The Scarlet Sisters (24 page)

Tucker remarked that Tennie had “some intelligence, some force, some humor, and a little education”; her beauty “was of a sensuous nature. I think that the love that she inspired was generally of a sexual nature.”

While her most defiant public gesture was seen by tens of thousands in December 1871—carrying the large red IWA banner for a portion of the parade honoring the martyred French Communards—she made other scandalous news on her own.

In August 1871, soon after Tennie confessed that she wanted to become “chief of something,” she ran for Congress, representing the primarily German American Eighth District, speaking in German to several hundred
members of the German-American Progressive Society. An “attentive and appreciative audience, composed largely of the better class of German citizens with their wives and daughters” and also “many of Miss Claflin’s broker and banker friends,” was there. Even Henry Clews, who had been so disparaging about Tennie, and Jim Fisk lent their support, along with progressive politicians and “reform agitators.” A large lithograph of Tennie decorated the hall, in addition to German and American flags.

Deafening applause greeted the smiling Tennie, who wore a plain black organdy dress with a small print pattern. Her short hair hung loose and bushy about her forehead and temples. Coached by Andrews, the master of languages, Tennie spoke in a clear, strong voice in German. It was a long speech for any politician to finesse in a foreign language. She flattered the crowd, noting that she was “descended from the German stock,” and outlined the “New Departure” argument for women having the right to vote. She then asked if anyone thought “things could go worse in the administration of our national affairs than they now do?” This view in the wake of Grant and Tammany Hall scandals was cheered. Tennie suggested they “try the experiment merely of entrusting a woman with the performance of official duties.” If she failed, they could “retrieve their mistake.”

A beer-drinking cadre shouted, “Bravo,” and applauded her reference to temperance actions and Sunday drinking laws: “just as the religious American has the privilege of going to his church on Sunday, so must the right be equally secure to you to seek your recreation on Sunday… and to drink your glass of lager beer in peace and quietness, so long as you do not disturb the public order.” German admirers followed her home to serenade her at the mansion, complete with a full military band, once more startling staid Murray Hill. Tennie appeared on the balcony, like royalty, thanking them. Nothing more came of her attempt, but she was unstoppable. Her next campaign was to seek the colonelcy of the Ninth Regiment of the National Guard.

Her military bid began with one of the century’s most famous murders. Jim Fisk’s most disastrous move in his checkered life was introducing Edward “Ned” Stokes, a handsome gambler and flashy dresser, to Fisk’s
mistress, Josie Mansfield. Soon they became lovers. When Mansfield proposed that they all three be friends, Fisk replied, “No, Josie, it won’t do. You can’t run two engines on the same track in contrary directions at the same time.” Fights ensued between Stokes and Fisk over their partnership in an oil refinery as well as over Josie. Then Josie and Stokes “decided to extort money from Jim Fisk’s deep pockets.” She demanded a settlement of $25,000 and tried to blackmail him with love letters that might disclose nefarious business deals. Fisk countered, and had Stokes arrested for embezzlement; Josie then had Fisk arrested for libel, Stokes sued Fisk for malicious prosecution, and the press went wild.

Late on a Saturday afternoon, January 6, 1872, Fisk was on his way to meet a friend at the Grand Central Hotel. He started up the broad red-carpeted staircase toward the mezzanine. Standing at the top was Stokes, pistol poised. The life of Jubilee Jim, the exemplar of a financial era marked by capricious fortunes, greed, and corruption, ended on the steps of the hotel. Stokes shot twice, hitting Fisk in his arm and the hard-to-miss abdomen. Fisk crumpled, his crimson-lined cape and diamond stickpins lying in an oozing puddle of blood. He died early the next morning. He was thirty-six.

“Not since the memorable night that Abe Lincoln was shot,” remarked the
Herald
, “was there such excitement throughout the city.” Fisk was a rascal, but he was the people’s rascal. They loved his bonhomie, and his charitable contributions, which included a generous donation to Chicago after the famous 1871 fire. More than twenty-five thousand people jammed Manhattan’s streets for Fisk’s funeral parade, which featured a brass band and members of his Ninth Regiment.

The Reverend Beecher intoned that Fisk was a man “absolutely without moral sense.” This infuriated the sisters. The
Weekly
knocked “the sanctimonious, long-faced, orthodox saint” who would “shriek aloud about the immorality of Fisk… We are no admirers of the vain, vulgar display Fisk made of his wealth. The well-remembered ‘Black Friday’… is doubtless the best instance of his ‘sharp practice’… but he had grand virtues also. It is said that the last act of his life, with his pen, was a generous gift to
the needy and deserving poor.” The paper sent a message to Beecher: God would judge the good in Fisk and punish the follies of the “loudest professing saint on earth.”

Three months later, Tennie published a letter requesting that she be considered for the still-vacant position as colonel of the Ninth Regiment. “There can be no objection to me, save that I am a woman… Joan d’Arc was also a woman. While I do not make pretensions to the same military genius she possessed… it has always been my desire to become actively connected with the service.” While her request would “occasion incredulity… permit me to assure you I am deeply… in earnest.”

The
New York Times
, fresh from exposés that brought down Boss Tweed and his Tammany Hall gang, poked fun at Fisk, who also “finally fell, if not precisely in the front of the battle.” Sarcasm dripped as it editorialized, “There could be found a no fitter successor for the dead Fisk than the living Claflin… Of course no citizen of character and social position would care to wear the metaphorical stars of Col. Fisk.” The sisters cheekily excised the sarcasm and reprinted “there could be no fitting successor” as praise from the
Times
.

Of the two sisters, the
Times
acidly editorialized, “the more erratic and dashing Tennie… cites Joan d’Arc as a reason why she should be elected… we admire Miss Claflin’s logic quite as much as we admire her modesty.” The
Herald
mocked Tennie’s request as a typical publicity stunt: “For two years past two women of the same family have managed in this city to attract—by very gratuitous system of advertising—the attention of all persons to their every word and action.” Papers across the country joked about Tennie’s attempt. One of the illustrations published shows her in a can-can dancer’s corset outfit, stepping into gigantic trousers that the hefty Fisk would wear. Another shows her erratically riding a horse to demonstrate her military ineptitude. All this was nothing compared to the reaction of Tennie’s next jaw-dropping accomplishment. After being turned down by the Ninth, she was named colonel of New York’s Eighty-Fifth, the only black regiment in the state.

Only the New York
Sun
treated Tennie or the regiment with any
respect, possibly because of the smitten editor, Johnny Green. The
Sun
’s owner, urbane Charles A. Dana, who had been a close friend of Lincoln’s, also no doubt favored the coverage. Dana assumed a worldly, cynical air but also produced a liberal paper famous for its style, human interest stories, and proletariat message. Its motto was “The Sun Shines for All.”

The paper published a long and deferential front-page article about the black regiment, remarkable at the time for mainstream papers. No one was lavishing money on these soldiers; due to an unpaid forty-five-dollar gas bill they had inherited from previous tenants, the armory was dimly lit with ten coal oil lamps when Tennie appeared. Accompanied by Colonel Blood and a captain of the regiment, Tennie sat onstage, in a large armchair, wearing a plain black dress with a white frill at the neck and a blue necktie. Woodhull sat in the darkened audience, not wanting to steal her sister’s thunder. Tennie “exhibited a pluck that was truly remarkable. Her bright, beaming eyes wandered about the large room, and here and there she nodded to her friends.”

An officer stated that they had become “tired of inviting colored men and white men to assist them” with no results. It would be an honor to accept Tennie. One captain got to the heart of the matter. “He was willing to be led by a man or woman if either would uniform the regiment.” Great laughter followed. But the senior officer said he would oppose Claflin. Smiling at the audience sweetly, Tennie said she did not mean to oppose his authority. Reminding the audience that the struggle for an eight-hour workday had already led to bloodshed—in 1866, President Grant issued a proclamation for an eight-hour workday, but only for government workers; in reaction, laborers fought bloody battles in strikes and riots well into the twentieth century—Tennie said she was ready to be in the “advance column fighting for that right.”

Tennie knew how to work a room. Applause thundered as she vowed, “I would rather accept the colonelcy of a colored regiment than that of one composed of white men.” The approbation increased to a roar when she added that she could “pick out more white men than blacks who would run from the field of battle.”

As the captain politely insisted that a black should be its leader, Tennie said she would defer to him. Arguments became so vehement that a riot seemed imminent. Tennie tried hard to control herself, but “her beautiful eyes were filled with tears.” In the end she was overwhelmingly chosen as the first and only American white woman to be elected colonel of a black regiment. She already had her uniform and promised that she would outfit the six-hundred-man regiment in grand style.

Predictably, the
New York Times
led the ridicule of Tennie and the black regiment in offensive racist tones. “The colored race has a tropical fondness for brilliant colors and provided Col. Claflin selects a uniform which shall consist largely of red and yellow,” how they are arranged would not be a “matter of much consequence.” She must be prepared to exchange “the cosmetics of the Caucasian woman” for “burnt cork.” Other papers followed suit with more sarcastic references to “burnt cork,” which was used by white actors to don blackface.

African American soldiers had struggled for years and had finally gotten the word
white
erased from the state’s militia code; black companies could now combine into “Tennie’s” regiment, which was poised for incorporation into the National Guard. This historic move represented a potentially major social and political victory for the black community. “The decision to invite Tennessee to assume the high profile post… could not have been taken lightly.” Yes, money for uniforms was important, but Tennie “had earned the respect of New York’s black community through her own actions, through her association with the Yankee International and her participation” as a member in Victoria’s Equal Rights Association, which had nominated Frederick Douglass a few weeks before Tennie’s regimental victory. Due to the chaotic events that followed, which left the sisters nearly destitute, Tennie was never able to provide funding for her regiment and was never commissioned.

The sisters’ direct assault on masculine ego and tradition hit a nerve; furious indignation lay beneath the snide humor directed at these women who audaciously mocked the power that made men feel superior. The
Times
slammed Tennie as unnatural, no longer a woman, mentioning
that she would have to wear the long riding habit of “her ‘former’ sex or adopt the trowsers [
sic
] and saddle of the masculine sex, since nothing is more preposterous than an equestrian fringed about with a five or six-inch skirt.” The New York
Evening Telegram
chortled, “If Miss Tennie would select a mule to ride on, the picture would be more lively and fascinating.”

If her feelings were hurt, Tennie could take solace in box-office receipts as she spoke to packed houses. Even before her astounding dash for the colonelcy of the black regiment, an enormous crowd turned out on March 20, 1872, to hear her speak at the Academy of Music, drawn by her notoriety and a prominent ad in the
Weekly
touting her lecture as the “most searching analysis of present conditions.” The lecture was titled “The Ethics of the Relations of the Sexes: or, Behind the Scenes in Wall Street.” The crush mirrored the mass of people at her sister’s “Impending Revolution” speech a month before. The crushing mob outside, pushing and shoving to enter, reached riot proportions. The sisters were accused by some of selling more tickets than the house capacity.

“A mob of ten thousand persons—rich and poor, high-toned and rough, elegantly-dressed ladies of acknowledged respectability, and loudly attired women, whose opposite standing was equally apparent, bankers, brokers, merchants, hack-drivers, gamblers, pickpockets, bootblacks and every other class of society—pressing, pushing, squeezing, crowding to get into the building to hear Tennie C. Claflin.”

Police rushed in but could not stop the surging crowd that blocked the streets, halting carriages and nervous horses. Ushers were pushed aside by the crowd that overran the house from the orchestra to the topmost gallery. With the house packed, the doors were barred to avoid suffocation. “Such a spectacle is seldom witnessed in this city,” noted a reporter, “and certainly no lecturer, however popular, has ever succeeded in creating such an immense furor.” The mob remained in the streets and pounded on side-door entrances for an hour, furious that tickets had been oversold.

When Tennie walked alone on stage, a wave of “rollicking, rolling, noisy outburst of applause” from men lasted for several minutes, while
baskets of flowers “poured in upon her from every direction.” Tennie, in a simple white dress, eventually got to the advertised subject of her speech, “Behind the Scenes in Wall Street,” but first gave a “rather rambling and sophistical argument,” extolling her “peculiar views,” which condemned marriage “as it now exists.”