March 28, 2011 • 30 mins
In 1872, the Equal Rights Party nominated Victoria Woodhull for president, but her radical views and an personal scandal caused her to lose many supporters. In this episode, Sarah and Deblina recount the life of the first woman to run for U.S. president.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Deblia Chuck Aboarding, and I'm Fair Dowdy, and we
are barreling right along through women's history one. So far,
(00:20):
we've covered a couple of women, a pirate leader and
a warrior queen, for example, who both made a name
for themselves by fighting against the establishment. In this episode, however,
we're going to take a look at one who sought
to become part of the establishment and kind of affect
change from within, kind of the biggest part of the
establishment exactly. And um, by that, we mean we're about
(00:44):
to talk about Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run
for president of the United States. Yeah, and her bid
for the presidency was really remarkable. And that's not just
because it happened almost fifty years before women even had
the right to vote, the legal right to vote. It
was miraculous because she had this really sketchy pass. She
(01:04):
basically came out of nowhere. Uh, the previous entry on
her resume before presidential candidate was clairvoyant. That's something you're
unlikely to see to and um, in a couple of
years she became the leading voice in the women's rights movement.
So a remarkable biography. Yeah, you could probably do an
(01:25):
entire series on just all the details of her really
unconventional and turbulent, sometimes kookie, downright cookie life, but we're
mostly going to focus on the meteoric rise that led
to her nomination for president, and of course the scandal
that caused it all to go horribly wrong. And you'll
see that it really makes today's nominees for the most part,
(01:48):
not in all cases, but for the most part, look
pretty tame bland. Yeah, certainly their names, the names of
this podcast are going to be great. I just I
want to get you psyched up for that every life.
And you know, by saying that she's exciting, we're not
just talking about in terms of the scandal. Even her
background is really fascinating and unique. So we'll get into
(02:09):
that a little bit at first. She was born Victoria
Claughlin on September in Homer, Ohio, and her mom, Annie Claughlin,
named her after the then eighteen year old Queen of England.
She keeps popping up Victoria. So Victoria Claughlin was the
fifth of seven living kids, and while she was growing up,
(02:30):
her family had a lot of financial struggles. She didn't
really let that get to her though. She was still
a very confident kid, and she kind of held court
on this with her family, you know, telling stories to
the other kids. And she was really smart. She had
a photographic memory. And there, you know, we we should
mention too, because this comes into play later that her
(02:52):
intelligence was not educated intelligence. She she only went to
school from ages eight to eleven. She was just a
a smart, quick learning kid. Yeah, and that's all. That's
all the school and she had the opportunity to get
at the time. We should say, but she was nicknamed
Little Queen because of her proud demeanor and her she
would intensely concentrate on things, so people thought that was
(03:14):
very queen like, just like Madame de Pompadour. Very similar
her dad. But Claughlin was kind of a rascal who
just hopped from job to job. I think he had
something like a dozen jobs. But eventually his grand get
rich scheme was to start calling two of his daughters,
Victoria and Tennessee spiritual mediums and set them up as
(03:36):
this traveling spiritualist medicine show, which sounds like a really
off the Wall idea. But it wasn't quite as out
there as it seems, because Buck had heard about this
other pair of sisters from New York, Kate and Margaret Fox,
and they had earned huge amounts of money working as
these traveling mediums, and there was, you know, at the time,
(03:57):
this growing interest in spiritualism. I think that's something that
comes up in the podcast from time to time too,
And women were very important in that movement, partly because
it gave them influence. If you're speaking as a medium,
nobody is really holding your responsible for what you said,
not quite at least um, so you know, you could
(04:18):
get away with some stuff like a spooky loophole. So
in addition to this, Victoria had also been known to
have religious visions of her own from a very young age.
In one, for example, a young man in a tunic
supposedly told her quote, one day you will lead your people.
So it seems kind of prophetic for what's coming up
(04:39):
in this podcast, but a lot of historians say that
it may have just been because her mother was really
religious that she said she had these visions. We're not
and we can't be really sure she actually had them
or not, but kind of the environment she was growing
up in. Yeah, definitely, she might have just been picking
up on what she had seen, regardless of the motivations
and inspiration, I guess so. Victoria and Tennessee did turn
(05:02):
a pretty big profit for their family doing this. So
the girls weren't really sure how to approach it at first,
and they kind of went to their dad and they're like,
what are we supposed to do? And so Buck gave
Victoria this advice. He said, be a good listener child,
and that's kind of all he told her. But we'll
see that that comes into play later. Following that advice,
that is, it sort of becomes the foundation for some
(05:23):
of her later ideas. I think it would be awkward
if your dad told you and your sister to go
be mediums, Like, oh, no, where to start with that exactly? Um,
But yeah, you're right. It does prove to be a
really big foundation to her later beliefs. And marriage was
another big foundation of these later beliefs, and she got
(05:43):
married for the first time when she was only fifteen
years old, to a doctor named Kenning wood Hall, and
it seemed like a promising match at first, except that
he turned out to be a drunk, and Victoria was
very unhappy and wanted to leave him, but because of
Victorian social standards and the marriage laws at the time,
(06:04):
she was trapped. Her property was her husband's and she
really couldn't get out. So she ended up because Canning
was such a drunk and also cheated on her, I think,
and just basically wasn't a great provider at that time.
He wasn't a very successful doctor. Even though he was one,
he didn't have that many patients, So she's not too surprising, right,
(06:24):
So she supported him and her two kids, Byron and Zulu,
by dressmaking. Then she did a short stint with acting
when they were living out on the West Coast, and
then she efluentially returned to the family business, which got
increasingly sketchy as the years got by. Buck actually started
claiming that Tennessee was a healer who could cure cancer,
(06:46):
and at one point later on down the road, she
is charged with manslaughter when a man dies of cancer.
This is kind of what I meant. Women didn't get
too much in trouble for what they said as clairvoyance.
Unless you go say you're going to cure someone's cancer,
unless you start making medical claims of the line. I guess.
So Victoria's role, though, was different from Tennessee's. She wasn't
(07:08):
out curing cancer. It was more like the job of
a therapist. Onmost she listened to people's problems, often problems
about unhappy married life, and uh, hearing enough stories convinced
her that in some cases divorce was necessary and called for. Yeah,
and this is combined with her own experience, Right, so
(07:28):
she's had her own unhappy marriage and now she's hearing
us from other people. So obviously that would influence you
a little bit. Yeah, So she's starting to change her mind.
And this belief actually ends up coming in handy when
in eighteen sixty four she moves to St. Louis and
she meets a man by the name of Colonel James
Henry Blood who's just back from the Civil War. He's
also into spiritualism, and she likes him immediately, not just
(07:52):
because they have that in common, but he's very attractive
and so they hit it off. But he comes to
see her as a patient and she supposedly this is
the story that is told that she supposedly goes into
a trance and tells him that his destiny is to
marry her from like a far away voice, as if
someone else is the same way to do it, you
will marry me. Um. So of course after that they
(08:15):
said they must get married even though they're both married,
even though they're both married at the time, So they
file for divorce and they get married eventually in July
eight sixty six. She does keep the name Woodhole though,
which some find to be scandalous. Some people think that
because she kept the name, that meant that she never
really married Blood. But maybe she just didn't want to
be Victoria Blood. That's true, that's a scary name sounding um,
(08:40):
but Blood the husband did have a really huge influence
on Victoria's ideals and further shaping them, and he becomes
something of a mentor to her and exposes her to
these radical ideas of the time, like birth control and
free education and equal rights for women and um it
starts to shape her into a new person with some
(09:03):
pretty new ideas. Definitely, by the time Victoria and her
extended family moved to New York City in eighteen sixty eight,
and this was also at the direction of one of
her visions. By the way, by that time, she's committed
to social reform, but she realizes that to be a
real player in the fight for equality, she needs some cash.
Most women's rights activists at the time came from the
(09:25):
upper and middle class, so that was the example she
had for getting in. Yeah, and that's an important thing
to keep in mind for some later issues she runs into.
But Victoria and Tennessee sat themselves up as clairvoyance in
New York City, and they have business cards and everything.
They're like really going for it, and they aren't making
any claims about medical expertise anymore. After that man's letter charge,
(09:48):
you know, they've learned better than that. And it seems
like the business gets off to an amazingly lucky start
because one of their first clients is seventy three year
old multi millionaire commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. So yeah, he's the
kind of guy who can make your clairvoyant career. Definitely.
And actually it's very unclear how much this no nonsense
(10:12):
railroad and shipping tycoon actually believed in the sisters spiritual powers.
But he liked them in general, and when we get
down to it, he really just thought they were pretty.
He liked hanging out with pretty women, so he takes
to them, and Vanderbilt teaches the sisters about the stock market.
And I saw a quote in an American Heritage. It
(10:32):
wasn't a quote actually was said by John Gordon, the
writer of this article in American Heritage, and he compared
this to getting stock tips from Warren Buffett. So just
to give all the listeners out there an example of
how major this was. This was a pretty significant person
to be giving you advice. So he gives them tips.
Colonel Blood invests money for them on their behalf using
(10:53):
Vanderbilts advice, and suddenly they find themselves with a little
bit of wealth. Yeah, paid off pretty quickly. And so
now that they're secure, Victoria is ready to make her
debut into this women's rights movement, and she does that
in January eighteen sixty nine. But she knows that her
clairvoyant job title is going to hold her back a
(11:15):
little bit. She can't be a reformer and a working
clairvoyant or no one will pick her seriously. So she
gives up her old line of work and makes starts
taking calculated steps to recreate herself again. Her first opportunity
for reinvention comes by September sixty nine, and that happens
to be Black Friday on Wall Street. When the market crashed,
(11:39):
Investors began selling off their stocks in a panic, and
Victoria basically just sat outside the exchange and bought up bargains.
She supposedly made seven thousand dollars by the end of
eighteen sixty nine, although some people think that she inflated
that figure when she reported it. But she made a
lot of money, to say the least. Yeah. After that,
Victorian Tennessee, they think, Okay, we've had a little success,
(12:01):
we can probably become major players on Wall Street. So
they asked for Vanderbilt Backing to open their own financial firm,
and he shows his support. He gives them seven thousand
dollars to to do that. It's called Woodhull, Claughlin and Company.
And the sister has become the first female stockbrokers on
Wall Street, the first of many first for at least Victoria.
(12:23):
And they got a lot of attention because of this,
and they met a lot of really influential people, and
some people came by just to sort of check out
this company, you know, it's going by and see what
it's all about. Walt Whitman even comes by he says
something that sounds very Walt Whitman quote, you have given
an object lesson to the whole world. You are prophecy
(12:44):
of the future. There you go, yes to put that
on their new business cards. And that's just from doing,
you know, a little walkthrough. Um So, overall, I think
they had to rain in that people just walking through
randomly thing. But business was good. Some people suggest that
might have been because of Vanderbilt's name being behind it.
I think people automatically assume that maybe he was pulling
(13:06):
the strings. But regardless, he did well. Clairvoyant ability, you
never know, that could also be an aspect of it. Um. So,
Victoria starts making some pretty influential friends and eventually she
enlists one of them, Stephen Pearl Andrews, who was very
educated also another reformer, to help her buff up her
(13:28):
education a little bit, you know, polish her basic reading
and writing skills, and and sort of get a new
start there as well. And so in April eighteen seventy,
the New York Herald begins to publish this series of
articles by Victoria, and she really comes out swinging for
the first one she does. She says, while others of
(13:49):
my sex devoted themselves to a crusade against the laws
that shackle the women of the country. I asserted my
individual independence. While others prayed for the good time coming,
I worked for it. Others argued the equality of woman
with man. I proved it by successfully engaging in business,
while others sought to show that there was no valid
reason why women should be treated socially and politically as
(14:11):
being inferior to man. I boldly entered the arena of
politics and business and exercise the rights I already possessed.
I therefore claimed the rights to speak for the unenfranchised
women of the country and announced myself as a candidate
for the presidency. There you go. I know she dropped
a bomb with that one, definitely. So Ulysses of Grant
was in his first term at this time, and most
(14:33):
people were thinking that he would run again in eighteen
seventy two, so the Republican nomination was out. She knew
that she wouldn't get the Democratic nomination, so if she
was going to run for president, she was going to
have to nominate herself and get enough support to get
her name put on the ballot. So that's what she
sets out to do, and she has pretty creative ways
(14:55):
of going about it. She does. She launches into this
whole series of kind of next steps to prepare for her.
You can't really call it a campaign, I guess, but
it sort of was ance an unannounced campaign a good
way to put up. So she started by getting this
a big, fancy house between Madison and Fifth Avenues in
(15:16):
New York City's Murray Hill district, which was one of
the more aristocratic neighborhoods. So again we see the whole
class issue coming up here. She wanted to establish herself
as someone who was somebody rather than you know, a
poor girl from Ohio, definitely. And the next thing she
does is buy a newspaper. Yeah, buying a newspaper meant
that you're someone really influential. So she does buy one,
(15:37):
and she calls it wood Hole and Claughland's Weekly. And
she sets this up as doing a certain number of things.
Of course, first and foremost, it supports Victoria's c wood
Hole for President. It's a mixture of mud raking, fads
and scandals. For example, she publishes in her publication the
first English translation in the US of the con Munist
(16:00):
Manifesto just totally bizarro. That was one of the things
that threw me for the biggest loop in this episode.
I think, yeah, it's sort of mentioned as a fact
in her life, but seems like it should be a
very big deal. But I guess when we have so
many different things going on, it's hard to make any
one thing that prominent. Yeah, but you know, so she
is running this newspaper and it's not as out there
(16:23):
as it seems. It had a circulation of twenty people
by fall eighteen seventies, so she has a pretty large
audience reading all this Victoria woodhol of her president business.
But even with all this, she knows it's still going
to be tough to get elected if women can't vote
for her. Simple enough, right, So she moves to Washington
(16:45):
and declares herself a lobbyist on behalf of women's suffrage.
While she's in Washington, she befriends a congressman named Benjamin Butler,
who helps her kind of navigate the political arena. So
again another male presence who's kind of helping her find
her way. Together, they decided that women actually didn't need
an amendment to vote, they already had the right under
(17:07):
current laws. This is what they kind of formulated their lines.
They found in loophole and the lagic behind this was
that the fifteenth Amendment stated that the rights of citizens
of the U. S. Shall not be denied or abridged.
Then the fourteenth Amendment said that all persons born are
naturalized in the U. S. Or citizens. So when you
put the two together, it means that all citizens have
(17:28):
the right to vote. And since women are citizens, they
have the right to vote too. Yeah. So Woodhall, thanks
to Butler's influence, actually becomes the first woman to address
Congress on January eleventh, eighteen seventy one, and get to
make her case with this little loophole and and try
to see what everybody thinks about it. It doesn't really work,
(17:50):
but suffarate jets, including Susan B. Anthony, were really impressed.
I mean, how would you not be impressed by the
first woman speaking before Congress. Yeah, it's a pretty big first.
So Victoria was invited finally. She wanted this for a while,
but because of her background and because of her scandalous
sort of scandalous newspaper that she had, she wasn't invited before.
(18:12):
But she was finally invited to become part of the
National Women's Suffrage Association, but it was long before it
became clear to the others who were members that Victoria
wasn't just interested in women's rights. She started talking about
things like national public education, institutionalized welfare for the poor,
and perhaps the most controversial of things, she talked about
(18:33):
free love. Yeah, it's not quite the free love like
what we think of today. Basically, she wanted to reform
marriage laws and make man and wife equal partners in
a marriage, a relationship that was based on love and
free will. That's free love. It sounds a little more
scandalous than it was, but still it was something that
(18:55):
was pretty radical for a lot of the suffragists. A
lot of them were not on board with this idea
at all. No. I mean, for one thing, they didn't
want women's rights to be diverted by other concerns. And
on the other hand, some of the ideas like free
love were way too extreme for a lot of the
people who were involved. So regardless, Victoria gave the speech
(19:17):
about free love on November one, and this was kind
of a turning point for her because after she gave
the speech, it sparked this huge controversy all around her
and her cause. People pretty much ignored her message of
free love the way she had interpreted it and was
trying to get it across, and they took it more
as something that would be considered immoral in that day,
(19:40):
probably more like we consider free love to be now.
And so she was denounced in the press. It was
a big to do, yeah, and leaders of the Suffrage
Association withdrew their support. And so Victoria now is not
backed by this group of wealthy, influential women and people anymore. Um,
(20:00):
she's splintered off with a group of more radical women activists.
So this radical group forms the Equal Rights Party, which
has both men and women involved, and it's a party
about all sorts of reforms, basically a reform minded party.
And in eighteen seventy two the party nominated Victoria for president. Interestingly,
(20:23):
they also nominated Frederick Douglas, who was, of course the
very famous African American leader in the anti slavery movement
at the time as vice president. He turned the offer down.
But wood Hall, of course it does accept and in
her acceptance speech she says, quote, I've sometimes thought that
here is something providential and prophetic, and the fact that
(20:44):
my parents conferred upon me a name which forbids the
very thought of failure, So again bringing attention to her
queenly name again, Little Queen. At this time, though after
she was nominated, the Little Queen Star was already in decline.
Her views had caused her to lose a lot of
supporters already and her Wall Street business as well. She
(21:07):
went broke and she got turned out of her fancy
home and she had to suspend publication of her weekly.
So just a really kind of fast fall, you know,
because of the loss of her support and business, and
also because she had put so much money into these
campaigns that she was trying to pull off. Yeah, but
it was this one last scandal that really did her in,
(21:29):
and unfortunately it was instigated by Victoria herself. Yeah, here's
just a little background on that. The wealthy and influential
Beacher sisters from Boston, Katherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
of Uncle Tom's Cabin fame, they hated Victoria. According to
author Jacqueline McLean, who wrote a biography of Victoria Woodhull,
(21:52):
the Beacher's opposed women's suffrage, and we're really just critical
of how vocal Victoria was and everything that she did,
both in her paper and in the speeches that she gave.
But Victoria had something on them too. She had damaging
information about their brother, who was a prominent Brooklyn pastor,
Reverend Henry Ward Beecher now Reverend Beecher, had an affair
(22:12):
with the wife of one of his colleagues, possibly even
impregnated her. She had a miscarriage. Yeah, very scandalous. And
Victoria knew about this, but she hadn't used it yet.
I mean, this sort of war between the Beacher sisters
and Victoria had been going on for some time. So
weird too if you think about it. The Beacher sisters,
I mean, come on, we think of them as reformers too, definitely,
and and I know you were mentioning earlier. It is
(22:35):
strange that they were not reformers involved in the women's movement,
but so prominent in the abolition movement. Definitely, and I
think they were also Victoria saw them as being part
of that sort of elitist upper class set that she
just could the old establishment that she just couldn't break into.
So they were just always at odds because of that.
(22:56):
But in October eighteen seventy two, she revived the weekly
for one issue to write an expose about the whole
affair with the reverend. Maybe there are different theories about
why she did this. Maybe it's because the reverend wouldn't
lend her money when she came to him when she
was broke. Maybe it's because she just wanted to get
back at all her critics, especially the Beach Your Sister.
(23:21):
She had been blasted in the press for her free
love ideas, and she wanted to basically say, Okay, you
guys are hypocrites because I may be talking about free love,
but you guys are actually out there practicing if you're
having affairs with you know, your colleagues wives. So that
was sort of the motivation behind it. But the issue,
(23:41):
as you would imagine, flew off the stands. I think
people were buying not just the copies, but then buying
used copies, and the price kept going up. So it
was very popular, but it backfired against her in a
big way. Victoria and her sister were arrested for distributing
indecent literature through the mail and spent the election day
itself in jail. Yeah, and so after that, after a
(24:02):
scandal of that magnitude, even her biggest supporters turned against her.
So her political career, which hadn't ever really launched, I
mean to be honest, it hadn't really gotten off the ground,
came to an end quite suddenly. Yeah. I think they
were in jail for about two months, and then kept
getting re arrested after that for various indecency charges, libel charges,
(24:25):
and so it was a struggle for her after that,
as she had to travel around again with her husband
and her sister giving speeches here and there for a
little money. But people didn't really take her seriously after that,
more of a side show than a speaker you were
truly interested in hearing, right, So, yeah, kind of a
disappointing ending after a sort of promising rise. But we'll
(24:47):
have to wrap up the details of her life a
little bit. As I said at the beginning, there's so
much to say about her, even her later life after
all of this, that we could probably do a separate
podcast on just the post election victoria. But in ed
we'll just give you a little bit. She ends up
divorcing Blood in eighteen seventy six when she catches him
with another woman. So so much for free love, right,
(25:08):
we know she's not going to go for that. So
in eighteen seventy seven she joins up with her sister
Tennessee again besides seeing it, maybe they'll work better together,
and they moved to England and they get a fresh start.
But the really weird thing is it takes a hundred
thousand dollars for them to get to England and set
up quite nicely, and most people suspect that that money
(25:30):
came from a very prominent source. Yeah, a lot of
people suspect that they were actually bribed to leave the
country by Vanderbilt's son William after his death. And that's
because of some feuding that was going on between the
Vanderbilt siblings over their inheritance and William, since he got
the biggest chunk, he was afraid that the other siblings
(25:52):
were going to try to prove that their father was
not well in his mind when he made out his
will and used the the Claflind sisters unfortunately as an
example of why he was unwell. So William might have
bought them off and sent them packing to England. Yeah,
it's quite likely that somebody did, and it was probably him,
(26:13):
because they really didn't have any money at that point.
They weren't earning much on the on Victoria's speech circuit.
It's a good offer for them to have taken, though,
because once they're there, both of the ladies end up
becoming rich again. These these women have made so many
fortunes and lost so many. This time it's the old
fashioned way though. They just marry rich and m Victoria.
(26:34):
I think you mentioned she actually ends up inheriting not
just her husband's fortune but his father's as well. Yeah.
Unfortunately share her new husband, who loves her by all accounts,
he after he dies. I think he dies maybe a
day after a few days after his father dies. So
she inherits a ton of money and retires to the
(26:54):
English countryside with her daughter Zulu, and they spend the
rest of their life kind of funding these philanthropic efforts
and like education and so forth. And um, she lives
to be eighty eight. She lives to be eight. She
dies June nine in her sleep, seven years after American
women were granted the right to vote. Yeah, so this
(27:17):
kind of reminded me a little bit of our Chinese
Pirates episode in that it ends so well. Usually usually
I feel like our podcast, even if they're upbeat, they
have kind of a tragic ending. Not this one. Yeah,
this one has sort of a if not a happy ending,
because I think that she did want to redeem her
her name and her character and her image and maybe
(27:38):
never quite got where she wanted to get with that.
But um, a comfortable and a comfortable ending, a peaceful
kind of ending. So and as we said, that is
the end. That's all we have today on Victoria Claplin
with the whole, but we do have listener mail. We
do have listener mail. Sarah. You just mentioned to are
(28:00):
don't cross the Dragon Lady podcast, and this letter is
about that. It is from Jennie and Janie. I'm very
sorry if I mispronounced your name, but just gave it
my best shot. And she says, I'm really enjoying the
Dragon Lady podcast. I'm a proud member of the International
Wenches Guild, and I've played a pirate at my home,
Renaissance Farris since before it was cool. Just a little
(28:22):
tidbit regarding your bit about the no raping women rule.
You were discussing the notorious pirate Blackbeard and Parends Edward
Teach was well known to be a vicious barbarian. However,
he loved women. For all his violent, crazy antics, he
did not tolerate rape, abuse, or man handling of women
in any way. The punishment was death. He had multiple
(28:43):
wives and several ports, and allegedly showered them with gifts
and loving gestures. He treasured women and demanded that his
crew do the same. I guess he couldn't be all
bad because some firecrackers stuck in into beard. Not all
that bethan much there um. So Yeah, if you have
any more suggestions or comments you want to send us,
(29:05):
feel free to email us at History Podcast at how
stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter and mist
in history, and we're on Facebook. We check them both regularly,
so that's a great way to drop us a line.
And if you want to learn a little bit more
about the presidency in the United States, we have an
article called how the US President Works, and you can
(29:26):
find it by searching our homepage at www dot how
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(29:47):
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Deblia Chuck Aboarding, and I'm Fair Dowdy, and we
are barreling right along through women's history one. So far,
(00:20):
we've covered a couple of women, a pirate leader and
a warrior queen, for example, who both made a name
for themselves by fighting against the establishment. In this episode, however,
we're going to take a look at one who sought
to become part of the establishment and kind of affect
change from within, kind of the biggest part of the
establishment exactly. And um, by that, we mean we're about
(00:44):
to talk about Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run
for president of the United States. Yeah, and her bid
for the presidency was really remarkable. And that's not just
because it happened almost fifty years before women even had
the right to vote, the legal right to vote. It
was miraculous because she had this really sketchy pass. She
(01:04):
basically came out of nowhere. Uh, the previous entry on
her resume before presidential candidate was clairvoyant. That's something you're
unlikely to see to and um, in a couple of
years she became the leading voice in the women's rights movement.
So a remarkable biography. Yeah, you could probably do an
(01:25):
entire series on just all the details of her really
unconventional and turbulent, sometimes kookie, downright cookie life, but we're
mostly going to focus on the meteoric rise that led
to her nomination for president, and of course the scandal
that caused it all to go horribly wrong. And you'll
see that it really makes today's nominees for the most part,
(01:48):
not in all cases, but for the most part, look
pretty tame bland. Yeah, certainly their names, the names of
this podcast are going to be great. I just I
want to get you psyched up for that every life.
And you know, by saying that she's exciting, we're not
just talking about in terms of the scandal. Even her
background is really fascinating and unique. So we'll get into
(02:09):
that a little bit at first. She was born Victoria
Claughlin on September in Homer, Ohio, and her mom, Annie Claughlin,
named her after the then eighteen year old Queen of England.
She keeps popping up Victoria. So Victoria Claughlin was the
fifth of seven living kids, and while she was growing up,
(02:30):
her family had a lot of financial struggles. She didn't
really let that get to her though. She was still
a very confident kid, and she kind of held court
on this with her family, you know, telling stories to
the other kids. And she was really smart. She had
a photographic memory. And there, you know, we we should
mention too, because this comes into play later that her
(02:52):
intelligence was not educated intelligence. She she only went to
school from ages eight to eleven. She was just a
a smart, quick learning kid. Yeah, and that's all. That's
all the school and she had the opportunity to get
at the time. We should say, but she was nicknamed
Little Queen because of her proud demeanor and her she
would intensely concentrate on things, so people thought that was
(03:14):
very queen like, just like Madame de Pompadour. Very similar
her dad. But Claughlin was kind of a rascal who
just hopped from job to job. I think he had
something like a dozen jobs. But eventually his grand get
rich scheme was to start calling two of his daughters,
Victoria and Tennessee spiritual mediums and set them up as
(03:36):
this traveling spiritualist medicine show, which sounds like a really
off the Wall idea. But it wasn't quite as out
there as it seems, because Buck had heard about this
other pair of sisters from New York, Kate and Margaret Fox,
and they had earned huge amounts of money working as
these traveling mediums, and there was, you know, at the time,
(03:57):
this growing interest in spiritualism. I think that's something that
comes up in the podcast from time to time too,
And women were very important in that movement, partly because
it gave them influence. If you're speaking as a medium,
nobody is really holding your responsible for what you said,
not quite at least um, so you know, you could
(04:18):
get away with some stuff like a spooky loophole. So
in addition to this, Victoria had also been known to
have religious visions of her own from a very young age.
In one, for example, a young man in a tunic
supposedly told her quote, one day you will lead your people.
So it seems kind of prophetic for what's coming up
(04:39):
in this podcast, but a lot of historians say that
it may have just been because her mother was really
religious that she said she had these visions. We're not
and we can't be really sure she actually had them
or not, but kind of the environment she was growing
up in. Yeah, definitely, she might have just been picking
up on what she had seen, regardless of the motivations
and inspiration, I guess so. Victoria and Tennessee did turn
(05:02):
a pretty big profit for their family doing this. So
the girls weren't really sure how to approach it at first,
and they kind of went to their dad and they're like,
what are we supposed to do? And so Buck gave
Victoria this advice. He said, be a good listener child,
and that's kind of all he told her. But we'll
see that that comes into play later. Following that advice,
that is, it sort of becomes the foundation for some
(05:23):
of her later ideas. I think it would be awkward
if your dad told you and your sister to go
be mediums, Like, oh, no, where to start with that exactly? Um,
But yeah, you're right. It does prove to be a
really big foundation to her later beliefs. And marriage was
another big foundation of these later beliefs, and she got
(05:43):
married for the first time when she was only fifteen
years old, to a doctor named Kenning wood Hall, and
it seemed like a promising match at first, except that
he turned out to be a drunk, and Victoria was
very unhappy and wanted to leave him, but because of
Victorian social standards and the marriage laws at the time,
(06:04):
she was trapped. Her property was her husband's and she
really couldn't get out. So she ended up because Canning
was such a drunk and also cheated on her, I think,
and just basically wasn't a great provider at that time.
He wasn't a very successful doctor. Even though he was one,
he didn't have that many patients, So she's not too surprising, right,
(06:24):
So she supported him and her two kids, Byron and Zulu,
by dressmaking. Then she did a short stint with acting
when they were living out on the West Coast, and
then she efluentially returned to the family business, which got
increasingly sketchy as the years got by. Buck actually started
claiming that Tennessee was a healer who could cure cancer,
(06:46):
and at one point later on down the road, she
is charged with manslaughter when a man dies of cancer.
This is kind of what I meant. Women didn't get
too much in trouble for what they said as clairvoyance.
Unless you go say you're going to cure someone's cancer,
unless you start making medical claims of the line. I guess.
So Victoria's role, though, was different from Tennessee's. She wasn't
(07:08):
out curing cancer. It was more like the job of
a therapist. Onmost she listened to people's problems, often problems
about unhappy married life, and uh, hearing enough stories convinced
her that in some cases divorce was necessary and called for. Yeah,
and this is combined with her own experience, Right, so
(07:28):
she's had her own unhappy marriage and now she's hearing
us from other people. So obviously that would influence you
a little bit. Yeah, So she's starting to change her mind.
And this belief actually ends up coming in handy when
in eighteen sixty four she moves to St. Louis and
she meets a man by the name of Colonel James
Henry Blood who's just back from the Civil War. He's
also into spiritualism, and she likes him immediately, not just
(07:52):
because they have that in common, but he's very attractive
and so they hit it off. But he comes to
see her as a patient and she supposedly this is
the story that is told that she supposedly goes into
a trance and tells him that his destiny is to
marry her from like a far away voice, as if
someone else is the same way to do it, you
will marry me. Um. So of course after that they
(08:15):
said they must get married even though they're both married,
even though they're both married at the time, So they
file for divorce and they get married eventually in July
eight sixty six. She does keep the name Woodhole though,
which some find to be scandalous. Some people think that
because she kept the name, that meant that she never
really married Blood. But maybe she just didn't want to
be Victoria Blood. That's true, that's a scary name sounding um,
(08:40):
but Blood the husband did have a really huge influence
on Victoria's ideals and further shaping them, and he becomes
something of a mentor to her and exposes her to
these radical ideas of the time, like birth control and
free education and equal rights for women and um it
starts to shape her into a new person with some
(09:03):
pretty new ideas. Definitely, by the time Victoria and her
extended family moved to New York City in eighteen sixty eight,
and this was also at the direction of one of
her visions. By the way, by that time, she's committed
to social reform, but she realizes that to be a
real player in the fight for equality, she needs some cash.
Most women's rights activists at the time came from the
(09:25):
upper and middle class, so that was the example she
had for getting in. Yeah, and that's an important thing
to keep in mind for some later issues she runs into.
But Victoria and Tennessee sat themselves up as clairvoyance in
New York City, and they have business cards and everything.
They're like really going for it, and they aren't making
any claims about medical expertise anymore. After that man's letter charge,
(09:48):
you know, they've learned better than that. And it seems
like the business gets off to an amazingly lucky start
because one of their first clients is seventy three year
old multi millionaire commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. So yeah, he's the
kind of guy who can make your clairvoyant career. Definitely.
And actually it's very unclear how much this no nonsense
(10:12):
railroad and shipping tycoon actually believed in the sisters spiritual powers.
But he liked them in general, and when we get
down to it, he really just thought they were pretty.
He liked hanging out with pretty women, so he takes
to them, and Vanderbilt teaches the sisters about the stock market.
And I saw a quote in an American Heritage. It
(10:32):
wasn't a quote actually was said by John Gordon, the
writer of this article in American Heritage, and he compared
this to getting stock tips from Warren Buffett. So just
to give all the listeners out there an example of
how major this was. This was a pretty significant person
to be giving you advice. So he gives them tips.
Colonel Blood invests money for them on their behalf using
(10:53):
Vanderbilts advice, and suddenly they find themselves with a little
bit of wealth. Yeah, paid off pretty quickly. And so
now that they're secure, Victoria is ready to make her
debut into this women's rights movement, and she does that
in January eighteen sixty nine. But she knows that her
clairvoyant job title is going to hold her back a
(11:15):
little bit. She can't be a reformer and a working
clairvoyant or no one will pick her seriously. So she
gives up her old line of work and makes starts
taking calculated steps to recreate herself again. Her first opportunity
for reinvention comes by September sixty nine, and that happens
to be Black Friday on Wall Street. When the market crashed,
(11:39):
Investors began selling off their stocks in a panic, and
Victoria basically just sat outside the exchange and bought up bargains.
She supposedly made seven thousand dollars by the end of
eighteen sixty nine, although some people think that she inflated
that figure when she reported it. But she made a
lot of money, to say the least. Yeah. After that,
Victorian Tennessee, they think, Okay, we've had a little success,
(12:01):
we can probably become major players on Wall Street. So
they asked for Vanderbilt Backing to open their own financial firm,
and he shows his support. He gives them seven thousand
dollars to to do that. It's called Woodhull, Claughlin and Company.
And the sister has become the first female stockbrokers on
Wall Street, the first of many first for at least Victoria.
(12:23):
And they got a lot of attention because of this,
and they met a lot of really influential people, and
some people came by just to sort of check out
this company, you know, it's going by and see what
it's all about. Walt Whitman even comes by he says
something that sounds very Walt Whitman quote, you have given
an object lesson to the whole world. You are prophecy
(12:44):
of the future. There you go, yes to put that
on their new business cards. And that's just from doing,
you know, a little walkthrough. Um So, overall, I think
they had to rain in that people just walking through
randomly thing. But business was good. Some people suggest that
might have been because of Vanderbilt's name being behind it.
I think people automatically assume that maybe he was pulling
(13:06):
the strings. But regardless, he did well. Clairvoyant ability, you
never know, that could also be an aspect of it. Um. So,
Victoria starts making some pretty influential friends and eventually she
enlists one of them, Stephen Pearl Andrews, who was very
educated also another reformer, to help her buff up her
(13:28):
education a little bit, you know, polish her basic reading
and writing skills, and and sort of get a new
start there as well. And so in April eighteen seventy,
the New York Herald begins to publish this series of
articles by Victoria, and she really comes out swinging for
the first one she does. She says, while others of
(13:49):
my sex devoted themselves to a crusade against the laws
that shackle the women of the country. I asserted my
individual independence. While others prayed for the good time coming,
I worked for it. Others argued the equality of woman
with man. I proved it by successfully engaging in business,
while others sought to show that there was no valid
reason why women should be treated socially and politically as
(14:11):
being inferior to man. I boldly entered the arena of
politics and business and exercise the rights I already possessed.
I therefore claimed the rights to speak for the unenfranchised
women of the country and announced myself as a candidate
for the presidency. There you go. I know she dropped
a bomb with that one, definitely. So Ulysses of Grant
was in his first term at this time, and most
(14:33):
people were thinking that he would run again in eighteen
seventy two, so the Republican nomination was out. She knew
that she wouldn't get the Democratic nomination, so if she
was going to run for president, she was going to
have to nominate herself and get enough support to get
her name put on the ballot. So that's what she
sets out to do, and she has pretty creative ways
(14:55):
of going about it. She does. She launches into this
whole series of kind of next steps to prepare for her.
You can't really call it a campaign, I guess, but
it sort of was ance an unannounced campaign a good
way to put up. So she started by getting this
a big, fancy house between Madison and Fifth Avenues in
(15:16):
New York City's Murray Hill district, which was one of
the more aristocratic neighborhoods. So again we see the whole
class issue coming up here. She wanted to establish herself
as someone who was somebody rather than you know, a
poor girl from Ohio, definitely. And the next thing she
does is buy a newspaper. Yeah, buying a newspaper meant
that you're someone really influential. So she does buy one,
(15:37):
and she calls it wood Hole and Claughland's Weekly. And
she sets this up as doing a certain number of things.
Of course, first and foremost, it supports Victoria's c wood
Hole for President. It's a mixture of mud raking, fads
and scandals. For example, she publishes in her publication the
first English translation in the US of the con Munist
(16:00):
Manifesto just totally bizarro. That was one of the things
that threw me for the biggest loop in this episode.
I think, yeah, it's sort of mentioned as a fact
in her life, but seems like it should be a
very big deal. But I guess when we have so
many different things going on, it's hard to make any
one thing that prominent. Yeah, but you know, so she
is running this newspaper and it's not as out there
(16:23):
as it seems. It had a circulation of twenty people
by fall eighteen seventies, so she has a pretty large
audience reading all this Victoria woodhol of her president business.
But even with all this, she knows it's still going
to be tough to get elected if women can't vote
for her. Simple enough, right, So she moves to Washington
(16:45):
and declares herself a lobbyist on behalf of women's suffrage.
While she's in Washington, she befriends a congressman named Benjamin Butler,
who helps her kind of navigate the political arena. So
again another male presence who's kind of helping her find
her way. Together, they decided that women actually didn't need
an amendment to vote, they already had the right under
(17:07):
current laws. This is what they kind of formulated their lines.
They found in loophole and the lagic behind this was
that the fifteenth Amendment stated that the rights of citizens
of the U. S. Shall not be denied or abridged.
Then the fourteenth Amendment said that all persons born are
naturalized in the U. S. Or citizens. So when you
put the two together, it means that all citizens have
(17:28):
the right to vote. And since women are citizens, they
have the right to vote too. Yeah. So Woodhall, thanks
to Butler's influence, actually becomes the first woman to address
Congress on January eleventh, eighteen seventy one, and get to
make her case with this little loophole and and try
to see what everybody thinks about it. It doesn't really work,
(17:50):
but suffarate jets, including Susan B. Anthony, were really impressed.
I mean, how would you not be impressed by the
first woman speaking before Congress. Yeah, it's a pretty big first.
So Victoria was invited finally. She wanted this for a while,
but because of her background and because of her scandalous
sort of scandalous newspaper that she had, she wasn't invited before.
(18:12):
But she was finally invited to become part of the
National Women's Suffrage Association, but it was long before it
became clear to the others who were members that Victoria
wasn't just interested in women's rights. She started talking about
things like national public education, institutionalized welfare for the poor,
and perhaps the most controversial of things, she talked about
(18:33):
free love. Yeah, it's not quite the free love like
what we think of today. Basically, she wanted to reform
marriage laws and make man and wife equal partners in
a marriage, a relationship that was based on love and
free will. That's free love. It sounds a little more
scandalous than it was, but still it was something that
(18:55):
was pretty radical for a lot of the suffragists. A
lot of them were not on board with this idea
at all. No. I mean, for one thing, they didn't
want women's rights to be diverted by other concerns. And
on the other hand, some of the ideas like free
love were way too extreme for a lot of the
people who were involved. So regardless, Victoria gave the speech
(19:17):
about free love on November one, and this was kind
of a turning point for her because after she gave
the speech, it sparked this huge controversy all around her
and her cause. People pretty much ignored her message of
free love the way she had interpreted it and was
trying to get it across, and they took it more
as something that would be considered immoral in that day,
(19:40):
probably more like we consider free love to be now.
And so she was denounced in the press. It was
a big to do, yeah, and leaders of the Suffrage
Association withdrew their support. And so Victoria now is not
backed by this group of wealthy, influential women and people anymore. Um,
(20:00):
she's splintered off with a group of more radical women activists.
So this radical group forms the Equal Rights Party, which
has both men and women involved, and it's a party
about all sorts of reforms, basically a reform minded party.
And in eighteen seventy two the party nominated Victoria for president. Interestingly,
(20:23):
they also nominated Frederick Douglas, who was, of course the
very famous African American leader in the anti slavery movement
at the time as vice president. He turned the offer down.
But wood Hall, of course it does accept and in
her acceptance speech she says, quote, I've sometimes thought that
here is something providential and prophetic, and the fact that
(20:44):
my parents conferred upon me a name which forbids the
very thought of failure, So again bringing attention to her
queenly name again, Little Queen. At this time, though after
she was nominated, the Little Queen Star was already in decline.
Her views had caused her to lose a lot of
supporters already and her Wall Street business as well. She
(21:07):
went broke and she got turned out of her fancy
home and she had to suspend publication of her weekly.
So just a really kind of fast fall, you know,
because of the loss of her support and business, and
also because she had put so much money into these
campaigns that she was trying to pull off. Yeah, but
it was this one last scandal that really did her in,
(21:29):
and unfortunately it was instigated by Victoria herself. Yeah, here's
just a little background on that. The wealthy and influential
Beacher sisters from Boston, Katherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
of Uncle Tom's Cabin fame, they hated Victoria. According to
author Jacqueline McLean, who wrote a biography of Victoria Woodhull,
(21:52):
the Beacher's opposed women's suffrage, and we're really just critical
of how vocal Victoria was and everything that she did,
both in her paper and in the speeches that she gave.
But Victoria had something on them too. She had damaging
information about their brother, who was a prominent Brooklyn pastor,
Reverend Henry Ward Beecher now Reverend Beecher, had an affair
(22:12):
with the wife of one of his colleagues, possibly even
impregnated her. She had a miscarriage. Yeah, very scandalous. And
Victoria knew about this, but she hadn't used it yet.
I mean, this sort of war between the Beacher sisters
and Victoria had been going on for some time. So
weird too if you think about it. The Beacher sisters,
I mean, come on, we think of them as reformers too, definitely,
and and I know you were mentioning earlier. It is
(22:35):
strange that they were not reformers involved in the women's movement,
but so prominent in the abolition movement. Definitely, and I
think they were also Victoria saw them as being part
of that sort of elitist upper class set that she
just could the old establishment that she just couldn't break into.
So they were just always at odds because of that.
(22:56):
But in October eighteen seventy two, she revived the weekly
for one issue to write an expose about the whole
affair with the reverend. Maybe there are different theories about
why she did this. Maybe it's because the reverend wouldn't
lend her money when she came to him when she
was broke. Maybe it's because she just wanted to get
back at all her critics, especially the Beach Your Sister.
(23:21):
She had been blasted in the press for her free
love ideas, and she wanted to basically say, Okay, you
guys are hypocrites because I may be talking about free love,
but you guys are actually out there practicing if you're
having affairs with you know, your colleagues wives. So that
was sort of the motivation behind it. But the issue,
(23:41):
as you would imagine, flew off the stands. I think
people were buying not just the copies, but then buying
used copies, and the price kept going up. So it
was very popular, but it backfired against her in a
big way. Victoria and her sister were arrested for distributing
indecent literature through the mail and spent the election day
itself in jail. Yeah, and so after that, after a
(24:02):
scandal of that magnitude, even her biggest supporters turned against her.
So her political career, which hadn't ever really launched, I
mean to be honest, it hadn't really gotten off the ground,
came to an end quite suddenly. Yeah. I think they
were in jail for about two months, and then kept
getting re arrested after that for various indecency charges, libel charges,
(24:25):
and so it was a struggle for her after that,
as she had to travel around again with her husband
and her sister giving speeches here and there for a
little money. But people didn't really take her seriously after that,
more of a side show than a speaker you were
truly interested in hearing, right, So, yeah, kind of a
disappointing ending after a sort of promising rise. But we'll
(24:47):
have to wrap up the details of her life a
little bit. As I said at the beginning, there's so
much to say about her, even her later life after
all of this, that we could probably do a separate
podcast on just the post election victoria. But in ed
we'll just give you a little bit. She ends up
divorcing Blood in eighteen seventy six when she catches him
with another woman. So so much for free love, right,
(25:08):
we know she's not going to go for that. So
in eighteen seventy seven she joins up with her sister
Tennessee again besides seeing it, maybe they'll work better together,
and they moved to England and they get a fresh start.
But the really weird thing is it takes a hundred
thousand dollars for them to get to England and set
up quite nicely, and most people suspect that that money
(25:30):
came from a very prominent source. Yeah, a lot of
people suspect that they were actually bribed to leave the
country by Vanderbilt's son William after his death. And that's
because of some feuding that was going on between the
Vanderbilt siblings over their inheritance and William, since he got
the biggest chunk, he was afraid that the other siblings
(25:52):
were going to try to prove that their father was
not well in his mind when he made out his
will and used the the Claflind sisters unfortunately as an
example of why he was unwell. So William might have
bought them off and sent them packing to England. Yeah,
it's quite likely that somebody did, and it was probably him,
(26:13):
because they really didn't have any money at that point.
They weren't earning much on the on Victoria's speech circuit.
It's a good offer for them to have taken, though,
because once they're there, both of the ladies end up
becoming rich again. These these women have made so many
fortunes and lost so many. This time it's the old
fashioned way though. They just marry rich and m Victoria.
(26:34):
I think you mentioned she actually ends up inheriting not
just her husband's fortune but his father's as well. Yeah.
Unfortunately share her new husband, who loves her by all accounts,
he after he dies. I think he dies maybe a
day after a few days after his father dies. So
she inherits a ton of money and retires to the
(26:54):
English countryside with her daughter Zulu, and they spend the
rest of their life kind of funding these philanthropic efforts
and like education and so forth. And um, she lives
to be eighty eight. She lives to be eight. She
dies June nine in her sleep, seven years after American
women were granted the right to vote. Yeah, so this
(27:17):
kind of reminded me a little bit of our Chinese
Pirates episode in that it ends so well. Usually usually
I feel like our podcast, even if they're upbeat, they
have kind of a tragic ending. Not this one. Yeah,
this one has sort of a if not a happy ending,
because I think that she did want to redeem her
her name and her character and her image and maybe
(27:38):
never quite got where she wanted to get with that.
But um, a comfortable and a comfortable ending, a peaceful
kind of ending. So and as we said, that is
the end. That's all we have today on Victoria Claplin
with the whole, but we do have listener mail. We
do have listener mail. Sarah. You just mentioned to are
(28:00):
don't cross the Dragon Lady podcast, and this letter is
about that. It is from Jennie and Janie. I'm very
sorry if I mispronounced your name, but just gave it
my best shot. And she says, I'm really enjoying the
Dragon Lady podcast. I'm a proud member of the International
Wenches Guild, and I've played a pirate at my home,
Renaissance Farris since before it was cool. Just a little
(28:22):
tidbit regarding your bit about the no raping women rule.
You were discussing the notorious pirate Blackbeard and Parends Edward
Teach was well known to be a vicious barbarian. However,
he loved women. For all his violent, crazy antics, he
did not tolerate rape, abuse, or man handling of women
in any way. The punishment was death. He had multiple
(28:43):
wives and several ports, and allegedly showered them with gifts
and loving gestures. He treasured women and demanded that his
crew do the same. I guess he couldn't be all
bad because some firecrackers stuck in into beard. Not all
that bethan much there um. So Yeah, if you have
any more suggestions or comments you want to send us,
(29:05):
feel free to email us at History Podcast at how
stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter and mist
in history, and we're on Facebook. We check them both regularly,
so that's a great way to drop us a line.
And if you want to learn a little bit more
about the presidency in the United States, we have an
article called how the US President Works, and you can
(29:26):
find it by searching our homepage at www dot how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. So
learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
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(29:47):
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
Popular Podcasts
1. The Podium
The Podium: An NBC Olympic and Paralympic podcast. Join us for insider coverage during the intense competition at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. In the run-up to the Opening Ceremony, we’ll bring you deep into the stories and events that have you know and those you'll be hard-pressed to forget.
2. In The Village
In The Village will take you into the most exclusive areas of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to explore the daily life of athletes, complete with all the funny, mundane and unexpected things you learn off the field of play. Join Elizabeth Beisel as she sits down with Olympians each day in Paris.
3. iHeartOlympics: The Latest
Listen to the latest news from the 2024 Olympics.