[laughter] myra macpherson: i used to hate public speaking, and i would get anxiety, and i still do, but i was at a speech and a woman was in the front row and she was smiling, so i found myself playing to her. all of you remember jack, my wonderful jack gordon, and he would say it all matters about the 95% and who the hell cares about the other 5%? so i was focusing on this woman and finally i got so angry at the end of this q&a and i was wondering what her problem was and so i asked the woman next to her, and she said, oh, she is him germany -- from germany she doesn't understand a word you are saying. so i wanted to focus on these sisters, because they were incredible female lecturers of their time. but at the beginning, they both almost fainted when they first started to speak, and i thought maybe this is an interesting story. maybe they developed this amazing skill without anything behind this and it is just one little person on a huge stage and when tennie the youngest, was a 64, she sold out a huge hall, so they were really an amazing duo -- was 64, she sold aout a huge hall, so they were really an amazing duo. i wanted to focus on the relationship between a white woman and a african-american male i.e., president obama and hillary clinton, and when victoria woodhull ran on this remote third-party ticket with frederick douglass, a former slave, i thought, i have to find out more about that, and i found out more about her younger sister, tennie, and she was just totally -- she was just like an untamed colt. everything she did was just out there, very fast. anyway, so when she ran for president, tennie ran for congress, and their argument was that nothing in the constitution said there was anything against a woman a running for office and this was years before the women had gotten the right to vote, and this was before the board room and the classroom and the battlefield, and tennie claflin became the first woman who was in charge of the new york regiment of troops. so before i get into how they were similar, i want to talk about who they were, because this is when women had no power women could not leave a marriage -- leave marriages if they wanted to and they were stratified in terms of the upper class, middle class, and lower-class, and they came from the trashiest background possible, their father was a con artist, a snake oil salesman. he was selling fake fortunes, 13 hours at a stretch and they both just climbed out of this horrible background and this terrible family situation, and they decided they wanted to have power and they wanted to have freedom, and they just pursued it with the kind of pursuit that very few people, and certainly women, would have been able to, and they were very beautiful, and great self promoters. the first thing they had to know was get known before they became -- before they ran for congress. they were bankrolled and this would not happen again for another 100 years, they were bankrolled by cornelius vanderbilt, the richest man in america, who was known to be the lover of tennie, and at least all the books say that, and i don't want to abuse anybody by saying that, but i think it was a good idea, but a got to him because they believed in a spiritualism, and they were clairvoyants and they believed in a genuine force in what they could do, and they kept convincing him that they were talking to his long on dead mother. i don't know -- long-lost den mother. i don't know if that happened actually. [laughter] myra macpherson: they came in, they dressed alike, even though they were seven years apart, the even had to gold -- two gold pens behind each ear they cut their hair short, they were just audacious in everything they did. victoria became the first woman ever to address congress, and it was over the vote, and she was trying to prove that because the constitution said that citizens and people -- and because nowhere in the 14th amendment did it ever say male --and that was kind of the throwaway in the 14th amendment, in the second article, and it was to make sure that no african-american women could vote, and that was really the reason for it, so up until then, there had not been anything. so she went to speak before congress, almost dancing, they said, and gave this really in normal sleep -- really enormously intelligent speech, and all the congressman shot it down. and when she was talking to one of them, she said, i am a citizen, and he said, madam, you are not a citizen, and she said what am i? and he said, you are a woman. [laughter] myra macpherson: and for the next 50 years, whatever kind of citizen women were, they could not get the vote. and then they started a radical newspaper and became fiery lecturers shocking audiences of up to 6000 on their views on a divorce and prostitution and financial and political corruption, sex, marriage, and then they decided to approach women who married -- and then they decided that women who marry for money were practicing legalized prostitution. in fact, they knew how to reshape a story, "the new york times" wrote a blistering view of them, and it said, we can't believe how many women like this could be in one family. [laughter] myra macpherson: i mean, we could all take lessons from them. they joined the first and only women -- they were the first and only women to join a crawl marks international working women association -- carl marx international working women association. and then they made their aversion -- their version of the rainbow coalition. many people who thought they were great at first just threw a fit and the sisters said, he is as nothing but a fallen desperate -- despot. [laughter] myra macpherson: they actually promoted the most about racial equality since the abolition movement, the first was frederick douglass. as i said, above all, they railed against the taurean hypocrisy, and they were free lovers, that means anything from just wanting to reform these horrible divorce laws to having the choice, believe it or not of having the choice of someone that you wanted to marry and having the choice of wanting to have children, and that was considered absolutely impossible in those days, and then finally, they blew the whistle on the head reward beecher -- henry ward beecher affair. they just blasted him in print and they also accused a man of having raped a virgin in their weekly, and they got thrown into prison for obscenity by a man named comstock, who was a horrible man, he was anthony comstock he was everywhere medical books, drawing in illegal books, we are talking about a really sick guy, but he did great damage because he became famous over the sisters until the middle of the 1920's. the comstock law was very repressive about the first amendment, and about the best books and poetry and george bernard shaw, and he was also against contraception completely, and he drove margaret sanger out of the country. so he was a very vicious man, and he not only threw them into prison but he left them in there for a whole month, they were left there without any possibility of having a trial or anything, and we are not talking about a nice prison or anything. then there are those who made fun of him, and there was a wonderful cartoon of comstock standing with this woman speaking before a judge, and comstock saying, well, your honor, this woman just gave birth to a naked baby. [laughter] myra macpherson: and i wanted to read a few things that the women said in their own voice. they had these -- i have 47 sets of characters, and i divide it into acts rather than parts because their life was rather like hydrometer -- high drama. they met everyone from president to future kings to henry ward each are and harriet beecher stowe -- henry ward beecher and harriet beecher stowe. and henry james wrote a book called "the siege of london" and they met him and so these were outrageous women in a time when outrage was right there for the men, i mean, we are talking about the robber baron era. i am not good to go into it all here, but i go into life and times and how interesting it was . the fifth avenue hotel had a vertical railway going through every floor, and it was an elevator, and all of these guys would come to fleece everybody else and flees each other -- fleece each other on wall street and there was this one guy, daniel drew, and he -- the story is, once, when he was a cattle drover leading all of his cattle, and he told all of his people to just give them a lot of salt, give them a lot of salt, and then he said give them lots of water, give them lots of water, they drank all of the water, and that rose the weight of the price that you got, and that was the beginning of the phrase "watered stock." he also has a line about he who steals what isn't his pays it back or goes to prison. but the sisters, i think the only way you are going to get a sense is if i give you a little bit of their -- of what they said. with her piercing blue eyes victoria observed life at the willard hotel in washington watching all of the comings and goings of the lobbyists from congress. and have you heard the old story that it is said that grant made it up, he was walking through the lobby of a hotel, the willard, and all of these people were coming up and beseeching him, and he said, oh, these damn lobbyists! she later shocked audiences with her observations. where is prostitution in its greatest luxury? washington. everybody knows that the third house congress, consists of the lobbyists who are there to obtain legislation to push this or that legislation. there are 10, 15, and even --$10,000, $15,000, or even $20,000 to influence senators. it is only the best man in the country who influences the house of prostitution. [laughter] myra macpherson: and then they were totally on this concept of the lies and the double standards. as i say, underneath the victorian cloak of unctuous morality was everywhere, except in the marriage bed. marriage, she said, is a licensed to behave sexually, yet this eventually he feeds the original object, it is a common experience among the married couples who live together that they are sexually estranged. she would say this all over the country, and people would gasp and blue and everything -- and boo and everything. and they both decried the economic dependency of women a century and a half before date rape and domestic violence were coined, they talked about domestic abuse. night after night, there are thousands of rapes undercover in this accursed license, and millions, and yes, i say it boldly, millions of poor, heartbroken, suffering wives must be administered to the insatiable lecherous attitude of their husbands. nothing except marriage invests man with the right to do bosh women sexually against their will. and tennie did the whole double standard routine constantly. she said, now i say, the poor prostitutes suffering for bread and naked from clothing sells herself for a few hours to obtain dollars and thus is the same in life as the young maiden . this prostitute is an angel, and this is compared to the rich woman, who would sell herself for thousands of dollars. well it is public opinion that the prostitute be kicked from the doorstep while they unmarried girl be turned from her father's home, and the designing woman be married and become a worshiped belle of new york. the thing that is quite amazing is when you start looking at what they said back then and what is still going on today, as i mentioned, people pay for equal work, there are just so many, like, for example, this one. excuse me. society should leave the love affairs of a community to regulate themselves instead of trusting to legislation to regulate them. and i said, this is not the modern supreme court in 2013 this is woodhull in the 1800s. she also mentioned that it is fair for a woman to make them of searching examination of her sexuality, and again, this is not a contemporary woman speaking of disparaging treatment of women who try to speak out against somebody who had raped them, and it actually is one of the reasons that the kind of fear that was happening and she mentions 54% of rape happening, and again, this is mentioned by her in the 1820's, and it goes on and on and on. this is just amazing the things that they fought for 144 years ago and now we fight the battle for today. it is just so many areas, i must say. i must let you all ask you some questions, if you have any? [applause] myra macpherson: i forgot to tell you, there is a great fact, but i am going to make you read the book, as they went from rags to riches and back to rags everybody forsake them, but one that really bought the freelove passage, because she wanted to elope with her brother-in-law and this was before she was forced into a marriage that was loveless, and she was there at the time, but actually went to prison, and of course, the press did everything it could to ruin them. i was lucky to find some personal letters between the sisters later in life, because they were always not oblivious. they fought like men. they believe that women's rules were men's rules. they lied incessantly they made up themselves, they reinvented who they were, they just told another story when it worked and then they kept on going, but in their letters, there is a very personal sense of sadness or at least a sense that they had been persecuted for what they had stood for. they were pioneers, i am sure. >> [indiscernible] -- all their lives? myra macpherson: yes, they were symbiotic, when victoria left, tennie was seven or eight, she left to get married, and tennie was about seven or so and always felt lost, and she felt that she would tell the story about this incredibly dramatic trial for the family and their crazy mother. this same at mother threatened them and told them that victoria's husband was keeping victoria from her and they had been blackmailed by their own family, this crazy, trashy family. this was people that had supported them, so they were almost ruined by this family over and over, but tennie said that she would always be grateful to her sister for getting her out of the horrible life and giving her life and they were together for a very long time, and even in the 20's . >> was victoria basically put into an arranged marriage when she was young? myra macpherson: one of the things that i can say in the beginning is that everything a morass of speculation intrigue, some fact, a lot of rumors. she wrote a biography when she was 31, and in it, she trashes her family terribly, but there were times when they were ruining men, and we don't know how much of that was real or not. anyway, one man's wife was the one who had the affair with henry ward beecher. he was a wonderful free lover until he became cuckolded. [laughter] myra macpherson: it was like hey, this is an fair -- this isn't fair. i read the transcripts, and these stories written at the time and i think these just nail him. in fact, victoria used to say he preaches to 16 of his mistresses every sunday. [laughter] myra macpherson: yeah. >> why do think they have been sort of forgotten by history? myra macpherson: i think that is an amazing question, and when i look at all the newspapers at the time, there was truly a paparazzi time, and they had cartoons and the guerra types -- deguerrotypes, and they call the victoria and tennie and they did not use any last name, including over in europe, and what happened was that they were just simply written out of the history of women. this huge tome that was written in 1882, which was a historic book, it wrote them out but they were so far ahead of everybody else and so highly charged with these sexual concepts, it was just ignored, and i think for a long time, there would be books that were written, but the first book that was written about women was in -- these women wereas in 1927. most of the book concentrated on victoria, but that book is full of lies and like i said, they used verbatim content and created a biographical sketch, but remember it read it with a grain of salt, and that book was copied by a lot of people. and then the women's movement in the 1970's, they started writing about them, and that is when they were discovered again. the time is now. they were ahead of their time, and they absolutely have to speak to another generation. >> so how did you begin your research into them? you started reading their letters? myra macpherson: the answer is torturous. [laughter] myra macpherson: well, i started out like a lot of people do, i look at the books that had been written and where their sources came from and you find those sources, and you don't want to take from the book, you want to find the original sources. and then i found these letters in carbondale, illinois, and then i found other sources, and i had an absolutely wonderful researcher. he was adopted in japan and the day that i got my cell phone which he had sent me and 1872 article via pdf, and it looked exactly like it had in 1872, and the weekly that they had was not digitized, a lot of the stuff was not digitized and there was this birth of change and the internet made it possible to find the originals, so i went back to all of the original newspapers myself. i wanted to look at it myself, i didn't want to take it from somebody else. and that i had a lucky trip of going to portugal and england to find out, all right, i will tell you what happened. [laughter] myra macpherson: i kind of felt bad, anyways they went to england, and they married to of the richest men in england. [laughter] myra macpherson: one of them sir francis the lady cook so one of them was known as the lady cook for the rest of her life, so she used her money and publicity to go all over the world to preach women suffrage -- women's suffrage, and she did that until her dying days. victoria, on the other hand, she was an erratic personality but had extraordinary poise, but victoria looked like, she was named for the queen, and she would act like it, and tennie would come in and just jostle around and say, i love the press, i love the media, and they are the salt of the earth. [laughter] myra macpherson: they were into monaco's -- in demaemonaco's, which was a very fancy restaurant in new york and the owner came up and said, you girls know the rules, you girls get come in here without an escort. so she said, ok, she without i got there carriagemen, drag the mm in. she had a little spark of her that i liked. -- spark in her that i liked. >> can you draw their activism to accepting change, where they could say, we did this? myra macpherson: i don't think you could say in their lifetimes, but for example there are some women who say that they wrecked the suffrage movement, but they did not rocket -- wreck it. they would get into huge fights, and they had a huge fallout in 69 -- '69, so at the time, when they profess what they said to congress they wanted to speak to a large number of women who didn't vote, as test cases, so they were integral in that, but what really i think happened is that they were considered hearlds --heaeralds they were the heralds of the movement. from then on, it was just a gradual thing. there was [indiscernible] so, not in their lifetime, well sort of, because it was inside of 1927 and 19208. but hey, i bet everyone in this room can tell a story about women suffering, mitch mcconnell referred to a woman as an empty dress and i think the funny thing is that wendy davis was trashed for being not trailer trash enough. [laughter] myra macpherson: it is really something. anymore questions -- any more questions? >> were women ultimately rejected by women that historically i revere -- i noticed that there were women who were ultimately rejected by women that historically i revere. myra macpherson: because all of those women were middle-class, they were not upper-class, and the movement was a minority. they fought the same kind of things that we fought and things that continue, like these religious groups that come up. one of the beecher sisters was against women's writes totally -- women's rights, and she came from an educated background. [indiscernible] when they said too many things -- >> that will make us look bad. myra macpherson: yes, and a lot of women were in bed marriages themselves. that vittorio wrote a column called "tit-for-tat." she was going to rail on all of these people -- and then victoria wrote a column called "tit-for-tat." she was going to rail on all of these people, and she came into a meeting -- they came to the service so fast that within four months, newspapers were calling them woodhull women, so she was very determined to take over. she gave a speech, telling everybody to come over to her place to be with her and nominate her right? and then the judges said, you're out of order, and victoria had stacked the room because she had all of these people in there and they were going back and forth and then susan b anthony sits back and hires a workman and have him shot off all of the gas lights. so then victoria is standing in the dark on the stage, and from that point, they would not speak to each other. they were also very good about corruption. they were talking about robber barons and wrote about it. all of the newspapers were run by robber barons, and they were trashed by them. the beecher dynasty was enormous. that is what fascinated me. >> other than the revelations that they wanted sex in the 19th century, you seem to have a lot of fun in this talk -- book. myra macpherson: yes i ended up splitting a one chapter into group and all of that -- one chapter into two and all of that but -- >> they are here to stay. do they have a movie deal yet? myra macpherson: we are working on it. [applause] myra macpherson: anybody else? know? -- no? well, thank you! host: thank you very much, and if you want to put your number on the screen, she will send the book to you, sign, and it will be shipped to you for no charge, and you can go to the live streaming link and any events that we broadcast from here in the store will be saved there to watch at your convenience, and so for those of you in the house, we have those books for sale on the counter over there and that was such a wonderful presentation let's please give her another hand. [applause] announcer 1: on "history bookshelf," you can tune in on saturday at 4:00 p.m. eastern. you're watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. announcer 2: each week, "reel america" brings you videos from america. "two down and one to go!" aired in 1945. posted by general george marshall, the film describes in details the plan to defeat japan and who can be released and sent home and who needs to stay on for the continuing fight in the pacific. ♪ [crowds cheering] general george marshall: now that the united nations has delivered europe to the united states to foes -- two foes have been defeated, and i salute the members of the armed forces of the united states, throughout the african and european campaigns. we have a one of the battle of europe -- announcer: we have won the battle of europe, but the war cannot be won until japan and malaysia are defeated. japan is committed to 100 years of war and sacrifice, if necessary. >> we are prepared to lose 10 million lives in our war with america. announcer: in japan, world of a nation is planned for today. a japan whose home front is united behind the enemy's war efforts. now, together with our allies, -- general george marshall: now together with herour allies will defeat this enemy, and we can do this in and out of uniform. it is a plain fact that we would not have won this war until japan is completely crushed. announcer: two down and one to go. announcer 1: in 1945, 70 years ago, allied forces liberated the not the concentration camps. we will hear holocaust stories from those who live them -- lived them. this is part of the united states holocaust memorial museum in washington, d.c. in this interview, kurt klein:

Related Keywords

United States , New York , Malaysia , Japan , Tennessee , Germany , Carbondale , Illinois , Florida , Willard Hotel , District Of Columbia , Portugal , Washington , London , City Of , United Kingdom , Monaco , America , American , George Marshall , Frederick Douglass , Margaret Sanger , Carl Marx , Kurt Klein , Cornelius Vanderbilt , Wendy Davis , Harriet Beecher Stowe Henry , Harriet Beecher Stowe , Jack Gordon , Anthony Comstock , Mitch Mcconnell , Beecher Henry , Henry James , George Bernard Shaw , Myra Macpherson , Hillary Clinton ,