20 things Nigerian women should know about Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President of the United States

The first woman to run for President of the United States was unable to vote, too young to be elected, ignored by her chosen running mate, and ultimately thrown into prison on election day.

Yet Victoria Woodhull, a thrice-married mother of two, was not someone to be easily dissuaded.

Victoria Woodhull was an American leader of the women’s suffrage movement who ran for President of the United States in the 1872 election.

Below are 20 things Nigerian women should know about this woman who refused to give up:

1. Victoria California Claflin was born the seventh of ten children (six of whom survived to maturity),in the rural frontier town of Homer, Licking County, Ohio.

2. Her mother, Madame Roxanna “Roxy” Hummel Claflin, was born to unmarried parents and illiterate. Her father, Reuben “Buck” Buckman Claflin, Esquire, was a con man, lawyer and snake oil salesmen.

3.  By age 11, Woodhull had only three years of formal education, but her teachers found her to be extremely intelligent. She was forced to leave school and home with her family when her father, after having “insured it heavily,” burned the family’s rotting gristmill.

4. When she was 14, Victoria met 28-year-old Canning Woodhull, a doctor from a town outside Rochester, New York. Her family had consulted him to treat the girl for a chronic illness.

5. They were married on November 20, 1853. Their marriage certificate was recorded in Cleveland on November 23, 1853, when Victoria was two months past her 15th birthday.

6. Victoria soon learned that her new husband was an alcoholic and a womanizer. She often had to work outside the home to support the family. She and Canning had two children, Byron and Zulu (later called Zula) Maude Woodhull. After their children were born, Victoria divorced her husband and kept his surname.

7. About 1866, Victoria Woodhull married Colonel James Harvey Blood, who also was marrying for a second time. He had served in the Union Army in Missouri during the American Civil War and had been elected as city auditor of St  Louis Missouri.

8. Woodhull’s support of free love likely started after she discovered the infidelity of her first husband, Canning. Women who married in the United States during the 19th century were bound into the unions, even if loveless, with few options to escape. Divorce was limited by law and considered socially scandalous. Women who divorced were stigmatized and often ostracized by society. Victoria Woodhull concluded that women should have the choice to leave unbearable marriages.

9. Woodhull railed against the hypocrisy of society’s tolerating married men who had mistresses and engaged in other sexual dalliances. In 1872, Woodhull publicly criticized well-known clergyman Henry Ward Beecher for adultery. Beecher was known to have had an affair with his parishioner Elizabeth Tilton, who had confessed to it, and the scandal was covered nationally.

10. Woodhull and her sister Tennessee (Tennie) Claflin, became the first female stockbrokers and in 1870 they opened a brokerage firm on Wall Street. Wall Street brokers were shocked.

11. Woodhull made a fortune on the New York Stock Exchange by advising clients like Vanderbilt. On one occasion she told him to sell his shares short for 150 cents per stock, which he duly followed, and earned millions on the deal.

12. On May 14, 1870, Woodhull and Claflin used the money they had made from their brokerage to found a newspaper, the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, which at its height had a national circulation of 20,000.

13. On November 2, 1872, Woodhull, Claflin and Col. Blood were arrested and charged with publishing an obscene newspaper and circulating it through the United States Postal Service. In the raid, 3,000 copies of the newspaper were found.

14. It was this arrest and Woodhull’s acquittal that propelled Congress to pass the 1873 Comstock Laws.

15. With the power of her first public appearance as a woman’s rights advocate, Woodhull moved to the leadership circle of the suffrage movement. She was the first woman to petition Congress in person. Numerous newspapers reported her appearance before Congress.

16. Woodhull joined the International Workingmen’s Association, also known as the First International. She supported its goals by articles in her newspaper.

17. Woodhull announced her candidacy for president by writing a letter to the editor of the New York Herald on April 2, 1870. She was nominated for President of the United States President by the newly formed Equal Rights Party on May 10, 1872, at Apollo Hall, New York City.

18. There is a historical marker located outside the Homer Public Library in Licking County, Ohio to mark Woodhull as the “First Woman Candidate For President of the United States.”

19. In 2001, Victoria Woodhull was inducted posthumously into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.  

 

20. She was honored by the Office of the Manhattan Borough President in March 2008 and was included in a map of historical sites related or dedicated to important women.

There is a memorial clock tower in her honor at the Robbins Hunter Museum, Granville, Ohio. A likeness of Victoria made out of linden wood appears on the hours.

The Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance is an American human rights and sexual freedom advocacy organization, founded in 2003, and named in honor of Victoria Woodhull.

In March 2017, Amazon Studios announced production of a movie based on her life, produced by and starring Brie Larson as Victoria Woodhull.