Notes from my Knapsack 3-12-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 3-12-2026
Jeff Gill

Victoria Woodhull, apostle of free love (or was she?)
___


In 1876, Victoria Woodhull in one of her last public statements on marriage in the U.S., before moving to Great Britain in 1877 (where she would live until her death in 1927):

"I mean by marriage, in this connection, any forced or obligatory tie between the sexes, any legal intervention or constraint to prevent people from adjusting their love relations precisely as they do their religious affairs in this country, in complete personal freedom; changing and improving them from time to time, and according to circumstances."

Allowing for some Victorian turns of phrase here, that's not a controversial statement in 2026. Some scholars even see it, in 1876, as a retreat from her more controversial earlier speech of 1871, where before a packed house in New York City, in response to a shouted accusation from the crowd, she said "Yes, I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere."

The latter statement, and the interpretation usually placed it, has defined Victoria Woodhull for generations. She's been called "the apostle of free love" and been adopted as a sort of mascot for all sorts of movements around sexual liberation. Her later comments modifying and limiting her intention are often dismissed as late in life prudery and a retreat from a former bold stance.

But I have come to believe that there is, for her time, an even bolder interpretation to put on her words in and just after 1871, which is in line with her later assertions against promiscuity, and in favor of marriage and commitment. It is present in her many recorded speeches from the late 1860s almost to the end of her life, though it has to be said that much of her rhetoric in the Twentieth Century leaned into the then-new eugenics movement. But her original theme is a bit disguised, again thanks to the euphemisms of her era which was indeed called "Victorian." To find it, let's look at some other eminent Victorians whose lives made me realize what our Victoria was trying to say.

Noted newspaper editor Horace Greeley ("Go west, young man") infamously had a tempestuous relationship with Mary Cheney, they were married in 1836: Wikipedia sums up by telling us their "marriage was not a happy one, and [that he] avoided his wife and their house. However, he kept her almost constantly pregnant." They had seven children and an unknown number of miscarriages. Not to be crude, but he could not have "avoided his wife" entirely, could he?

By way of comparison, in England the author Charles Dickens married Catherine Hogarth, also in 1836; in the next fifteen years they would have ten children and at least two miscarriages. Though she was for that era a well-educated woman and an author herself, it was recorded that he said had "contempt" for her intellect, and called her housekeeping "incompetent." Yet there were at least a dozen pregnancies over fifteen years?

What I'm saying is that the skeleton key to Victoria Woodhull's social teaching was something even she could barely bring herself to say straight out: she was arguing a woman had the right to say no, even to her husband. And her audiences in general knew that was what she was saying. For this assertion, this right to say "no," she became known as "Notorious Victoria."


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a fourth and final installment coming later this month. Tell him what you think about our Victoria at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 3-6-2026

Faith Works 3-6-2026
Jeff Gill

Faith and citizenship in America 250
___


When we look back to the years around 1776, which we mark this year with the America 250 celebrations marking the passage of the Declaration of Independence, distance can tend to flatten some of the differences which are more obvious in the historical record.

We are in the middle of another Middle East conflict in 2026, in opposition to a country with a state religion. But it's worth recalling that the United States isn't in opposition to Islam itself. From the Founders themselves, religious pluralism is part of our model for representative democracy, going back to John Locke, whose political philosophy was so influential on the Declaration.

Thomas Jefferson rephrased a passage from Locke's 1689 "Letter on Toleration" in his personal notebook around 1776, reminding himself that Locke: "…says neither Pagan nor Mahometan [Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion." The precedents Jefferson copied from Locke echo strongly in his Virginia "Statute for Religious Freedom," which says: "(O)ur civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions."

The statute, drafted in 1777, which became law in 1786, inspired the Constitution's "no religious test" clause, and was one of the influences on what would become the First Amendment in the 1789 "Bill of Rights" which the founders quickly added to the 1787 Constitution.

Jefferson wrote in an autobiographical fragment from 1821 about his intentions with the Virginia "Statute for Religious Freedom": "[my] intent had been "to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan [Muslim], the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination."

John Adams mentioned Muhammad favorably in his 1776 book "Thoughts on Government" as a "sober inquirer for truth" along with figures like Socrates and Confucius. He also signed the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797 as president, which states that our new nation had no "enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen [Muslims]."

George Washington's views are even more expansive, if with qualification. A 1784 letter to a business associate about prospective employees for Mount Vernon says: "If they are good workmen, they may be of Assia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans, Jews, or Christian of any Sect—or they may be Athiests…"

Sadly, this is largely about the purchase of skilled tradespeople, more than the hiring of such staff. Washington, like Jefferson, was an enslaver on his properties. Later records with names of people enslaved at Mount Vernon include women's names like Fatima and Nila which strongly suggest Islamic connections, as does the Anglicized name "Sambo" from Sambou, a common name for a second son in Islamic parts of west Africa. Most scholars estimate at least 15% of enslaved Africans brought to the United States were Muslims, so the presence of that faith would have been general, if largely invisible to public records.

Yet Washington, after a visit to Newport, RI in 1790 wrote back to the Touro Synagogue and the anxious Hebrew congregation there these words: "the Government of the United States…gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." And in closing reassurance, he says "May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy."

"To bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance" are words worth holding dear in the American 250th commemoration, as is Washington's love of Micah 4:4, which he cites some 50 times in his personal correspondence.

"But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it."


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he does not have a fig tree, but hopes a shady porch will do. Tell him how you are marking this America 250 year at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.