Free Love In Sandusky, Ohio 1858

 

Victoria Woodhull as drawn by Thomas Nast, America's first political cartoonist.  Woodhull ran for president in 1872 on a platform we would call women's rights, or human rights.  The virtuous young woman in the background bending under the burden of children and a drunkard husband is saying, "I 'd rather travel the hardest path of matrimony than follow your Fornication." 

 

    “Do you think your generation invented sex?” my 80 year old grandmother asked when I was in my twenties.  I nearly ran her Oldsmobile off the road.  At the time I was sure I had seen undiscovered vistas with the enthusiastic co operation of fellow explorers.  Much older now, I realize my grandparents did not invent sex in the 1920s either. 

    Whoever invented it—and there have been a number of claimants—“free love” or “open marriage,” communes have blessed modern Americans with microwaves and table settings.  

    And you thought it just produced babies and Democrats.

     Amana and Oneida were two of the early “free love” communities.  Like most utopian communes, they started off agriculturally based. The further West one went, there was more open land and less regulation. With the rise of industry in the 19^th century, these communes shifted their sources of income to manufacturing.  Eventually, these communes dissolved, and their industries and products were sold off to large corporations. 

    Ante Bellum America was an ideal breeding ground (pardon the pun) for utopian communes of all sorts. Strict public morals and religious fervor forced people with a different outlook to seek out the like-minded.  Any community allowing women to have a say in whom they should marry, what work they should pursue, values they should hold, or even having a libido was suspect. Women’s rights were so restricted that any group advocating what we would now view as common sense human rights was branded a "free love" community. 

   Berlin Heights is an area of Sandusky, Ohio

Free Love in Berlin Heights!

1855

Pugnacious “Reformers”

The Free Lovers Refuse to Leave Berlin Heights

We published a day or two ago a statement from an Ohio paper, to the effect that the peaceable citizens of Berlin Heights proposed to get rid of the free-love community in that place by purchasing their property at a fair valuation. The offer has been made but the offensive people will not go. Mrs. Cora Barry, editor of that blasphemous sheet the “Age of Freedom,” gives vent to the feelings of the free-lovers in the following independent style:

            Born in Berlin, I consider myself “naturalized;” feel I have the privileges of a ‘native American,’ and I expect to remain  here. Thinking as I must on all subjects; acting as my highest convictions impel me on all occasions: advocating such faith and such life as is good to me always, I expect I shall remain.  Rejecting all religious dogmas; repudiating all arbitrary marriage bonds; believing in no government save the ever acting laws of all being, I shall utter my thoughts as I am moved and shall utter it here. Scorning that purity manufactured by legal force; despising that virtue based only on the opinion of the world; the truth I feel shall not be stifled in my soul anywhere on God’s earth.

            Advocating the sublimest trueness to the Christ within, my life shall alone listens to the deep voice of the Infinite coming to me from the bleeding heart of Humanity—the aching pulses of my myriad sisters whose anguished prayer of old, is, “What shall we do to be saved?” and oh! From the million innocent, and unmasked child-souls who are only born to a Heritage of sin; all biding me ‘cry aloud and spare not’ the deep truths so clearly shown me.

            Holding all days alike holy, I would do only good and beautiful deeds at any time, and the Bible Sabbath or Christian Sunday ; like every day of my life, shall be devoted to whatever of work, or study, or music, or preaching, or dancing, my own judgement says will be most productive of health in my body and soul; and this I shall do in Berlin as I have always done—'David danced before the Lord’—and I believe it quite innocent as any act of his life; and dancing between the hours of intellectual and religious exercises, on Sunday or any other day, will be part of all whole and consistent worship.

            “Seeing clearly that woman as well as man, has the natural right to the fullest action of all the faculties and passions of the soul, that she must be self-owned and self-whole: that her womanhood and her maternal relations should be sacredly held in her own hands, I bid her keep herself—never become a slave—never yield to the mercenary obligations of the marriage bond—but accept the truest life upwelling in her own soul, letting a wise lovingness be ever the only parent that shall give her a child; and despite threats, despite churches and priesthood, despite the howling of the rabble and the unlawful persecutions of legalized power, despite the misrepresentations and calumny, and abuse and vilification, this truth will I proclaim from my native hill-tops, and send it reverberating through the valleys where my childhood wandered. I shall sit among the orchard blooms that draped my cradle; they shall give fragrance to my life, and shroud my grave with rose hued mantle; and yet that life shall be lived unfettered—that grave no coward’s tomb. The scented slopes, where my childhood’s winged hours went by, and still to give their sweetness and sunshine to my riper years; and the mother’s love, and the father’s smile are still to be mine for the faith they have in their child; and yet more for supreme faith in truth; and ever shall my pen go on in its work, ever shall I utter this thought of freedom, ever shall I live the life that I feel most true and ever must it be where my own soul chooseth its resting spot and its home.”

Below

An afternoon at the Oneida Community.  Notice, all the women are wearing "pants,"

    The ideas of socialism and communism predated Karl Marx' writing.  

    The major advocates of women's rights initially were men.  The utopian communities they founded whether based on some miracle cure such as "hydrotherapy" or "Labor exchange," all advocated much more independence for women than was allowed by law or custom at the time. 

    After a good roll in the hay, Joseph Noyes, founder of the Oneida community, once asked his favorite bedmate, his niece, to look into German literature to discover "who had introduced atheism into Bible Communism." 

    The Mormons' advocacy of polygamy inspired such outrage the Republican party was partly founded upon fighting it.  The first four Republican presidential platforms vowed to "fight the twin barbarisms of polygamy and slavery." 

    I'll add some more entries on early communes next week.