The Highest Office in the Land

Victoria Claflin Woodhull

Victoria Claflin Woodhull was a woman like no other. She has a place in history—being the first woman to run for president—but her own story was so complicated, her own adventures so diverse, her own background so questionable, it is remarkable she managed even to live to her 88 years, much less achieve some fame and respectability.

She was born into a family of charlatans, liars, and dirt poor crooks in the middle of the U.S. in the 19^th century. There were seven children and two of the worst parents in American history, living in a chaotic house on bare land. Her mother, Roxy, was probably certifiably insane. At best she was schizoid and cruel. Roxy tormented and laughed at her children, and sent them to the neighbors to beg for table scraps to eat.  Victoria’s father, Buck Claflin, did odd jobs and looked for schemes to make big money, including selling patent medicine cooked up by his wife of alcohol, laudanum, herbs, and molasses, and setting up his daughters Vicki and Tennie, as psychics and fortune tellers, and likely prostitutes as they grew up.  

Even in childhood, even with this squalid background, little Victoria had a way about her. She was a pretty, soft-spoken child, and when she went to the neighbor’s house she did not ask for food but asked if there were some work she might do around the house. Rachel Scribner, the kindly neighbor, was touched by her innocent appearance, with her sincere blue eyes, and asked her in. Victoria was to remember her experiences with Rachel all her life. Entering that house, with red gingham curtains and clean floors, was the first time she had seen a semblance of a normal home. Rachel taught her to read and write and presented a picture of a balanced and somewhat prosperous existence. Rachel was taken by cholera and died suddenly, and dealing with this death gave Victoria her first brush with spiritualism. She was literally struck down,  passing out, and experienced a vision of a changed world, a paradise. After this she occasionally consulted with the spirits of a variety of bygone heroes, including, most often, Demosthenes, who told her of the future and consoled her in times of stress. Her sister Tennie, too, had a certain spiritual talent, saying she could read minds. Buck Claflin played these traits his daughters shared for all they were worth in an era when séances were common and crowds flocked to religious revival meetings.  

Victoria and Tennie made a small fortune as faith healers. Victoria married Canning Woodhull when she was 14. He was a small-town doctor who unfortunately had a serious drinking problem. The couple had two children. The first born was mentally defective, and Victoria, probably correctly, thought this was because of Woodhull’s alcoholism. The second was a girl they named Zulu (or Zula). She divorced Woodhull after the second child was born, but kept his name. Victoria nurtured these children, and the sick father, all their lives, but she was to go on to much grander things.

She had a variety of careers before deciding to get into politics. Having lived as a woman abused in many ways, she fought for the rights of women and admired the women who were working in the movement. In their travels as spiritualists and faith healers, she and Tennie came in contact with influential men, and began to advise them on the stock market. They opened the first women’s brokerage firm, at a prestigious address in New York City, and became darlings of the press and basically the talk of the town, advising the likes of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was said to be contemplating marrying Tennie. Both young women were comely—Victoria was seven years older than her sister—and she had a line on stocks from other clients, giving her an edge with her advice to Vanderbilt. He was convinced that the tips she gave him were coming from the spirit world and believed her totally. However she got her information, Vanderbilt made millions from the deals she proposed.

Susan B. Anthony visited the brokerage house and was very impressed with the beautiful, competent Victoria, who espoused the Feminist cause of the day. Anthony had only good things to say about the future of the movement with such sleek young women involved. The suffragist movement was beginning to come to a head.

Victoria took it upon herself to speak to the Senate Judiciary Committee about women’s rights in 1870. It was unheard of that a woman would invade men’s domains in such a way, and she was shaky and terrified when she started her speech—but she did so, with help from Demosthenes and her other spirit friends, and made the point to the committee that women already had the right to vote as the 14^th and 15^th amendment stated that citizens of the United States automatically had that privilege. By now Victoria had several brilliant male allies, and had married Col. James Harvey Blood, a Civil War veteran. She and Tennie published a newsletter with a circulation of over 20,000 readers weekly. The main thrust of the newsletter was to promote Victoria as a candidate for President of the United States, but it was fearless in espousing such causes as sex education, free love, and spiritualism. Stephen Pearl Andrews was writing editorials, and he and Blood both wrote speeches for her as she began to make the lecture circuit. She had quite a following as a public speaker, and both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were pleased with her for a time. She ran for president as the nominee of the Equal Rights Party, and chose Frederick Douglass as her running mate, although he had not been consulted and never attempted to run. He was an acquaintance and had been a supporter of her efforts in women’s suffrage.

Victoria abhorred hypocrisy and made an enemy of the powerful Protestant minister Henry Ward Beecher by uncovering his sexual affairs with a number of his parishioners. She believed in free love and advocated for it, and called upon this man to reveal his own proclivities on the subject but he would not.

At one of her speeches she veered into the taboo territory of free love and someone in the audience called out, “Are you a free lover?” to which she replied “Yes! I am a free lover!” and then the wheels began to come off her otherwise promising campaign for women’s rights. Her ugly family roots came out, with her mother, definitely off the rails now, denouncing her and some of her sisters and in-laws coming forward to spread falsehoods about her and her intentions. Stanton and Anthony pulled away, fearing for the degradation of the movement they had worked so diligently for.

Politics was pretty much a shambles at this point. Running for re-election, Ulysses S. Grant was on shaky ground, and his opponent, Horace Greeley, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Stanton and Anthony reluctantly backed Grant, and both were arrested for voting and Susan spent a night in jail—but Victoria and Tennie had a much harder time of it in the court system, for unrelated reasons.

The Claflin-Woodhull weekly was declared to be obscene and the sisters were jailed for their part in passing its distribution through the U.S. mail.  Victoria, Tennie, and Col. Blood were in jail in November, and couldn’t have voted if they tried. Despondent in a jail cell, Victoria wrote to Stanton, calling on her to speak what she knew to be true about Beecher, but Stanton didn’t respond.

It took some behind the scenes work by a number of people to get Victoria and Tennie back but six months later their conviction was overturned by a technicality. They were marginalized by society now and Victoria’s bid to become the first woman president was soon all but forgotten.

In 1876, in hopes of cleansing her reputation, she divorced Col. Blood. “The grandest woman in the world went back on me,” he was reported as having said at the time.

A surprise was in store for her and her sister at the death of Cornelius Vanderbilt. After the reading of the will, it was clear there were going to be disputes among his heirs, and his son William Henry called on Victoria to inquire if she had certain letters in her possession that might create problems for the family. She played her last card pretty well, ending up with a thousand dollars (about $24,000 in today’s currency) for her and Tennie, enough to get them started on a life in a new place. They set sail for Southampton and both finished their lives in England.

According to Wikipedia, “She made her first public appearance as a lecturer at St. James Hall in London on December 4, 1877. Her lecture was called "The Human Body, the Temple of God," a lecture which she had previously presented in the United States. Present at one of her lectures was the banker John Biddulph Martin. They began to see each other and married on October 31, 1883. His family disapproved of the union.”

Her sister Tennie married Francis Cook, chairman of Cook and Son drapers, and also Viscount of Monserrate in Sintra on the Portuguese Riviera. Claflin was correctly known "Lady Cook", and in Portugal was also Viscountess of Monserrate. She lived a long and happy life from then on.

Victoria never gained the presidency, but by her unique gifts and tenacity she overcame incredible odds to rise from a childhood of impossible anguish to heights a lesser person might not even imagine.

Much of this information comes from the book OTHER POWERS, by Barbara Goldsmith; and from THE SCARLET SISTERS, by Myra MacPherson.