Victoria Woodhull, “a lady stock operator of Wall Street,” was a “highly unorthodox candidate for president,” concludes Ellen Fitzpatrick in her book The Highest Glass Ceiling—Women’s Quest for the American Presidency.
When Woodhull announced her “self-nomination” in 1870, women couldn’t vote. And, she didn’t meet the minimum age for president mandated by the Constitution.
Woodhull later explained that she was running “mainly for the purpose of drawing attention to the claims of woman to political equality with man.”