Presidential candidates, part II

Title

Presidential candidates, part II

Description

Presidential Candidates, Part II.

1884 was a general election year - but the major parties refused to include women’s suffrage in their platforms.

Fed up, women revived Victoria Woodhull’s Equal Rights Party and nominated attorney Belva Lockwood for President. 🧵

Lockwood’s campaign wasn’t any more politically plausible than Victoria Woodhull’s, but it was a serious effort. 12 years earlier Woodhull didn’t actually campaign for the office or get any votes, and she wasn’t old enough to serve if elected.

Lockwood was 54, and qualified:

She knew every branch of the federal government first-hand, having lobbied Congress to let women practice law, the President to make sure she got the law degree she had earned, and argued at the Supreme Court as an advocate, the first woman to do so. See this thread.

Lockwood’s platform pledged “to do equal and exact justice to every class of our citizens, without distinction of color, sex, or nationality.” Planks included voting and property rights for ♀️, trade w/Latin America, temperance, and uniform marriage, divorce & inheritance laws.

Some feminists supported her: Matilda Joslyn Gage ran as an elector on the Equal Rights Party ticket.

ElizCadyStanton & Susan B Anthony had been burned by Victoria Woodhull. They rejected Lockwood’s candidacy, supporting the Republican party as ever.

Lockwood got tons of press, and won 4,149 votes. Indiana pledged all of its electoral votes to her - presumably as a joke. The federal govt refused to recognize the votes, so Lockwood yet again appealed to Congress. Congress refused to count them.

But she did it. She ran for President and thousands of men voted for her. In her own words: “I have had a splendid campaign, well received and attentively listened to everywhere...I had more fun and less worry than any of the other candidates and have accomplished a great deal.”

This amazing artifact is a rebus ribbon from Lockwood’s second, less successful 1888 campaign. @kclemay explains that we don’t know if it was genuine or a satire, but “such puzzles were commonly used by illiterate individuals in the 19th cent, including women voters.”

Lockwood summed up her race: “Reforms are slow, but they never go backwards. Their originators may die, but the reform will live to bless millions yet unborn.”

Creator

Daily Suffragist

Date

18/1/2020

Files

EOmpiKEW4AUEbCY.jpg
twitter.com_DailySuffragist_status_1218691583752712194.png

Citation

Daily Suffragist, “Presidential candidates, part II,” Daily Suffragist, accessed March 29, 2024, https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/items/show/215.

Output Formats