The Origin, Tendencies and Principles of Government: Or a Review of the Rise and Fall of Nations from Early Historic Time to the Present;

AMERICA'S FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

with Special Considerations Regarding the Future of the United States as the Representative Government of the World.

First edition. Portrait frontispiece. 8vo. Publisher's green pebble-grain cloth, spine & upper board gilt, headcap repaired, a couple of stray ink marks to frontispiece, some spotting, later ownership inscription to front free endpaper. [iv], 40, 40A-J, 41-247, [1]pp. New York, Woodhull, Claflin & Co.,

A very good copy of Victoria Woodhull's (1838-1927) polemic, published as part of her campaign as the first female candidate for President of the United States.

 

She announced her candidacy in April, 1870, running for the Equal Rights Party, and famously chose Frederick Douglass as her vice president. Douglass had campaigned for the enfranchisement of newly liberated Black men from the war's conclusion in 1865. This largely symbolic gesture - Woodhull didn't ask his permission and Douglass didn't accept the nomination - was surely to highlight the increased inequality when enfranchisement was granted with the ratification of the 15th amendment on 3 February, 1870.

 

Her candidacy came to prominence when, on 11 January 1871, Woodhull "became the first woman to testify before a congressional committee, addressing the House Judiciary Committee on the subject of women's suffrage. Her argument was that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments already guaranteed a woman's right to vote. All that was needed, she said, was for Congress to pass an act guaranteeing those rights. Susan B. Anthony was so taken with Woodhull's argument that she asked her to repeat it at the National Woman Suffrage Association Convention" (Felsenthal).

 

Despite Woodhull's best efforts, she "received no electoral college votes, and her party made the ballot in only twenty-two states ..." Furthermore, her "enemies pounced on her utopian call for sexual freedom for both men and women, and stirred up the fear of miscegenation that white voters felt, with only minimal prompting, at the sight of a white women consorting with a black man" (Crispin). In the end, Ulysses Grant was re-elected.

 

This volume was published by Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee Claflin (1844-1923) and the collected speeches here include Woodhull's declaration of her candidacy, her address to Congress advocating for women's suffrage, her address to the National Woman Suffrage Association, and articles published under her name (though ghosted by Stephen Pearl Andrews) in the New York Herald.

 

Crispin, J., "Madam Prescient: Raising the spirit of American radicalism" in The Baffler No. 32 (2016), p96; Felsenthal, C., "The Strange Tale of the First Woman to Run for President" in Politico, 9 April 2015 - accessed online 3 July, 2023.

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Stock Code: 250571