Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt

Interesting book review of this biography, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aiQs1Hd3d30I&refer=home

A towering figure who's involvment with Spiritualism came through Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee (or, "Tennie C.") Claflin. The Commodore became infatuated by Tenny C after receiving healing from her. He proceeded to bankroll the endeavours of the sisters and finance their newspaper Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly. Woodhull was a champion of Free Love, Feminism and perchance a Spiritualist (well maybe). I will write a seperate article about this which I am researching. Suffice to say that she became President of the American Association of Spiritualists (AAS). As events transpired her platform including those two elements and communism split the Association. She also lost the patronage of the Commodore by translating and printing Marx's Communist Manifesto equally the Free Love platform saw Horace Greeley withdraw his support of Spiritulaism (remarkably he had employed Marx and Engels as Foreign Correspondent at his paper the New York Tribune) of course Woodhull also stood against him in the Presidential race of 1874 which they bothe lost.

There is an argument that it was Woodhulls behaviour which inspired the US obscenity laws as she was the bete noir of their architect Anthony Comstock. Oh well all in good time its a boisterous story which delayed the effective formation of a coherent National Spiritualists body in the USA by another 20 years