Victoria Claflin Woodhull

later Victoria Woodhull Martin (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927), was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement. In 1872, she ran for President of the United States. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for President of the United States, some have questioned that priority given issues with the legality of her run. They disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because she was younger than the constitutionally mandated age of 35. (Woodhull's 35th birthday was in September 1873, seven months after the March inauguration). However, election coverage by contemporary newspapers does not suggest age was a significant issue; this may, however, be due to the fact that no one took the candidacy seriously.

An activist for women's rights and labor reforms, Woodhull was also an advocate of "free love", by which she meant the freedom to marry, divorce and bear children without social restriction or government interference.[2] "They cannot roll back the rising tide of reform," she often said. "The world moves."[3]
Woodhull twice went from rags to riches, her first fortune being made on the road as a magnetic healer[4] before she joined the spiritualist movement in the 1870s.[5] Authorship of many of her articles is disputed (many of her speeches on these topics were collaborations between Woodhull, her backers, and her second husband, Colonel James Blood[6]). However, despite her ethical problems, her role as a representative of these movements was powerful. Together with her sister, Tennessee Claflin, she was the first woman to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street, making a second, and more reputable fortune.[7] They were among the first women to found a newspaper in the United States, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, which began publication in 1870.[8]
Woodhull was politically active in the early 1870s, when she was nominated as the first woman candidate for the United States presidency. Woodhull was the candidate in 1872 from the Equal Rights Party, supporting women's suffrage and equal rights; her running mate was black abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass. A check on her activities occurred when she was arrested on obscenity charges a few days before the election. Her paper had published an account of the alleged adulterous affair between the prominent minister Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton which had rather more detail than was considered proper at the time. However, it all added to the sensational coverage of her candidacy.[9]

She was born Victoria California Claflin, the seventh of ten children (six of whom survived to maturity),[10] in the rural frontier town of Homer, Licking County, Ohio. Her mother, Roxanna "Roxy"[10] Hummel Claflin, was illegitimate and illiterate.[11] She had become a follower of the Austrian mystic Franz Mesmer and the new spiritualist movement.[12] Her father, Reuben "Old Buck"[10] Buckman Claflin,[13][14] was a con man and snake oil salesman.[10] He came from an impoverished branch of the Massachusetts-based Scots-American Claflin family, semi-distant cousins to Massachusetts Governor William Claflin.[14]
Woodhull was whipped by her father, according to biographer Theodore Tilton.[15] Biographer Barbara Goldsmith claimed she was also starved and sexually abused by her father when still very young.[16] She based her incest claim on a statement in Theodore Tilton's biography: "But the parents, as if not unwilling to be rid of a daughter whose sorrow was ripening her into a woman before her time, were delighted at the unexpected offer."[17][18] Biographer Myra MacPherson disputes Goldsmith's claim that "Vickie often intimated that he sexually abused her" as well as the accuracy of Goldsmith's saying that "Years later, Vickie would say that Buck made her 'a woman before my time.'"[16] Macpherson wrote, "Not only did Victoria not say this, there was no 'often' involved, nor was it about incest."[19]
Woodhull believed in spiritualism – she referred to "Banquo's Ghost" from Shakespeare's Macbeth – because it gave her belief in a better life. She said that she was guided in 1868 by Demosthenes to what symbolism to use supporting her theories of Free Love.[20]
As they grew older, Victoria became close to her sister Tennessee Celeste Claflin (called Tennie), seven years her junior and the last child born to the family. As adults, they collaborated in founding a stock brokerage and newspaper in New York City.[10]
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,"[4] burned the family's rotting gristmill. When he tried to get compensated by insurance, his arson and fraud were discovered; he was run off by a group of town vigilantes.[4] The town held a "benefit" to raise funds to pay for the rest of the family's departure from Ohio.[4]