The Terrible Siren: Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) by Sachs, Emanie - 1928

New York: Harper and Brothers, 1928. Book. Good. Hardcover. Decorative paper covered boards with cloth spine, paper labels on front and spine, rubbing to edges, text clean. Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin (1838-1927), was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement. An activist for women's rights and labor reforms, Woodhull was also an advocate of "free love", by which she meant the freedom to marry, divorce and bear children without social restriction or government interference. She made her first fortune as a fraudulent magnetic healer before joining the spiritualist movement in the 1870s. Together with her sister, Tennessee Claflin, she was the first woman to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street, making a second, and more reputable fortune. They were among the first women to found a newspaper in the United States, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, which began publication in 1870. She was politically active in the early 1870s, when she was nominated as the first woman candidate for the United States presidency. She was the candidate in 1872 from the Equal Rights Party, supporting women's suffrage and equal rights; her running mate was black abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass. A few days before the election, she was arrested on obscenity charges. Her newspaper had published an account of the alleged adulterous affair between the prominent minister Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton which had rather more detail than was considered proper at the time. However, all this accomplished was to add to the sensational coverage of her candidacy. B000HBXNCO..