Honestly, if you ask the average person who the first woman to run for president was, they’ll probably guess Hillary Clinton or maybe Shirley Chisholm. Both are legends. But they weren’t the first. Not by a long shot.
The real answer is a woman named Victoria Woodhull. She ran in 1872. That is 50 years before women even had the right to vote in the United States. Think about that for a second. She was asking for the keys to the White House while the law said she wasn't even allowed to step into a voting booth.
The "Bewitching Broker" of Wall Street
Victoria Woodhull wasn't some career politician from a wealthy dynasty. Her life was kind of a mess early on. She grew up in a "traveling medicine show" family—basically a group of grifters and fortune tellers. Her father was a criminal; her mother was illiterate. By 15, she was married to a guy named Canning Woodhull, who turned out to be a severe alcoholic.
She had to support the family herself. She worked as a cigar store clerk, a seamstress, and eventually, a "medical clairvoyant."
But here’s where it gets wild. Victoria and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, moved to New York City and caught the attention of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Yeah, that Vanderbilt. The railroad tycoon. He was obsessed with spiritualism and used the sisters as mediums to talk to his dead wife. In exchange, he gave them stock tips.
It worked.
In 1870, they opened Woodhull, Claflin & Co., the first female-run brokerage firm on Wall Street. The newspapers called them the "Bewitching Brokers." They were making a killing. But Victoria didn't just want money. She wanted a platform.
A Platform Ahead of Its Time
She used her Wall Street profits to start a newspaper called Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. This wasn't a gossip rag. Well, it was a little bit of a gossip rag, but it was also the first publication in the U.S. to print Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto in English.
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She was radical. Like, truly radical. Her 1872 platform included:
- Universal suffrage (not just for white women, but for everyone).
- An eight-hour workday.
- Abolition of the death penalty.
- Welfare for the poor.
- Free Love.
That last one—"Free Love"—is what really got her into trouble. People today hear that and think of the 1960s, but back then, it basically meant the right for a woman to divorce an abusive husband and choose her own romantic partners without the government or church interfering. To the Victorian-era public, this was basically saying she wanted to destroy the fabric of society.
The Equal Rights Party and the 1872 Election
In May 1872, the newly formed Equal Rights Party nominated Victoria Woodhull for president at Apollo Hall in New York.
Her running mate? Frederick Douglass.
It was a brilliant move, at least on paper. Putting a woman and a former slave on the same ticket was the ultimate middle finger to the establishment. There was just one tiny problem: nobody actually asked Frederick Douglass if he wanted the job. He never acknowledged the nomination and spent the campaign season supporting Ulysses S. Grant instead.
Why People Say Her Candidacy "Didn't Count"
You’ll still find historians who argue Victoria Woodhull wasn't technically the first candidate. Their argument usually boils down to two things.
First, she was too young. The Constitution says you have to be 35 to be president. On Election Day in 1872, Victoria was 34. She would have turned 35 by the time of the inauguration in March 1873, but critics at the time used her age as a legal cudgel to dismiss her.
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Second, women couldn't vote. There’s a persistent myth that it was "illegal" for her to run. It wasn't. There was no law saying a woman couldn't run; there were just laws saying they couldn't vote. Woodhull actually argued before the House Judiciary Committee in 1871 that women already had the right to vote under the 14th and 15th Amendments. She said women were "citizens," and citizens have the right to vote. The committee basically patted her on the head and said, "Nice try."
The Beecher Scandal and Election Night in Jail
The campaign didn't end in a triumphant speech. It ended in a jail cell.
Victoria was a woman who didn't like hypocrisy. There was a famous preacher at the time, Henry Ward Beecher, who was constantly railing against Woodhull's "Free Love" ideas from his pulpit. The thing was, Victoria knew Beecher was having an affair with a married woman in his congregation.
She decided to expose him in her newspaper.
The backlash was instant. She wasn't praised for exposing a hypocrite; she was arrested for sending "obscene" material through the mail. She spent Election Day 1872 in the Ludlow Street Jail.
She didn't receive a single electoral vote. In fact, many of the popular votes she did receive weren't even counted. The system basically tried to erase her from the record.
The Complicated Legacy of Victoria Woodhull
If you’re looking for a perfect, stainless hero, Woodhull isn't it. Later in her life, after she moved to England and married a wealthy banker, she sort of disowned her radical past. She even started writing about eugenics, which is a dark and ugly chapter of her story that many people gloss over.
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She was human. She was ambitious, sometimes opportunistic, and incredibly frustrated by a world that told her "no" at every turn.
She eventually lived to see women get the right to vote in both the UK and the US. She died in 1927, an aristocrat in a country manor, a far cry from the "medical clairvoyant" who once slept in a New York jail for the crime of wanting to be president.
Moving Forward: What We Can Learn
Understanding Victoria Woodhull's run helps us see that the fight for the presidency wasn't a slow, steady climb. It was a series of explosions.
If you want to dive deeper into this history, don't just look at the big names like Susan B. Anthony. Anthony actually grew to dislike Woodhull because she thought Victoria's "radicalism" was hurting the suffrage movement's image. History is full of these messy, internal fights.
Practical Next Steps for History Buffs:
- Visit the National Women's History Museum digital archives to see the actual sketches and newspaper covers of "The Woodhull" during her campaign.
- Read the "Steinway Speech" (1871). It’s her most famous defense of Free Love and still sounds shockingly modern in parts.
- Research Belva Ann Lockwood, the woman who ran in 1884. She's often considered the first woman to run a "full" campaign since she met the age requirement and actually appeared on several state ballots.
The road to the White House wasn't paved by people who followed the rules. It was paved by people like Woodhull, who decided the rules were wrong and dared the world to stop them.