The First American Women to Run for President

In early April 1870, nearly half a century before women were even allowed to vote, 32-year-old Victoria Claflin Woodhull used the pages of the New York Herald to announce her intention of standing as the first female presidential candidate. “I am quite well aware that in assuming this position I shall evoke more ridicule than enthusiasm at the outset”, she wrote in a letter to the paper, “but this is an epoch of sudden changes and startling surprises. What may appear absurd today will assume a serious aspect tomorrow.”

Woodhull’s own early life may be best described as unconventional. Her father, Reuben “Buck” Claflin, earned a living as a quack salesman, hawking a variety of homemade medicines with little or no real health benefits to an unsuspecting public. As a result, the young Victoria led a largely nomadic childhood, with the family constantly on the move around their native Ohio. From an early age, she was also expected to contribute to the family finances by performing as a clairvoyant, for which it was claimed she had a special gift. 

Aged just 15, she married a 28-year-old doctor named Canning Woodhull, having formerly been one of his patients. Her decision may have been swayed by her desire to escape her family’s chaotic lifestyle, but the marriage proved disastrous and eventually failed, exacerbated by Canning’s increasing dependency on alcohol and opiates. With two young children now to support, she joined forces with her younger sister, Tennessee, and returned to her former profession as a spiritualist. Along the way, she married again—this time to a Civil War veteran named Colonel James Blood.

In an era when the long-held beliefs of mainstream religion were constantly being challenged by new scientific discoveries, the lure of spiritualism proved irresistible to many who were looking for an alternative, and that included some extremely high-profile figures. The sisters’ big break came when they were introduced to the wealthy entrepreneur Cornelius Vanderbilt in New York and were invited to become his spiritual advisers. Details as to the exact nature of their relationship with the railroad tycoon remain sketchy, but the association proved highly lucrative for them.

By February 1870, the sisters had amassed sufficient funds to open a brokerage firm called Woodhull, Claflin & Company, making them the first female stockbrokers on Wall Street. By this stage, Woodhull was already heavily involved in the women’s suffrage movement and just two months later published her famous declaration of intent in the New York Herald.

The timing of her letter may well have been influenced by the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment just two months previously. Intended to give African American men the right to vote for the first time, the Amendment asserted that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged…on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”.  

The following January, Woodhull broke further new ground when she became the first woman to testify before a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, arguing that the terms of the Fifteenth Amendment could equally be applied to female voters. The politicians were unmoved, but Woodhull’s speech only served to solidify her position at the forefront of the women’s suffrage movement. 

In May 1872, Woodhull was nominated as the newly formed Equal Rights Party candidate for the forthcoming presidential election later that same year. As the sole female nominee in an election for which only men were eligible to vote, Woodhull’s candidacy was only ever destined to become a token gesture aimed at raising awareness of women’s rights. In any event, at the age of 34, Woodhull was still a year short of the minimum age required to become U.S. president. Nevertheless, any hopes she harbored of mounting a credible challenge were effectively ended when she was controversially arrested just days before the polls opened.

Following their successful foray into the financial sector, the sisters had ventured into the world of publishing with Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. The newspaper ran articles on a diverse range of issues close to their hearts. These included hot topics of the day like women’s suffrage and spiritualism, but also even more contentious issues, such as the-then revolutionary concept of free love.

The right for women to enjoy the same kind of sexual freedom as their male counterparts seems to have struck a particular chord with Woodhull. “Yes, I am a free lover. I have an inalienable constitutional right and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or short a period as I can, to change that love every day as I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame can interfere”, she famously declared in an 1871 speech at the Steinway Hall.

However, such radical views inevitably alienated large sections of society, with one popular satirical cartoonist of the day even dubbing Woodhull “Mrs. Satan”. Following the appearance of one particularly controversial article in Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, Woodhull was accused of “publishing an obscene newspaper” and arrested along with her sister and husband. The timing of this arrest, just days before the presidential election, effectively derailed her campaign and she never ran for the presidency again. 

Eventually Woodhull emigrated to the UK, where she embarked on a third marriage to a wealthy London banker named John B. Martin. By the time of her death, aged 88, in 1927, she was living in relative obscurity in the quiet Cotswold village of Bredon’s Norton.

12 years after Woodhull’s ill-fated campaign, Belva Ann Lockwood (née Bennett) became the second woman to run for president. The daughter of a farmer from Niagara County, New York, Belva was born in October 1830 and began her working life as a teacher at the local school whilst still in her early teens. In 1848, she married a local farmer, Uriah McNall, only to be widowed five years later, leaving her as sole provider for their young daughter. In the hope that it would enhance her future employment prospects, she took the still relatively uncommon step, as a woman, of enrolling in higher education and subsequently proceeded to carve out a successful career for herself.

In 1866, she moved to Washington, D.C. and two years later married her second husband, Ezekiel Lockwood. By this juncture she had become keenly interested in the growing women’s rights movement and harbored ambitions of entering the legal profession. Lockwood made a series of applications to study law at higher educational establishments, all of which were rejected because of her gender, before being finally accepted at Washington’s National University Law School.

However, upon successfully completing the course, her hopes of being able to practice as a lawyer were initially dashed when the university refused to award her the customary degree. Undeterred, she appealed for help to the then-President, Ulysses S. Grant, who also happened to be the University’s honorary Chancellor. 

The strategy worked, as within a week of writing to Grant the situation was rectified and Lockwood was subsequently admitted to the Bar of the District of Columbia. She was already in her early forties, but, against all odds, built up a successful law firm and after a hard-fought three-year campaign became, in 1879, the first woman to practice before the Supreme Court.

Like Woodhull before her, Lockwood was asked to represent the Equal Rights Party in both the 1884 and 1888 presidential elections. Shortly after her first nomination, Lockwood wrote to the Woman’s Herald of Industry declaring: “Why not nominate women for important places? Is not Victoria Empress of India?...We shall never have equal rights until we take them, nor respect until we command it”. 

Unlike her predecessor, Lockwood comfortably met the minimum age requirement for president and thus she became the first woman to have her name printed on official ballot papers. 

The Boston Globe subsequently described Lockwood as having made “a most creditable and astonishingly strong fight”. She certainly ran a detailed and well-conceived campaign, outlining her position on a wide range of issues to include foreign policy, the treatment of Native Americans and civil service reform as well as women’s rights, but only received just over 4,000 votes from the solely male electorate. She was not discouraged, however, and ran for president again four years later, albeit with less success than on the first occasion.

Thereafter Lockwood remained a well-known public figure, who continued to campaign for women’s suffrage and went on to play a prominent role in the Universal Peace Union, representing the organization at several international peace conferences. Sadly, she did not live long enough to see the end of World War I, with her death coming in May 1917 at the age of 86. 

Although America’s first two female presidential candidates appear, superficially at least, to have little in common, Woodhull and Lockwood shared a determination to escape their humble beginnings and make a better life for themselves and their families. Neither woman was born into a life of wealth and social privilege, nor had easy access to education. Nevertheless, both these independent women became trailblazers for the early women’s rights movement, displaying the ability to reinvent themselves and enjoy success in traditionally male-dominated professions, despite the odds being heavily stacked against them.

Sources: Library of Congress, National Park Service