Victoria Woodhull
"While others of my sex devoted themselves to a crusade against the laws that shackle the women of the country, I asserted my individual independence; while others prayed for the good time coming, I worked for it; while others argued the equality of woman with man, I proved it by successfully engaging in business; while others sought to show that there was no valid reason why women should be treated, socially and politically, as being inferior to man, I boldly entered the arena of politics and business and exercised the rights I already possessed. I therefore claim the right to speak for the unenfranchised women of the country, and announce myself as a candidate for the Presidency" - April 2, 1870
Victoria Claflin was born on September 23, 1838. She was the fifth of seven surviving children born to poor parents living in the town of Homer, Ohio. Her mother named her after England's Queen Victoria. She had very little formal education but was known to have a photographic memory. Her mother Annie was very religious and Victoria, taking a cue from her mom, believed that she could hear spiritual voices; the first of these voices being her sisters that had died in infancy.
In 1853, Victoria's father's grain mill caught fire and burned down. Rumors circulated around town that her father Buck had set the fire himself in order to collect insurance money. The rumors persisted and the family thought it was time to leave the town of Homer, Ohio. They moved to Mount Gilead where Victoria's eldest sister was living with her own family. Here Victoria and her sister Tennessee, pushed by their scheming father, became "spiritual mediums" and became the bread winners for their family. The family also began offering healing elixirs and cures for all kinds of illnesses and diseases. Tennessee was later indicted for manslaughter after a cancer patient in Illinois died.
While living in Mount Gilead, Victoria was introduced to Doctor Canning Woodhull. Woodhull was impressed with Victoria and her parents were impressed with Woodhull. Victoria and Canning were married on November 23, 1853; Victoria was 15 years old. She soon learned that everything the good doctor had told her and her parents about how successful he was had in fact been a lie. He had very few patients and he did not have the great family connections that he claimed he had. Worse yet he was an alcoholic; drinking away what little money he brought in. December of 1854 Victoria gave birth to her first child; a boy they named Byron. As Byron grew it was discovered that he was mentally handicapped. Victoria was convinced her husband's alcoholism was the cause. In 1855, the family moved to San Francisco where Victoria began a short lived acting career. They returned to Ohio not long after moving to San Francisco when Victoria saw a vision of her sister telling her to come back home. Victoria resumed her work as a medium, sometimes traveling around different states for jobs. She had another child in 1861. This time she gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
Victoria kept working as a medium during the Civil War. It was during this time she met the man that would become her second husband. Victoria and her sister were living in St. Louis in 1864 when Colonel James Harvey Blood came into her practice. Victoria went into a trance and told Blood his future would be linked with hers in marriage. Both Victoria and James Blood were married to other people at the time. Divorce was rare for the time period and came with a bad social stigma. But despite societal views on divorce, both filed for divorce not long after meeting and were married in 1866. Victoria kept her first husband's surname; believing it to be rightfully her own. They settled in Pittsburgh, PA along with both her children.
Woodhull and Blood later moved to New York City and Blood began to open Victoria up to the new ideas of social reform and equal rights for women. In New York, Victoria and her sister continued their clairvoyance work and became friends with Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt offered financial advice to the sisters and soon they were wealthy. With her new-found wealth, Victoria thought it was finally time to begin her work on women's rights. She decided to be the first woman on Wall Street and with the backing of Vanderbilt, she succeeded. When the market crashed she bought up stocks from panicked traders and by the end of the day had $700,000 in her account. Victoria and her sister became the first women stockbrokers on Wall Street. She later bought a newspaper which she used as her own political forum. Not content with her paper, Victoria moved to Washington, D.C. and began to lobby for women's suffrage. She was the first female lobbyist and also the first woman to address a congressional committee.
Victoria's political platform for her newly formed "Cosmopolitical Party" included women's suffrage as well as a one-term presidency with a lifetime seat in the senate for former presidents. She also spoke for national public education and institutionalized welfare for the poor, a reform of marriage laws and a reform of the U.S. monetary system. Woodhull also opposed any laws that interfered with "the right of adult individuals to pursue happiness as they may choose." Of course, her platform and reform views garnered her as many enemies as friends, and even people who had been supporters in the beginning turned away from her. This was mainly due to the fact that she was misrepresented as being a proponent of the "Free Love" movement. In actual fact, what Victoria was trying to get people to understand was that she felt people should not be forced to stay in a marriage where there is no love or where there is abuse. When prominent women's rights leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton pulled their support of Woodhull, her chances of becoming the first woman president went down the drain.
On May 10th, 1972, Victoria was still nominated for president by the Equal Rights Party and Fredrick Douglas, an African-American anti-slavery leader, was chosen as vice presidential candidate.
Yes! Victoria we've selected For our chosen head: With Fred Douglas on the ticket We will raise the dead.
Shortly after her presidential nomination, Victoria found herself broke and alienated from her financial backers. Her newspaper had to stop publication. The Equal Rights Party fell apart and people were calling for a new presidential nominee. Victoria was turned out of her house because her landlord said she was too scandalous for the neighborhood. On Election Day, Victoria and her sister were in jail. They were both arrested by Anthony Comstock (known for his crusade against "immoral" art and literature) and charged with the spreading of obscenity by their newspaper for a vengeful article about Henry Ward Beecher, an American Congregationalist clergyman. The two sisters were released from jail in December when sympathetic supporters came up with the $16,000 bail money. Eventually, she had eight rounds of obscenity charges brought against her by Comstock. When their charges finally came to trial, the judge found them not guilty.
Cartoon by Thomas Nast that depicts public opinion about Victoria
In 1873 the stock market crashed again and Victoria was heavily in debt. She began to travel giving political speeches which became more and more radical while she tried to win back all the support she had lost. In 1876, she caught her husband with another woman and filed for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Her political career was over and so was her marriage. When a son of Vanderbilt gave her and her sister $100,000 to leave the country during the Vanderbilt inheritance law suit, Victoria and Tennessee, along with her two children and her mother sailed to England. Victoria began to give a series of lectures much more mild than the speeches she gave in America. During a lecture in London she piqued the interest of John Biddulph Martin; the co-heir to one of Britain's oldest banks. They became engaged in 1880 and Victoria set about changing the way the world viewed her and to become a respectable married woman.
Victoria became a recluse and she and her sister drifted apart. She did publish a newspaper which focused on social and moral reform. Her first husband had died in 1872; her second husband, Colonel Blood died of a fever while in Africa in 1885, and her third husband, John Martin died in 1897. Victoria became the inheritor of her husband's wealth and the wealth of her father-in-law who had just passed away three days before his son. She retired to her country home of Bredon's Norton and began to turn the house into a residential college for women. It was unsuccessful as was her attempt at a school for children. She became active in her village, supporting community efforts and youth organizations. She also put a great deal of effort and support into helping the community during WWI. She became known in the village as "Lady Bountiful".
On June 9, 1927, at the age of 88, Victoria died in her sleep. Victoria was described numerous times as a woman ahead of her time. She was definitely a woman of great courage and conviction. In a time when women couldn't even vote, she stood up and declared herself worthy of holding the highest office in America.
Further study:
Victoria Woodhull: First Woman Presidential Candidate - Jacqueline McLean
A Woman for President: The Story of Victoria Woodhull - Kathleen Krull
Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull Uncensored - Mary Gabriel
National Women's History Museum
http://www.victoria-woodhull.com/whoisvw.htm
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