As much as Hillary would like to be the first female candidate she in fact is not. Meet Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927) was an American leader of the woman’s suffrage movement. In 1872, Woodhull was the first female candidate for President of the United States. 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 government interference.
I guess the zombies that will follow her off a bridge, will try to find a way to rewrite history. Lets be honest Ms Woodhull’s story is a hell of a lot more interesting than Hillary’s. She didn’t even have the right to vote yet she was nominated and to make the story even better her running mate was Fredrick Douglass, a former slave and abolitionist. He didn’t have the right to vote either.
Having been vilified in the media for her support of free love, Woodhull devoted an issue of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly (November 2, 1872) to an alleged adulterous affair between Elizabeth Tilton and Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, a prominent Protestant minister in New York (he supported female suffrage but had lectured against free love in his sermons). Woodhull published the article to highlight what she saw as a sexual double-standard between men and women.
That same day, a few days before the presidential election, U.S. Federal Marshals arrested Woodhull, her second husband Colonel James Blood, and her sister Tennie C. Claflin on charges of “publishing an obscene newspaper” because of the content of this issue. The sisters were held in the Ludlow Street Jail for the next month, a place normally reserved for civil offenses, but which contained more hardened criminals as well. The arrest was arranged by Anthony Comstock, the self-appointed moral defender of the nation at the time. Opponents raised questions about censorship and government persecution. The three were acquitted on a technicality six months later, but the arrest prevented Woodhull from attempting to vote during the 1872 presidential election. With the publication of the scandal, Theodore Tilton, the husband of Elizabeth, sued Beecher for “alienation of affection.” The trial in 1875 was sensationalized across the nation, and eventually resulted in a hung jury.
Lets see the Democrats rewrite this piece of history….