religion, race, financial and political corruption, sex in and out of marriage and decided oppressed women who married for money were practicing legalize prostitution. their guts to do everything, in fact, they knew how to reshape a story. the new york times wrote a blistering piece about some, it seems unbelievable two women of this sort could be in one family so they just excise that part and said the new york times phrases us as it seems unbelievable. . we all take lessons. they all joined -- the first and only women to join karl marx's international working association and it was so popular it was called the yankee internationals and the sisters were going to make their version of the rainbow coalition. they let women in, blacks, anybody else, all for people. carl marks thought they were great at first, threw a fit and expelled them and the sisters, he is nothing but a fallen desk. the important thing is that historians say no matter what happens, they actually promoted racial equality, the most since abolition by their movement. one was frederick douglass and the other was the colonel of the army and everything and as i said, above all they railed against victorian hypocrisy. as they were free lovers which would mean anything from just wanting to reform these horrible divorce laws to have things and choice believe in and out of someone you wanted to have mary and whether you have children and that was considered impossible in those days and finally, adulterous affair, they just blasted. i know, it is so bad. they blasted him in print and accuse the man of having raped a virgin in their weekly and they got thrown into prison by obscenities for a man named comstock who was a horrible man. anthony comstock was a man whose ossian everywhere. medical books, science in medical books, we are talking a really sick guy, but he did great damage because he came famous, until the middle of the 1920s, the comstock law was very repressive about first amendment, repressive about the best books and poetry. george bernard shaw, everything and he was against contraception and drove margaret sanger out of the country. he was a very vicious man and not only through them in prison but for a whole month they were in prison without any possibility of having a trial or anything. we are not talking about nice prisons. then there were those who made fun of him. there was a wonderful cartoon of comstock standing with this woman speaking to a judge and he says this woman just gave birth to a naked baby. [laughter] >> and a few things the woman said in their own voice, they have these -- i have 47 cast of characters and i divide this into acts because their life was like high drama and they knew everybody from presidents to future king's. henry ward beecher, harriet ward beecher, area beecher stowe, thank you. she called been tramps, it was all over the place and henry james wrote a book called the siege of london and also the bostonian so favored these outrageous women in a time when outrage was quite there for zillow men. this was the robber baron era. i do a lot about -- i do a lot about the life and times and how interesting it was, the fifth avenue hotel, as they called a vertical railway going through every floor which was an alligator. was the first elevator ever. all of these guys would come to police everybody else and police each other on the hill, on wall street and there was one guy, daniel drew, one of the oldest and meanest and the story is he was a camel driver, was leading all of his cattle to be sold and he told all of his people just give them a lot of salt, got to the place where they were going to sell land said give them lots of water, give them lots of water, drank all water, the phrase he got was the beginning of the phrase watered stock. an interesting background. he also said he is steals what is and his goes to prison. the sisters, the only way you will get a sense is if i give you just a little bit of -- with her piercing blue eyes victoria observe life at the willard hotel in washington, watching the after-hours comings and goings of congressman and lobbyists. the phrase lobbyist came from -- does anybody know that? it said crabbs made it up when walking a through the lobby of the hotel and all these people were coming the beseeching him, all these damn lobbyists and that is how it got started but anyway she watched and she observed and then she later shocked audiences with her observations. where is prostitution in its greatest luxury? washington. everybody knows that the third house after the senate and congress in washington consists of the lobbyists who are there to obtain legislation to push this scheme or that small appropriation. it is distributed problem adams, 10, 15, $20,000. victoria ask why? to secure their influence with representatives and senators. i say it boldly. is the best men of the country who support the houses of prostitution. you can argue about the best men. they were totally on this concept of the lies and double standards. as i say underneath the victorian cloak of functions morality sex was everywhere except in the marriage bed. marriage is a license to cohabit sexually at the enforcement of this method eventually defeats the original object. is the common experience among married women who live together strictly according to the marriage covenant for 5 to 10 years that they are sexually estranged. she would say this all over the country and people would gasp and everything and they both decry the economic dependency of women that could contracting repugnant marriages. century and a half before the term date rape was going to victoria packed houses about domestic abuse. night after night there are thousands of rapes committed under cover of this occurs license, and millions, i say it boldly, millions of poor, heartbroken, suffering wives are compelled to ministered to the luxury of in satiable husbands and this is the line of thought was interesting, knowing the way the laws were she was probably right. nothing except marriage in debts men with the right to debauched women sexually against their will. and the whole double standard routine, i say that the prostitute suffering and sells herself to some man for a few hours to obtain a few dollars with which to procure them, the young maidens in voluntarily yielding to him to her young heart goes out in purity, compared to this woman, a rich woman who sold herself to the man she detested for $100,000, but such is the force of public opinion that while the prostitute would be kicked from the doorstep and the unmarried girls who engage in sex with a man she loved would fiji turned from her home, the designing woman varying from money is a warship to bell of new york, a virtuous woman. the thing that is quite amazing is when you start looking at what they said back then and what is still going on today. dimension equal pay for equal work. there are so many. for example this one. excuse me. society should leave the love affairs of the community to regulate themselves instead of trusting to legislation to regulate them. this is not a modern day activist sharing the u.s. supreme court, overturning the defense of marriage act as unconstitutional but woodhull 1871. this is a woman on trial for any thing, considered a legitimate part to make the most searching inquiry into her sexual morality and the decision generally turns in that regard. again this is not a contemporary woman speaking of disparaging treatment of women trying to speak out against somebody who had raped them. it is one of the reasons that kind of fear, 64% of rapes golan reported today. this was tennie speaking in 1871 ended goes on and on and on. we have what is happening on the hill with legitimate rate and everything else. it is just amazing that the things they fought for 144 years ago are now having to fight the battle again in so many areas. and i'm going to just let you all ask some questions if you have any. [applause] i am about to tell you, there is a great last act. i will make you read the book. they went from rags to riches and back to rags. one of their friends was cady stanton who was a maze -- she bought the free love package because she herself -- at one point for a marriage in which she is available in marriage and had children and she was fair for a long time but after they went to prison everybody looked the other way and i would love to find personal diaries between the sisters later in life because they were always fighting back. they fought back because the only rules were men's rules. they threatened blackmail of people who knew things about themselves, they lied successfully, made up an assault, reinvented do they wear. they told another story. it kept on going. there was a very personal sense of sadness that they had been persecuted for what they stood for. >> where they sentenced all their life? >> they wear a symbiotic to 0 i have ever seen. tennie, when victoria left, she was 10 years old, left and got married, a very bad marriage and tennie felt lost. were they prostitutes? the inclusion that they may have been in that period because i think the two brothers of other sisters, she felt, she tells the story, incredibly dramatic trial of family in the book. and their crazy mother threatened and said that they were keeping them from her and threatened to kill her. they had been blackmailed by their own families and did what they could. a crazy trashy family. people who had supported them, susan b. anthony, and this family over and over, tennie said she would always be grateful to her sister for bringing her out of the adorable life. they were together for a very long time. and giving a speech that would send a letter back. >> was victoria in an arranged marriage when she married so young? >> a lot of the things that i say in the beginning of this book, for everything is speculation, a lot of rumor, things that were written, she wrote some biographical sketches and energy tries -- it was at a time fits when it was ruining them. the man who wrote it was theodore telman, who was from the suffragist movement. his wife was the one who had the affair. he was a wonderful free lover until he became something else. and alleged a hung jury. i read the transcript and the commitment to the times. as nails him. not with her but all women. victoria used to say he preaches to 16 mistresses every sunday. >> the advantage. >> yes. >> why do you think it is, forgotten by history. >> it is an amazing one. when you think of the involvement in the newspapers and the times, it was truly paparrazzi time. there were cartoons. victoria -- they don't need any other last names. including in europe. what happened was, and its huge tones that were run in, stanton and anthony and several others and mentioned victoria's historic moment when she was in college but that is all until everything they did. highly charged with special conduct. and the first book that was written was in 1927. and both of them concentrating on victorian. and they use things verbatim. and the sketch which is a great assault. and what was real was not real. and to no boundary in this century, the 20th century, and a realist movement that reverted the women's movement, and a lot of things to discourage them. and always thought that it was their time and they have to speak to another generation than you are. >> how did you begin your research into this? .. he was adopted from japan and just -- the day that i got my cell phone, he sent me in 1872 "new york times," looking exactly like it did, 1872. such a new world. when i started i was having to go, the weekly that they had was now digitized. a lot of stuff wasn't digitized. working all that, changed, internet made it possible to find the originals. i would like to all the original newspapers myself. looked at them myself. i didn't want to take what someone else said they had said. then i had a lucky trip of going to portugal. i'll tell you what happened. [laughter] anyway, after they been trounced by everybody, they married two of the richest men in england. one of them was sir francis co cook. she used her money and her publicity to go all over the world for women's suffrage. victoria on the other hand, became more eccentric. she was there much in having a nervous breakdown or close to it. to tell you the difference, explain, victoria looked like, she was named for the queen and she acted like she was the queen all the time. and tennie would come in and she would say i love the press, i love the media. i love the newspaperman. they are the salt of the earth and they keep everything from spoiling. [laughter] >> they were in this fancy restaurant in new york, at this point they went in one night after work and the owner came up and very sweetly said, you know, you know the rules. you can't be in here after night without an escort. and tennie had ordered soup and she said okay, she went out, got their carriage driver out, drag him in, sat him down and said dinner for three. [laughter] >> two things. can you draw any lines from their activism to effecting change that was quantifiable in the lifetime that they could say, we did this? >> i don't think you could see in their lifetime, but what they really did was -- there were some women writers who say that they wrestled with the suffrage movement. they were there for only two or three years. they were having huge fights, before the sisters ever came and there was a huge shift. whether it should be the negroes our or the women's our. they all split and add a huge fight. and 69, and the sisters came on the scene in 70. so at the time when they professed with the city congress, why didn't we think of that. they did form a large number of women who didn't vote. just as test cases. so they were instrumental in that, but what really i think happened about the time of the suffragists in like 1812, they were considered heroes. they were older but they were still considered the heroes of the movement because by then the suffragists in new england were throwing things through glass windows and risking -- and being force-fed in prison. so these sisters were really looked on. from then on i think it's a gradual thing. my friend pat schroeder, a woman in congress, said i love those women. i quote her quite a bit in the epilogue. so not in our lifetime, well, sort of. 1927. so in their later life they were very much appreciated by kind of, you know. but hey, everyone in this room -- [inaudible] still going on and a lot in politics. mitch mcconnell referred to the drive as an empty dress, and wendy davis -- supposedly. the funny part was tennie and victoria were trashed for -- we call them trailer park trash. and they were trashed for not being trailer park trash enough. karl rove was saying, oh, my, they weren't even in that trailer for three months. [laughter] it's really something. >> it makes me feel sort of sad that these two women ultimately were rejected by women that historically i revere as having made a difference for women's rights in this country. was that possibly a class structure? >> totally. not totally, but very much so. because all those women were middle-class. they were not upper class. the movement was a minority. i mean, they thought the same kind of things we thought. you know, things that continue, the religious groups that come out. one of the sisters was against women's rights totally. and here come these do. for a while they were kind of exotic. they were gorgeous and they were exotic. and then when they said to me things, then absolutely couldn't -- >> make us look bad. >> and, of course, a lot of them -- [inaudible] they started slamming victoria. victoria wrote a column called tit for tat, and she said she's going to really nail all these people come and she said, sent them improve sheet saying if you don't let off me this is proof. that absolutely infuriated susan b. anthony. then she became very strong inner movement in her run for the presidency. she came in one of those meetings. they came to the surface so fast, the newspaper was calling woodhull women instead of the other, you know. so she was very determined to take over. she jumps up and races up and says her speech and tells everybody to come over to her club, to be with her and nominate her. and so susan b. anthony said you're out of order, they were screaming and yelling, but victoria left the room and should all those people in the. they were screaming back and forth. and then susan b. anthony sits back. she goes outside to a workman and has msha all the gas lights. and then from then they did not speak to each other. they were also very good about corruption. all the capitalist newspapers, all of them were mostly, they went against all of the big guns. the fact that the kind of recklessly said this is where we are going with what was fascinated me spent other than the revelation -- [inaudible] you seem to have a lot of fun writing this book. >> i loved the research. did it all and say now what am i going to do with it? i ended up splitting one chapter into to you, and all that. but i really felt it was fun. >> they are here to stay. >> they are. i think now is their time. >> do you have a movie deal yet? >> we are working on it. [applause] >> never count on anything in telepath and. anybody else? >> thank you very much, mira. [applause] >> you can purchase a book and will have assigned for you. another thing about our live stream is that they're all archived. you can go to books and books website and see any event we have broadcast in the store, it will be saved there to watch for your convenience. those of you here in the house, we have books for sale at the counter over there. myra will be signing books over here. that was a wonderful presentation. let's give her a warm hand. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> but if we don't step up the enforcement side, i think, the enforcement side brings immediate attention. i mean, so if we're going to see the only thing we can rely on to make these universities and colleges do what they should be doing is for them to get a bad story. first of all that's a lot of victims spent yes. >> you know, that to me would be a depressing conclusion. so we've got to figure out some way to up the ante that is short of waiting for another tragedy to hit the front pages. >> i would almost say more folks with the department of ed to do the work, a 13 team person can't do it. so again i think the changes i've seen, changes i've seen, institution certainly are when they're immediately under investigation. we don't know if the fine is 35,000 or upwards of a million. so i would almost rather see kind of that investment in bigger teams. >> in all fairness the fines will be paying for this. we have an issue with budget in a government. where does that money come from a? income from institutions that have done wrong, they can fund their own enforcement. i think that's justice and i think every survivor would back that up. >> center claire mccaskill and the first of several discussions on combating rape and sexual assault on college campuses. this morning at 10 eastern. and on booktv, lynne cheney, the wife of former vice president dick cheney examines the political philosophy and presidential tenure of james madison sunday morning at 11 on c-span2. and on american history tv at 10 eastern the life and work of american red cross founder clara barton. we will visit our missing soldiers office in washington followed by your questions and comments live. >> for the next one hour on booktv, alex beam recalls the assassination of mormon church founder joseph smith in a jail and carthage, illinois, on june 27, 1844. >> thank you. is everyone okay for listening? a little louder? okay. it's so nice to see some faces you. i'm actually returning to my hometown. i was born in george washington hospital, and it's lovely to be back in washington. i wanted to especially thank the two owners of politics and prose. i'm so happy i lost that bet. it was strategic because now he is repaying me with an appearance at this famous bookstore. i know br

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