The First Female Candidate for President

No, it's not Hillary, she's over a century too late.

The first female candidate for president was Victoria Woodhull (Mrs. John Biddulph Martin), who ran in 1872. This free love, women's rights, and labor union advocate, born in a shack in Homer, Ohio, was both the first American woman to run for President and the first woman to run a stock brokerage. Before that she was a famous “spiritualist” and healer who counted Cornelius Vanderbilt among her famous lovers.

She used information from her lovers, many being powerful businessmen, to start her own successful brokerage (1870) with her sister Tennessee, backed by Vanderbilt. They also started their own newspaper to champion their causes.

She ran for President in 1872, a candidate for the Equal Rights Party, and former slave Frederick Douglass was nominated as VP, but never acknowledged it. She was denounced from the pulpit as immoral and an adulteress, while no one mentioned that she was actually under the legal age to serve of 35. Some even argued that women were not citizens, and only legal citizens could serve.

Two days before the election, she and her sister were arrested for sending obscene materials through the mail, and although later acquitted, they were held over a month and prevented from voting, amid public outcries of censorship. She tried to run again in 1884 and 1892.

She thought she could “cheat death” by not sleeping in a bed, so for the last 4 years of her life slept in an armchair in her living room in England (where she retired with her last husband), where she was eventually found, having passed away in her sleep.

Here's a tribute site for her: www.victoria-woodhull.com