Gilded Age need. Gilded Age greed. Corruption and crusades, triumph and tragedy. The cast of real-life characters includes:

William M. “Boss” Tweed who ruled New York City as the Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall, a notorious engine for graft and corruption.

Victoria Woodhull, the scandalizing, energizing leader of the women’s suffrage and equal rights movement, the first female candidate for president, and an advocate for “free love,” seeking to allow complete freedom in love, marriage and reproduction.

Anthony Comstock, the U.S. Postal Inspector who pursued “vice” near maniacally, eventually inspiring the Comstock Act, which made it illegal to send materials promoting the use of contraceptives and abortion.

Madame Restell provided  abortions and contraceptives to the carriage trade.

Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother and at one point the most famous preacher in America.

Charlotte Temple: America’s first best-selling novel, which, according to its author, was a true story of a young naïve girl impregnated and abandoned by a soldier; a gravestone put up ifor her n Trinity Churchyard became a popular pilgrimage site.