Every so often, a person comes along in history and does something astounding. Unheard of. Remarkable.
That was the case with Victoria Claflin Woodhull. Long before women could vote, let alone win a major-party nomination, that good woman Victoria Woodhull decided to do something almost unthinkable.
She ran for President of the United States.
This was 1872.
I like her for so many reasons.
First, Woodhull did not come from privilege. She was born in Homer, Ohio. That is in Licking County, which is just east of Columbus. Some of my ancestors were from there. I wonder if they knew the Woodhulls.
Anyway, she was born to an abusive, illiterate father. And. Her mother had little power to protect her children.
Formal education barely touched her life. She had a rough, rough, young life. At fifteen, she married a man twice her age, hoping to escape her situation. She was looking for security. Well, things went from bad to worse. Her husband was a raging alcoholic. In their marriage, there was more abuse, betrayal, and hardship. They had two children in all of that. But, eventually, came a scandalous divorce.
But Woodhull was not finished. Somehow, she was an incredible thinker with a powerful mind.
Marriage was just what most women did back in those days. As such, Victoria Woodhull married a total of three times:
Canning Woodhull — 1853
(She was about 15; He was an alcoholic and abusive; the marriage later ended in divorce in the mid-1860s, commonly cited as 1866.)
Colonel James Harvey Blood — 1866
(A radical thinker and strong supporter of her work; eventually, their ideas moved them apart; the marriage ended in divorce in 1876.)
John Biddulph Martin — 1883
(A wealthy English banker; this marriage lasted until her death in 1927.)
All throughout her life, Woodhull was an unconventional thinker. She leaned fully into spiritualism, radical politics, and women’s autonomy.
She had strong ideas about “free love.” This was much less about indulgence and more about agency. She believed women should choose their partners freely and leave marriages without being ruined by shame. Marriage, she argued, “should not be owned by the state, nor governed by double standards.”
Then she did something no woman had done before.
With her sister Tennessee, Woodhull opened a Wall Street brokerage firm, becoming the first women to do so. Newspapers mocked them and made fun of them.
But they made money. And with that, they funded a newspaper. Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly published radical ideas and championed women’s suffrage.
In 1871, Woodhull announced her intention to run for president.
She later secured the nomination of the Equal Rights Party, naming Frederick Douglass as her running mate. That crazy Victoria. She did this without Frederick’s consent.
Her platform called for voting rights for women, labor protections, regulation of monopolies, and abolition of the death penalty. She was only 34 years old. So, technically, she was too young to serve. And, women did not have the right to vote in 1871. She was legally barred from voting for herself.
On Election Day, she sat in jail. She had been arrested for exposing the hypocrisy of a powerful minister.
Of course, she lost the election. I’m not even sure how many votes she won. Nonetheless, she was the first woman to do so in the United States. Good for her.
History does not always reward the brave. But she dared to go where no other woman had gone.
Now, it is 2026. The United States still refuses to elect a woman to the presidency, and many have run. I’m not sure the overall “white male supremacy” mindset will ever let a woman be president here.
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“Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use.” — Ruth Gordon
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“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” — Alice Walker
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“Well-behaved women seldom make history.” — Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
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“I raise up my voice—not so I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard.” — Malala Yousafzai
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