[2]: 20–26, 57–60 Although the long trial ended in a deadlock, it destroyed the social positions and careers of both Elizabeth and Theodore Tilton.

She was a contributor to and the poetry editor of The Revolution,[7]: 281 [8]: xv  which was the voice of the National Woman Suffrage Association, founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.

[18]: 108 [11]: 196  For the first five years of their marriage, and again from 1860 to 1863, the Tiltons lived in a boardinghouse run by Elizabeth's mother, on Harrison Avenue in the Sixth Ward.

[1]: 53–54  Elizabeth described occasions when her husband indicated that she was "so insignificant that he was ashamed of [her]", and another when he held a gathering of "woman's rights people" at their home, and "particularly requested me not to come near him that night".

[1]: 54–55  Theodore Tilton also traveled frequently on lecture tours in 1866–1868, which gave him opportunities to be sexually unfaithful, something he confessed to Elizabeth on January 25, 1868.

[21] On January 3, 1866, Beecher described the main characters to his publisher as "the man of philosophy and theology and the woman of nature and simple truth".

[19]: 82 [26][27] Theodore Tilton was rumored not only to have been sexually unfaithful while on tour,[1]: 79–80  but also to be involved in an affair with Elizabeth's friend Laura Curtis Bullard.

[1]: 263–264 [8]: xxi–xxv The Tiltons' letters to each other over a period of several years reveal a shift from hopefulness on Elizabeth's part to awareness of the harmfulness of the "ungenerosity and fault-finding" of their actual time together.

These included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Henry Chandler Bowen, and Francis D. Moulton and his wife Emma.

[18]: 161–167 Possibly as a result of this evening, Elizabeth left Theodore in late September or early October 1870 and traveled to Marietta, Ohio, where she stayed with a friend, Sarah Putnam.

[1]: 12–13  On December 26, 1870, Tilton wrote to Beecher, "Sir, I demand that, for reasons which you explicitly understand, you immediately cease from the ministry of Plymouth Church, and that you quit the City of Brooklyn as a residence.

[27]: 400–406 [f] On December 31, 1870, Bowen fired Tilton from The Independent,[26] unwilling to support his radical politics and wishing to distance himself from a possible scandal.

Possibly as part of the ongoing attempt to cover up the scandal, Tilton became involved with woman's suffrage and free love advocate Victoria Woodhull.

[31]: 54–56 On June 29, 1871, Elizabeth wrote a letter to Theodore that assumed great importance in later court proceedings, as lawyers tried to interpret her meaning.

[31][2]: 96–97 My dear Theodore, To-day, through the ministry of Catherine Gaunt, a character of fiction, my eyes have been opened, for the first time in my experience, so that I see clearly my sin.

That the love I felt and received could harm no one, not even you, I have believed unfalteringly until 4 o'clock this afternoon, when the heavenly vision dawned on me.

my dear Theo, though your opinions are not restful or congenial to my soul, yet my own integrity and purity are a sacred and holy thing to me.

[31][2]: 96–97 The "Catherine Gaunt" letter clearly shows that Elizabeth had reinterpreted her actions from a spiritual perspective as sinful.

[33] But in spite of Woodhull's denunciations of Beecher and Tilton, the initial response of most newspapers was to largely ignore the story.

[1]: 202, 332 Tilton had spoken, among others, with Richard Salter Storrs, a gifted scholar and pastor of the Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn, New York.

[18]: 75–76  During the investigation, and the subsequent civil trial, Elizabeth Tilton was "housed and supported" by members of the congregation of Plymouth Church.

[1]: 333  Then, and again in a letter dated July 23, 1874, in the Brooklyn Eagle, Elizabeth Tilton refuted her husband's assertions of a sexual relationship between herself and Beecher, declaring "I affirm myself before God to be innocent of the crimes laid upon me; that never have I been guilty of adultery with Henry Ward Beecher in thought or deed; nor has he ever offered to me an indecorous or improper proposal.

[18]: 251–252 [1]: 9 Elizabeth considered Theodore's publication of her private correspondence to be "perfidious and sacrilegious", a violation of the privacy of their marriage.

[18]: 65 On August 20, 1874, Theodore Tilton brought a civil suit for "criminal conversation" against his former friend, Henry Ward Beecher.

[18]: 91–92, 95  Elizabeth was described frequently by the press as meek, shy, yielding and compliant, and as showing calmness, resignation and sadness, sometimes sobbing.

[18]: 92–94 The trial also became an "intensely literary event", in which the intentions and actions of Elizabeth Tilton (who could not testify) and others were inferred from novels, letters and quotations.

[18]: 84  Tilton told the Plymouth Investigating Committee in 1874 that the character of Mary Vail was based upon his wife,[18]: 82–84  and intended as a tribute to "Elizabeth's blameless purity".

[1]: 334 Victoria Woodhull married English banker John Biddulph Martin in 1882,[46] and remained in England after his death in 1897, a wealthy widow.

[26][27] Elizabeth Tilton and her children were left largely without financial support,[48] although some members of Plymouth Church may have hired her as a tutor.

[49][51] She became blind, but remained active, using a cane to navigate streets and trolley cars until surgery a year before her death restored her sight.