The First Woman to Run for President

Everything about the first woman to run for president—her youthful radicalism, her defiance, her willingness to attack and her ability to absorb criticism—caused followers to flock around her like a prophet. Supporters cheered when she decided that the most famous black man in American would be an ideal running mate, even when he showed no interest in being No. 2.
Critics reviled her for questionable investments, her attitude about extramarital affairs and her assault on one of the nation's most politically active religious leaders. They also hated her radical ideas on the nature of the family. Mostly, critics reviled her gall to anoint herself a candidate for the White House.

When Victoria Claflin Woodhull ran for president in 1872, she knew she had no chance to win. At the age of 34, she was a year shy of eligibility for the Oval Office. And women did not even enjoy the right to vote.

The long and colorful life of Victoria Woodhull offers intriguing clues about the challenges facing women in American politics, including Hillary Clinton. Both Woodhull and Clinton joined the national conversation by taking radical stances on family, labor and women's issues. Both made a lifelong project of finding new ways to communicate with the public. Both got caught in charges and countercharges about sex scandals, were mocked for their spiritual values and were patronized for their maneuvering in a man's world. Through it all, both changed the possibilities for women everywhere.

Woodhull, the daughter of a failed mill owner who was run out of town for passing counterfeit money and committing arson, found fame early in life. As a teenager, Victoria and her sister Tennessee performed medicine shows, one year earning more than $100,000 for their act. One contemporary biographer wrote: "She straightened the feet of the lame; opened the ears of the deaf; she detected the robbers of a bank … she solved psychological problems." After Tennessee got a call to become Cornelius Vanderbilt's masseuse, the commodore gave the sisters inside stock advice that helped them make a small fortune. Vanderbilt also gave them seed money for a newspaper. Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly agitated for a radical platform of reform and published gossip about Wall Street and celebrities.

In January 1871, Woodhull became the first woman ever to address a congressional committee with her claim that Article IV, Section 2, of the Constitution—which states that "citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states"—already gave women the vote. Forty-two members of Congress supported the idea. When suffragists met in Washington, Woodhull won lavish praise from the mothers of the movement, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

The Woodhull formula for fame was one part stubborn insistence on radical change and one part dramatics. She attracted countless enemies and angered many of her erstwhile allies. In May 1872, at another suffragist convention, Woodhull disrupted proceedings by calling for delegates to follow her to a new party convention to nominate her as president. By this time, she had already alienated Anthony and Stanton. But it didn't matter—at least, it didn't seem like it mattered.

Six hundred people moved over to New York City's Apollo Theater to anoint Woodhull the presidential candidate of the Equal Rights Party and name author-activist Frederick Douglass the candidate for vice president. (Delegates roundly rejected a suggestion that the convention telegraph Douglass to see if he was interested.) And they cheered enthusiastically for a comprehensive plan of social revolution.

In four short years, Woodhull jolted the feminist movement leftward. In 1868, radicals favored national reforms to grant women the right to vote, while moderates favored a state-by-state approach. By 1872, radicals now favored the complete transformation of all aspects of domestic life, while moderates had adopted a nationwide strategy for securing the woman's right to vote. Woodhull's platform called for a new civil and commercial code, abolition of the death penalty, banning of monopolies, direct taxation, uniform wages, public works programs and free trade.