Born the seventh of 10 children, Woodhull was educated haphazardly, married at 15 to a doctor and lout, divorced and remarried. Back in the days before women could vote, running for the presidency was an act of civil disobedience, not a career move. She was running to make a statement. But it's the statements made by Woodhull, who won the endorsement of the Equal Rights Party, that make me nostalgic for the era of daring. If women candidates today are afraid of being tainted with the brush of women's rights, hear Woodhull.
Women are the equals of men before the law and are equal in all their rights.
If you think sex is a controversial issue now, consider Woodhull. For one brief comet-like streak, Woodhull stirred up a coalition of suffragists, spiritualists, labor activists. Then almost inevitably, her celebrity was followed by notoriety, which in turn was followed by scandal, financial ruin, and a media feeding frenzy of Monica proportions. In the end, after her newspaper outed famed preacher Henry Ward Beecher as an adulterer, Woodhull was jailed for passing obscenity through the mails and spent election eve behind bars. I don't want to be too nostalgic.