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Comstock, Reconstruction Politics, and Moral Surveillance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2025

Andrew Wender Cohen
Andrew Wender Cohen*
Affiliation:
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
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Extract

It is best to think of Anthony Comstock’s campaign against vice as a response to Reconstruction that afflicted the nation long after that period was over. Comstock’s rise in the 1870s was not organic; it was backed by wealthy patrons engaged in intense political fighting over issues such as racial equality, taxation, and democracy. And although Comstock began by arresting vendors of so-called obscene goods, he soon expanded his portfolio, pursuing folks of every race and gender engaged in erotic, profane, or blasphemous correspondence. Interfering in personal conversations proved controversial, resulting in attempts by courts and postmasters to restrain Comstock’s authority, but he, nevertheless, prosecuted countless letter writers. The law that bore his name resulted in federal involvement in private correspondence well into the twentieth century.

Type
Review Article
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , October 2024 , pp. 438 - 444
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE)

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References

Notes

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4 Foster, Moral Reconstruction, 31, 51–54. “Temperance Meeting,” Brooklyn Eagle, Jan. 27, 1869; “Temperance,” Brooklyn Eagle, Jan. 20, 1871; “Raid on Obscene Literature,” New York Herald, Mar. 4, 1872; “Virtue Triumphant,” New York World, Mar. 16, 1872; “The Two Comstocks,” New York Telegram, Mar. 20, 1872; “A Large Seizure,” Brooklyn Union, Apr. 5, 1872; “One Man Power,” Christian Weekly (New York), Nov. 9, 1872.

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11 Before the Woodhull arrest, the Brooklyn Eagle declared it had “never heard of Comstock.” “A False Witness,” Brooklyn Eagle, Nov. 23, 1872; “The Plymouth Scandal,” New York Telegram, Oct. 30, 1872; “The Courts,” New York Herald, Nov. 3, 1872; Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz, Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Vintage, 2003), 342–58Google Scholar; Faulkner, Unfaithful, 143–46; Barbara Goldsmith, Other Powers (New York, Knopf, 1998), 211–12, 287–323; Frisken, Amanda, Victoria Woodhull’s Sexual Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 9Google Scholar; Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (New York: Random House, 2007), 419.

12 Cohen, Contraband, 123–25, 188; Phelps, Dodge and Company [David A. Wells], Our Revenue System: History of the Proceedings in the Case of Phelps, Dodge & Co. (New York: Martin’s, 1873); Butler, Benjamin, The Necessity of Rewards for the Detection of Crime (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1874)Google Scholar; David A. Wells, Congress and Phelps, Dodge & Co.: An Extraordinary History (New York: n.p., 1875), 8–9.

13 Burrows, Edwin G. and Wallace, Mike, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1016 Google Scholar.

14 “An Impudent Official,” Troy (New York) Weekly Times, July 12, 1873.

15 “Postal Regulations,” New York Tribune, June 30, 1873, 1; “An Impudent Official,” Troy (New York) Weekly Times, July 12, 1873.

16 In 1875, there were arrests in other postal districts, including a Black man who sent an unwanted proposal to a white woman, which almost resulted in his lynching. “A Rascally Negro,” Rochester Union and Advertiser, June 17, 1875; “This Morning,” Utica (New York) Daily Observer, Mar. 17, 1875. A fifteen-year-old boy was jailed for sending obscene post cards, which could be read because they were not sealed. “Express Laconics,” New York Express, Dec. 4, 1875; “United States Criminal Court,” New York Commercial Advertiser, Jan. 29, 1876.

17 “Washington Notes and Gossip,” Philadelphia Press, Feb. 11, 1876; “The Catskill Scandal” Windham (New York) Journal, May 18, 1876; “A Merciless Woman,” Windham (New York) Journal, Oct. 19, 1876; “Doings in the County,” Windham (New York) Journal, Jan. 11, 1877; “Dr. Calvin A. Wetmore,” New York Tribune, Jan. 13, 1908.

18 “Anthony Comstock and the Opening of Letters,” New York Sun, Jan. 14, 1877; “News Notes,” Rochester Evening Express, Jan. 20, 1877.

19 Ex parte Jackson, 96 U.S. 727, 733–34 (1878); “The Suppression of Vice,” New York Times, Jan. 30, 1879.

20 “Arrest of Anthony Comstock,” Port Jervis (New York) Gazette, Nov. 13, 1879; “Those Anonymous Letters,” New York Sun, Feb. 14, 1880; “Those Anonymous Letters,” New York Sun, Mar. 7, 1880, 5; “President Williams Discharged,” Newtown (New York) Register, Apr. 29, 1880; “The Williams Case,” Brooklyn Eagle, Mar. 22, 1880; “Tony Comstock Indicted,” New York Truth, Apr. 14, 1881.

21 “The Williams Case,” Brooklyn Eagle, Mar. 22, 1880; “A Sharp Reply,” Brooklyn Eagle, Feb. 6, 1884; “Comstock Indicted,” Worthington (Minnesota) Advance, Apr. 21, 1881.

22 “To Annoy Her Husband,” New York Herald, Mar. 14, 1883; “Two Too Ardent Lovers,” Trenton (New Jersey) Evening Times, Dec. 7, 1888; “Minnie Irving,” Eastern State Journal (White Plains, New York), Dec. 15, 1888; “Insulted the Tarrytown Poetess,” Syracuse Daily Standard, Jan. 5, 1889; “Minor Crimes and Casualties,” Buffalo Morning Express, Mar. 31, 1892; “A Base Deceiver,” Wilmington (Delaware) Evening Journal, Jan. 21, 1889; “The Story of Her Life,” New York Graphic, Feb. 22, 1882.

23 “Obscene Letters,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Apr. 9, 1887; “Important Decision by Judge Morris,” Baltimore Sun, May 28, 1889; “United States District Court,” Baltimore Sun, May 28, 1889; “United States Court,” Buffalo Courier, Nov. 22, 1894; “Real Celestial is King of Buffalo’s Chinatown,” Buffalo Courier, Oct. 19, 1902.

24 Historians have noted the tension between laws requiring individual morality and more systemic social reforms. See Gwendolyn Mink, The Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917–1942 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Self, Robert O., All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy since the 1960s (New York: Hill & Wang, 2012)Google Scholar; Kruse, Kevin M., One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2016)Google Scholar; Hinton, Elizabeth, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.