--- title: Victoria Woodhull is the First Woman to Run for President description: Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President, shared a modern vision for personal freedom and sexual freedom. canonical: https://time.com/6107025/victoria-woodhull-free-love-movement/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2021-10-29T13:30:39.000Z article:modified_time: 2024-01-24T11:08:58.000Z article:section: History og:title: Victoria Woodhull is the First Woman to Run for President og:description: Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President, shared a modern vision for personal freedom and sexual freedom. og:url: https://time.com/6107025/victoria-woodhull-free-love-movement/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba96e08d01445106/698a1dc6b21a9cdb4e5053e8/Victoria-Woodhull-1.jpg?branch=production&width=686&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 686 og:image:height: 386 og:image:alt: Victoria Woodhull og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Victoria Woodhull is the First Woman to Run for President twitter:description: Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President, shared a modern vision for personal freedom and sexual freedom. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba96e08d01445106/698a1dc6b21a9cdb4e5053e8/Victoria-Woodhull-1.jpg?branch=production&width=686&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The 19th Century Advocate For 'Free Love' and Women's Liberty > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=9d055f1f-f4f0-4ee4-9f75-a6dfdab3b5f5&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=9d055f1f-f4f0-4ee4-9f75-a6dfdab3b5f5&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The History You Didn't Learn: Victoria Woodhull and the Free Love Movement [Watch (HLS stream): The History You Didn't Learn: Victoria Woodhull and the Free Love Movement](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ieEgDEpH.m3u8) (7:43)  _Published 2021-10-29. The freedom to love who you want to love, without government interference, might seem like a relatively new thing, but the push for this ideal goes as far back as the 19th century-- with Victoria Woodhull and the Free Love Movement._ by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/) and [Video by Arpita Aneja](https://time.com/author/arpita-aneja/) Updated: Jan 24, 2024 11:08 AM UTCPublished: Oct 29, 2021 1:30 PM UTC The freedom to love who you want to love, without government interference, might seem like a relatively new thing, but the push for this ideal goes as far back as the 19th century-- with Victoria Woodhull and the Free Love Movement. by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/) and [Video by Arpita Aneja](https://time.com/author/arpita-aneja/) Updated: Jan 24, 2024 11:08 AM UTCPublished: Oct 29, 2021 1:30 PM UTC When the roots of modern-day polyamory, sexual freedom, and “free love” are discussed, they’re often traced back to the 1960s—the era of hippies, the movement for queer rights, and the [“sexual revolution.”](https://time.com/3611781/sexual-revolution-revisited/) But in the U.S., those ideas are a century older still: The above video looks back at the life and legacy of Victoria Woodhull who, in the 1870s, was advocating for people to have the rights to love who they loved—without interference from the government. “She was probably the most famous woman in America at the time,” says Michael Bronski, author of _A Queer History of the United States_ and Professor of the Practice in Media and Activism at Harvard University. [Woodhull](https://time.com/4913233/womens-equality-day-2017/) was a stock broker and newspaper publisher best known for being the first woman to testify before a U.S. House committee in 1871—in favor of [women’s suffrage](https://time.com/5879346/19th-amendment-facts-myths/)—and as [the newly formed Equal Rights Party’s first candidate for President](https://time.com/5917131/seneca-falls-myth/) in 1872\. (Woodhull lost to Ulysses S. Grant, but her Party’s ideas have, in many senses, lived on.) Woodhull and activists formed the Equal Rights Party as a kind of [“People’s Party”](https://www.google.com/books/edition/The%5FMyth%5Fof%5FSeneca%5FFalls/ZYZgAwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22equal+rights+party%22+%22woodhull%22+%22tetrault%22&pg=PA63&printsec=frontcover) to challenge the fact that women couldn’t vote, and to raise awareness of social issues from labor union rights to [temperance](https://time.com/5469508/prohibition-repeal-anniversary-history/), according to Lisa Tetrault’s _The Myth of Seneca Falls:_ _Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898._ Woodhull’s platform was also inspired by aspects of the “Free Love” movement, a grassroots movement that believed “the state had no right to dictate how people led their personal lives around romance and sexuality,” according to Bronski. Utopian socialist and philosopher John Humphrey Noyes has been credited with coming up with the term “free love” in 1848 and for starting [a swingers community](https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/o/OneidaCommunityCollection/hsr1.htm) in upstate New York, one of several communal living experiments that cropped up nationwide in the mid-1800s as [a reaction to the industrial revolution’s emphasis on capitalism](https://news.usc.edu/100871/the-scandalous-story-behind-a-popular-silverware-brand-free-love-religion-and-eugenics/). Woodhull learned about the movement from Stephen Pearl Andrews, a writer for Woodhull’s newspaper _Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly_. She was heterosexual, but the movement’s ideals appealed to her as someone who had been divorced—Woodhull would marry three times in her lifetime. This was considered scandalous at the time for a woman, let alone one in the public eye. “She was married by the time she was a teenager to a man who was significantly older than her. It was not a good marriage by any means,” says Teri Finneman, associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas and author of the book _Press Portrayals of Women Politicians, 1870s-2000s._ “She felt it was really unfair that men could go around and have affairs. It was considered just part of society, while women had no other choices.” Woodhull explained what “Free Love” meant to her in her most famous speech, [“And the Truth Shall Make You Free: A Speech on the Principles of Social Freedom,”](https://www.google.com/books/edition/A%5FSpeech%5Fon%5Fthe%5FGreat%5FSocial%5FProblem%5Fof/w1AZAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Yes,+I+am+a+Free+Lover.+I+have+an+inalienable,+constitutional+and+natural+right+to+love+whom+I+may,+to+love+as+long+or+as+short+a+period+as+I+can%3B+to+change+that+love+every+day+if+I+please,+and+with+that+right+neither+you+nor+any+law+you+can+frame+have+any+right+to+interfere.+And+I+have+the+further+right+to+demand+a+free+and+unrestricted+exercise+of+that+right,+and+it+is+your+duty+not+only+to+accord+it,+but+as+a+community,+to+see+I+am+protected+in+it.+I+trust+that+I+am+fully+understood,+for+I+mean+just+that,+and+nothing+else.&pg=PA23&printsec=frontcover) on Nov. 20, 1871, to a crowd of 3,000 people at Steinway Hall in New York City: --- > “” ---  Black and white print illustrated by Thomas Nast, and published in Harper's Weekly, circa 1872, depicting suffragist Victoria Woodhull as a winged 'Mrs Satan,' holding a scroll proclaiming "be saved by Free Love." Ken Florey Suffrage Collection/Gado—Getty Images Such a position was controversial. An 1872 Thomas Nast cartoon dubbed Woodhull “Mrs. Satan,” parodying the pushback from conservatives. “The press wrote that her ideas were preposterous and revoltingly, indecent and nasty, and so she got a very strong lashing for having these kinds of liberal, open views as far as marriage and sexuality,” says Finneman. Woodhull died in 1927 at the age of 88\. And while the “Free Love” movement doesn’t boast concrete policy accomplishments, it did succeed in starting a conversation. “It was enormously effective in terms of getting people to think, and talk about, these issues,” Bronski explains. “They set the stage for a new way to think about idea of personal freedom and what people were allowed to do in their personal lives.” Scholars say Woodhull’s 1870s vision of personal freedom is universal and can be applied more broadly to a range of issues. “I have students ask me, ‘Did \[Woodhull\] advocate for gay rights back then?'” says Finneman. “The general theme of what she was saying is still very applicable today, as far as…’who is anybody else to judge my love life and who I want to spend time with?'” ## Transcript [00:00] I think that when we're looking at, [00:02] at the matter of how things are shaped or how movements [00:06] worked, right, I would argue that the LGBTQ movement is, [00:09] is actually dependent on many predecessors. [00:11] One of which was, was essentially, sort of an anarchist/ [00:15] libertarian view of how the state should treat people and I believe [00:19] that comes out of Victoria Woodhull. [00:38] The freedom to love who you want to love without government [00:40] interference may seem like a relatively new thing, but the push [00:44] for this ideal actually goes as far back as the 19th century [00:48] with the Free Love movement [00:50] So the Free Love movement was essentially a middle-class movement from [00:54] 19th century America. It came out of, to varying degrees, utopian [00:59] communities, such as the Robert Owen community and it essentially [01:04] said that people should be free to make their own decisions [01:07] about their private and personal lives around romance around [01:11] and around sexuality. [01:13] It was condemned by many ministers, by priests by the more [01:19] conservative social Purity movement, such as the Woman's [01:23] Christian Temperance Union. [01:26] They were not 1960's [01:27] hippies, they did not say everybody should be sleeping around. [01:31] They were not saying people should be totally free with their [01:34] sexuality. They were simply saying that the state had no right [01:39] to dictate how people led their personal lives around romance [01:43] and sexuality. [01:46] One of the leaders of this movement was Victoria Woodhull. [01:50] Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president [01:53] in this country, which a lot of people have forgotten because [01:56] she has not been included in history textbooks. [01:59] She was really a leader in this nation as a suffrage [02:02] leader, as a woman who started a newspaper, as a woman who [02:06] had a firm on Wall Street. [02:08] And I think the most important things about her for us today [02:11] is that she was actually what we would call a sex radical. [02:15] She was a self-described free lover, which meant that, although she was married three [02:20] times and probably monogamous in all those marriages, [02:23] she believed that the state should have nothing to say about [02:26] how she chose lovers, when she chose them, or how long she stayed [02:30] with them, or for anyone else. [02:33] One of the reasons that Victoria Woodhall got so attached to the Free Love movement [02:36] is due to a very disastrous first marriage that she had. [02:40] She was married by the time she was a teenager to man who was significantly older than her. [02:44] It was not a good marriage by any means. [02:47] And she felt it was really unfair that men could go around [02:50] and have affairs. [02:51] And it was considered just being a part of society, [02:53] Part of male culture while women were stuck in horrible [02:57] marriages and had no other choices [03:00] Woodhull was instrumental to the Free Love movement because she was, [03:04] by any measure, one of the most famous women in America or I should say one of [03:08] the most infamous, right? [03:09] Thomas Nast did a famous cartoon of her called Mrs. Satan. [03:12] And she had an enormous political platform. [03:15] She had her own newspaper, she ran a brokerage firm, [03:18] she socialized with people like Cornelius Vanderbilt, [03:21] she was friends with many of the women, and worked with many of [03:24] the women that were in the suffrage movement at the time. [03:27] So of all the people in America who might actually say these [03:32] things she got the most publicity, and I don't doubt [03:35] she was a bit of a publicity hound. [03:39] So, there are many reasons why she isn't remembered today. [03:43] First of all, a lot of history textbooks are very male-centered [03:48] with prominent white male figures from history. [03:51] And a lot of women's history hasn't been included. [03:53] Secondly, Victoria Woodhull was a very liberal person for her time, to put it mildly, [03:58] and she was involved with the suffrage movement with Elizabeth [04:01] Cady Stanton and with Susan B. Anthony. And, initially, they worked together. [04:06] But then there came a point where her views were considered [04:08] so radical by Susan B, Anthony that she was sort of kicked [04:13] out of the movement. [04:14] And so when the suffragists themselves, other feminist, went [04:18] to write their own history, she was excluded from that. [04:21] So she was a figure who was so controversial for her time, [04:25] considered so outside of the norm that not even her contemporaries [04:29] included her. [04:31] The free love movement of the 19th [04:32] century was also too controversial to be successful at the time. [04:36] The Free Love movement had a list of demands, none of which were ever going to be put into [04:43] practice by the government. [04:44] People we're not going to get rid of marriage laws, people [04:48] in the 19th century [04:48] were not going to get get rid of laws that criminalize [04:51] adultery. In terms of of concrete accomplishments, it really did almost [04:57] nothing, in terms of the larger scale, [04:59] it was enormously effective in terms of getting people to think, [05:03] and getting people to talk about these issues. [05:06] And while the Free Love movement and Victoria Woodhull [05:08] weren't necessarily advocating for LGBT rights, Woodhull's [05:12] influence can be seen in today's movements. [05:16] I have students ask me did she advocate for gay rights back then? [05:19] I highly doubt it. [05:21] I highly doubt it, you know she was very liberal but I don't think that she had reached that point. [05:26] She was heterosexual herself, having been married 3 times. [05:30] But certainly this concept that she and her [05:33] colleagues created of this Free Love platform is an ideology [05:37] that we have seen rippling across time, across the century, and the general theme of [05:43] what she was saying is still very applicable today. [05:45] As far as, "Who is anybody else to say?" [05:48] "Who's anybody else to judge my love life and who I want to spend time with?" [05:55] So I'm pretty sure that nobody in the LGBT movement [05:58] in the 1950s or after [06:00] Stonewall said, "You know what? Victoria Woodhull was really right, we should follow her example." [06:06] But they certainly followed the spirit of her example, [06:08] which is that the state should have no interference in your personal life. [06:14] In fact, Woodhull's ideals of personal freedom are still being [06:17] fought for by activists like those at the Woodhull Freedom Foundation. [06:21] I was awestruck at this human being so many, many years ahead of her time [06:27] advocating for the things I believed in and that I wanted [06:31] to lead an organization that would be focused on. [06:35] The organization focuses on issues such as protecting the rights of sex workers [06:40] and protecting the rights of all kinds of families. [06:43] Victoria Woodhull was a proponent of the right to really form [06:48] family. The universal Declaration of Human Rights states that [06:53] every individual has the right to form family. [06:56] The United Nations itself has refused to define family saying [07:02] that the complexity of family today is so vast that it couldn't [07:06] be limited by any one description. [07:08] That's a total mirror of what Victoria Woodhull believed. [07:13] If I had to explain to a student, [07:18] what they should learn in history that isn't actually taught [07:22] in textbooks, I would say to find the hidden gems, [07:27] like Victoria Woodhull. [07:29] We need to bring those stories to the forefront for our children [07:35] and for our children's children. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6107025/victoria-woodhull-free-love-movement/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6107025/victoria-woodhull-free-love-movement/"},"headline":"The 19th Century Advocate For 'Free Love' and Women's Liberty","datePublished":"2021-10-29T13:30:39.000Z","dateModified":"2024-01-24T11:08:58.000Z","description":"Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President, shared a modern vision for personal freedom and sexual freedom.","url":"https://time.com/6107025/victoria-woodhull-free-love-movement/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltba96e08d01445106/698a1dc6b21a9cdb4e5053e8/Victoria-Woodhull-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Olivia B. 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