Lockwood in ’84

In 1884, a woman couldn’t vote for the president of the United States, but that didn’t stop activist lawyer Belva Lockwood from conducting a full-scale campaign for the office. She was the first woman ever to do so, and she tried again for the presidency in 1888. It’s time we recognized her name.

by Jill Norgren

n 1884, Washington, D.C., attorney Belva on October 24, 1830, the second daughter, ILockwood, candidate of the Equal Rights and second of five children, of Lewis J. Party, became the first woman to run a full Bennett, a farmer, and Hannah Green campaign for the presidency of the United Bennett. Belva was educated in rural school- States. She had no illusion that a woman houses, where she herself began to teach at could be elected, but there were policy issues the age of 14. In her first profession she found on which she wished to speak, and, truth be told, her first cause. As a female instructor, she she welcomed the notoriety. When challenged received less than half the salary paid to the as to whether a woman was eligible to become young men. The Bennetts’ teenage daughter president, she said that there was “not a thing thought this treatment “odious, an indignity in the Constitution” to prohibit it. She did not not to be tamely borne.” She complained to the hesitate to confront the male establishment wife of a local minister, who counseled her that barred women from voting and from pro- that such was the way of the world. But bright, fessional advancement. With the spunk born of opinionated, ambitious Belva Bennett would not a lifelong refusal to be a passive victim of dis- accept that world. crimination, Lockwood told a campaign From her avid reading of history, Belva reporter, “I cannot vote, but I can be voted imagined for herself a life different from that of for.” Her bid for the presidency startled the her mother and her aunts—the life, in fact, of country and infuriated other suffrage leaders, a great man. She asked her father’s permission many of whom mistakenly clung to the idea that to continue her education, but he said no. She the Republican Party would soon sponsor a then did what she was expected to do: On constitutional amendment in support of November 8, 1848, she married Uriah woman suffrage. McNall, a promising young farmer. She threw In the last quarter of the 19th century, herself into running their small farm and Lockwood commanded attention, and not just sawmill, wrote poetry and essays, and deter- from the columnists and satirists whom she led mined not to let marriage be the end of her indi- a merry chase. Today she is virtually unknown, viduality. She wanted to chart her own course, lost in the shadows of the iconic suffrage lead- and tragedy gave her an opportunity to do so. ers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. In April 1853, when she was 22 and her daugh- Anthony. That’s an injustice, for Belva ter, Lura, three, Uriah McNall died. Lockwood was a model of courageous activism The young widow had a second chance to go and an admirable symbol of a woman’s move- out into the world. She resumed her teaching ment that increasingly invested its energies in and her education. In September 1854, she party politics. left Lura with her mother and traveled 60 Lockwood was born Belva Ann Bennett in the miles east to study at the Genesee Wesleyan Niagara County town of Royalton, New York, Seminary in Lima. The seminary shared a

12 Wilson Quarterly A fluttery Lockwood shares the stage in this campaign cartoon with , candidate of the Greenback-Labor and Anti-Monopoly parties in 1884, who polled less than 2 percent of the popular vote. building with the newly coeducational Erie Canal town of Lockport. Four years later, Genesee College, which offered a more rigor- she took over a small school in the south-cen- ous program. Belva transferred to the college tral New York town of Owego. In 1866, Belva (becoming its third woman student), where McNall traveled to Washington and began to she took courses in science and politics. She reinvent herself as an urban professional. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree (with hon- was neither flamboyant nor eccentric. Indeed, ors) on June 27, 1857, and soon found a posi- had she been a man, it would have been appar- tion teaching high school in the prosperous ent that her life was following a conventional

Autumn 2002 13 Belva Lockwood

19th-century course: Talented chap walks off the president on his choice: “The only danger is, that farm, educates himself, seeks opportunities, he will attempt to suppress polygamy in that and makes a name. But because Belva strove to country by marrying all of the women him- be that ambitious son of ordinary people who self.” A year later, in 1886, in another com- rises in the world on the basis of his wits and his munication to Cleveland, she laid claim to the work, she was thought a radical. position of district recorder of deeds and let In Washington, Belva taught school and the president know in no uncertain terms that worked as a leasing agent, renting halls to she had a “lien” on the job. She did not give up: lodges and organizations. She tutored herself in In 1911 she had her name included on a list sent the workings of government and the art of lob- to President William Howard Taft of women bying by making frequent visits to Congress. In attorneys who could fill the Supreme Court 1868 she married Ezekiel Lockwood, an elder- vacancy caused by the death of Justice John ly dentist and lay preacher who shared her Marshall Harlan. reformist views. We do not know precisely when she fell in love with the law. In antebel- hat persuaded Lockwood that she lum America the profession belonged to men, Wshould run for the highest office in the who passed on their skill by training their sons land? Certainly, she seized the opportunity to and nephews and neighbors’ boys. After the shake a fist at conservatives who would hold Civil War a handful of women, Lockwood women back. And she was displeased with the among them, set out to change all that. She enthusiasm for the Republican Party shown believed from her reading of the lives of great by suffrage leaders Susan B. Anthony and men that “in almost every instance law has Elizabeth Cady Stanton. More than that, how- been the stepping-stone to greatness.” She ever, campaigning would provide an opportu- attended the law program of Washington’s nity for her to speak her mind, to travel, and to National University, graduated in 1872 (but establish herself on the paid lecture circuit. only after she lobbied for the diploma male She was not the first woman to run for president. administrators had been pressured to with- In 1872, New York City newspaper publisher hold), and was admitted to the bar of the had declared herself a pres- District of Columbia in 1873 (again, only after idential candidate, against Ulysses Grant and a struggle against sex discrimination). When the Horace Greeley. But Woodhull, cast as Mrs. Supreme Court of the United States refused to Satan by the influential cartoonist Thomas admit her to its bar in 1876, she single-handedly Nast, had to abandon her campaign barely a lobbied Congress until, in 1879, it passed, month after its start: Her radical “free love” reluctantly, “An act to relieve the legal disabil- views were too much baggage for the nascent ities of women.” On March 3, 1879, women’s movement to bear, and financial mis- Lockwood became the first woman admitted to fortune forced her to suspend publication of the high Court bar, and, in 1880, the first Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly at the very woman lawyer to argue a case before the moment she most needed a public platform. Court. Years later, Lockwood—and the From her earliest years in Washington, women who drafted her—spoke of the cir- Lockwood coveted a government position. She cumstances surrounding her August 1884 applied to be a consul officer in Ghent during nomination, their accounts colored by ego and the administration of Andrew Johnson, but her age. Lockwood received the nod from application was never acknowledged. In later Marietta Stow, a reformer who years, she sought government posts—for spoke for the newly formed, California-based women in general and for herself in particular— Equal Rights Party, and from Stow’s colleague, from other presidents. Without success. When attorney Clara Foltz. Foltz later insisted that passed over Lockwood and Lockwood’s nomination amounted to nothing appointed as minister to Turkey a man thought more than a lighthearted joke on her and to be a womanizer, she wrote to compliment the Stow’s part. But Stow’s biographer, Sherilyn

>Jill Norgren, a former Wilson Center fellow, is professor of government and legal studies at John Jay College and the University Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is writing the first full biography of Belva Lockwood, to be published in 2003. Copyright © 2002 by Jill Norgren.

14 Wilson Quarterly Bennion, has made a strong case that the nom- dened by Stanton and Anthony’s continuing ination was, in fact, part of a serious political strat- faith in major-party politics: “It is quite time that egy devised by Stow to deflect attention from the we had our own party, our own platform, and rebuff given suffrage leaders that year at the our own nominees. We shall never have equal Republican and Democratic conventions, and rights until we take them, nor respect until we to demonstrate that “the fair sex” could create command it.” its own terms of engagement in American Stow had her candidate! She called a party party politics. Women were becoming stump convention on August 23, read Lockwood’s let- speakers, participants in political clubs, candi- ter to the small group, and proposed her as the dates for local office, and, in a handful of party’s nominee for president of the United places, voters. (By 1884 the Wyoming, Utah, and States, along with Clemence S. Lozier, a New Washington Territories had fully enfranchised women, who in 14 states were permitted to vote in elec- tions dealing with schools). Marietta Stow began the Equal Rights Party because she had long been interest- ed in matters of public policy and because readers of her newspaper, The Women’s Herald of Industry, had expressed an interest in a “new, clean, uncorruptible party.” In July 1884 Stow urged Abigail Scott Duniway, an Oregon rights activist and newspaper editor, to accept the Equal Rights Party’s nom- ination. But Duniway declined, believing, as Bennion writes, that “flaunting the names of women for official positions” would weaken the case for equal rights and provide “unscrupulous opponents with new pretexts and excuses for lying about them.” Undiscouraged, Stow con- tinued her search for a candidate. In August, she hit her mark. Belva Lockwood, Women’s Herald reader, had already begun to think of herself as a standard-bearer. On August 10 she wrote to Stow in San Francisco and asked rhetorical- Belva Lockwood in a photo probably taken in the early 1880s. ly, and perhaps disingenuously, “Why not nominate women for important York City physician, as the vice presidential places? Is not Victoria Empress of India? Have nominee. Acclamation followed, and letters we not among our country-women persons of were sent to the two women. The dispatch to as much talent and ability? Is not history full of Lockwood read as follows: “Madam: We have precedents of women rulers?” The the honor to inform you that you were nomi- Republicans, she commented, claimed to be the nated, at the Woman’s National Equal-Rights party of progress yet had “little else but insult for Convention, for President of the United States. women when [we] appear before its conven- We await your letter of acceptance with breath- tions.” (She had been among those rebuffed that less interest.” summer by the Republicans.) She was exas- Lockwood later said that the letter took her perated with the party of Lincoln and mad- “utterly by surprise,” and she kept it secret for

Autumn 2002 15 Belva Lockwood several days. On September 3, she wrote to been in name, ‘the land of the free and home accept the nomination for “Chief Magistrate of of the brave.’” She pledged herself to the fair dis- the United States” from the only party that tribution of public offices to women as well as “really and truly represent the interests of our men, “with a scrupulous regard to civil service whole people North, South, East, and reform after the women are duly installed in West. . . . With your unanimous and cordial sup- office.” She opposed the “wholesale monopoly port...we shall not only be able to carry the of the judiciary” by men and said that, if elect- election, but to guide the Ship of State safely ed, she would appoint a reasonable number of into port.” Lockwood went on to outline a women as district attorneys, marshals, and fed- dozen platform points, and her promptness in eral judges, including a “competent woman formulating policy signaled that she (and the to any vacancy that might occur on the United party) intended to be taken seriously about States Supreme Bench.” matters of political substance. Lockwood’s views extended well beyond women’s issues. She adopted a moderate orecasters in ’84 were predicting another position on the contentious question of tar- Fclose presidential race. Four years earli- iffs. In her statement of September 3, she er, James Garfield had defeated Winfield placed the Equal Rights Party in the political Hancock by just 40,000 votes (out of nine mil- camp that wanted to “protect and foster lion cast), and people were again watching the American industries,” in sympathy with the critical states of New York and Indiana. The working men and women of the country nearly even division of registered voters who were organized against free trade. But in between the two major parties caused the official platform statement reprinted on Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland and campaign literature, her position was modi- Republican candidate James G. Blaine to shy fied so that the party might be identified as away from innovative platforms. Instead, the two middle-of-the-road, supporting neither high men spent much of their time trading taunts and tariffs nor free trade. Lockwood urged the insults. That left the business of serious reform extension of commercial relations with foreign to the minor parties and their candidates: countries and advocated the establishment of Benjamin Butler (National Greenback/Anti- a “high Court of Arbitration” to which com- Monopoly), John St. John (Prohibition), and mercial and political differences could be Samuel Clarke Pomeroy (American referred. She supported citizenship for Prohibition). Butler, St. John, and Pomeroy Native Americans and the allotment of trib- variously supported workers’ rights, the abolition al land. As was to be expected from an attor- of child and prison labor, a graduated income ney who earned a substantial part of her tax, senatorial term limits, direct election of livelihood doing pension claims work, she the president, and, of course, prohibition of adopted a safe position on Civil War veterans’ the manufacture, sale, and consumption of pensions: She argued that tariff revenues alcohol. Lockwood joined this group of noth- should be applied to benefits for former sol- ing-to-lose candidates, who intended to pro- diers and their dependents; at the same time, mote the public discussion of issues about she urged the abolition of the Pension which Blaine and Cleveland dared not speak. Office, “with its complicated and technical The design of Lockwood’s platform reflect- machinery,” and recommended that it be ed her practical savvy. The platform, she said, replaced with a board of three commissioners. should “take up every one of the issues of the She vowed full sympathy with temperance day” but be “so brief that the newspapers advocates and, in a position unique to the plat- would publish it and the people read it.” (She form of the Equal Rights Party, called for the understood the art of the sound bite.) Her reform of family law: “If elected, I shall rec- “grand platform of principles” expressed bold ommend in my Inaugural speech, a uniform sys- positions and comfortable compromise. She tem of laws as far as practicable for all of the promised to promote and maintain equal polit- States, and especially for marriage, divorce, ical privileges for “every class of our citizens irre- and the limitation of contracts, and such a reg- spective of sex, color or nationality” in order to ulation of the laws of descent and distribution make America “in truth what it has so long of estates as will make the wife equal with the

16 Wilson Quarterly husband in authority and right, and an equal Abigail Duniway’s warning that women partner in the common business.” candidates would meet with “unpleasant Lockwood’s position paper of September 3 prominence” and be held up “to ridicule and was revised into the platform statement that scorn” proved correct, but Lockwood actually appeared below her portrait on campaign fly- encountered no greater mockery than the men ers. The new version expanded on certain in the election. She had to endure silly lies points, adopted some sharper rhetoric, and about hairpieces and sham allegations that she added several planks, including a commitment was divorced, but Cleveland was taunted with that the remaining public lands of the nation cries of “Ma, Ma Where’s My Pa” (a reference would go to the “honest yeomanry,” not the rail- to his out-of-wedlock child). Cartoonists for roads. Lockwood stuck to her radical positions Frank Leslie’s Illustrated and Puck, mass-cir- of support for women’s suffrage and the reform culation papers, made fun of all the candi- of domestic law, but, in a stunning retreat, her dates, including Lockwood. This was a rite of earlier promises of an equitable allotment of pub- passage and badge of acceptance. Leslie’s also lic positions by sex and any mention of the ran an article on Lockwood’s campaign and con- need for women in the judiciary were absent templated the entrance of women into party pol- from the platform. itics with earnest good wishes: “Woman in pol- itics. Why not? .... Twenty years ago woman’s rmed with candidate and platform, the suffrage was a mere opinion. To-day, it is Aleaders and supporters of the Equal another matter.” Rights Party waited to see what would happen. After establishing campaign headquarters at A great deal depended on the posture adopted her Washington home on F Street, Lockwood by the press. Fortunately for Lockwood and wrote to friends and acquaintances in a dozen the party, many of the daily newspapers con- states asking that they arrange ratification trolled by men, and a number of weeklies meetings and get up ballots containing the owned by women, took an interest in the names of electors (as required by the newest contender in the election of ’84. A day Constitution) pledged to her candidacy. This let- after she accepted the nomination, The ter to a male friend in Philadelphia was a typ- Washington Evening Star made her candidacy ical appeal: “That an opportunity may not be front-page news and reprinted the entire text of lost for the dissemination of Equal Rights prin- her acceptance letter and platform of ciples, cannot, and will not the Equal Rights September 3. The candidate told a Star Party of Philadelphia hold a ratification meet- reporter that she would not necessarily receive ing for the nominee, put in nomination a the endorsement of activist women. Indeed, Presidential Elector, and get up an Equal leaders of the nation’s two top woman suffrage Rights ticket? Not that we shall succeed in the associations had endorsed Blaine, and Frances election, but we can demonstrate that a Willard had united temperance women with the woman may under the Constitution, not only Prohibition Party. “You must remember,” be nominated but elected. Think of it.” Lockwood said, “that the women are divided up into as many factions and parties as the men.” loser to home, party supporters orga- On September 5, an editorial in the Star Cnized a ratification meeting in mid-Sep- praised Lockwood’s letter of acceptance: “In all tember at Wilson’s Station, Maryland. (They soberness, it can be said [it] is the best of the lot. bypassed the District to make the point that, It is short, sharp, and decisive. . . . It is evident under federal law, neither men nor women that Mrs. Lockwood, if elected, will have a pol- could vote in the nation’s capital.) Lockwood icy [that] commends itself to all people of com- delivered her first speech as a candidate at this mon sense.” Editor Crosby Noyes rued the let- gathering of about 75 supporters and journal- ter’s late appearance: Had it existed sooner, ists, and two Lockwood-for-president electors “the other candidates might have had the ben- were chosen. She did not disclose at the rally that efit of perusing it and framing their several Clemence Lozier had declined the nomination epistles in accord with its pith and candor.” for vice president—and not until September 29 Newspaper reporting elsewhere was similarly did Marietta Stow decide to run in the second respectful. spot and complete the ticket.

Autumn 2002 17 Belva Lockwood

Throughout September the national press face of the starving hordes of pauper labor in spread the story of the Equal Rights Party and other countries.” She applauded the good its candidate, and letters poured in to the that capital had done and said that “capital house on F Street. They contained “earnest and labor did not, by nature, antagonize, inquiries” about the platform, nasty bits of and should not by custom.” character assassination, and, from one male If the people who came to hear Lockwood admirer, the following poem, which so expected nothing but women’s rights talk, amused Lockwood that she gave it to a reporter they were disappointed. She and her party col- for publication: leagues believed that the Equal Rights Party should not run a single-issue campaign. Of O, Belva Ann! course, the platform introduced “feminist” Fair Belva Ann! ideas. But it also allowed Lockwood to I know that thou art not a man; address many other issues that preoccupied But I shall vote, Americans. So she directed only a small part Pull off my coat, of her talk to describing how women had And work for thee, fair Belva Ann. helped to make the country “blossom as a For I have read rose.” She intended her candidacy to make What thou hast said, history in the largest sense—by demonstrat- And long I’ve thought upon thy plan. ing that the Constitution did not bar women Oh no, there’s none from running in elections or serving in fed- Beneath the sun eral elective office. Who’d rule like thee, my Belva Ann! People who saw her for the first time said that her campaign photographs did not do her The letters also brought invitations to justice: The lady candidate had fine blue speak in cities across the East and the eyes, an aquiline nose, and a firm mouth, and Midwest. In late September, Lockwood pre- she favored fashionable clothes. The car- pared to go on the stump, her expenses covered toonists naturally focused on her sex, and by sponsors. Many of the lectures she gave the public had its own fun by creating were paid appearances; indeed, she claimed dozens of Belva Lockwood Clubs, in which to be the only candidate whose speeches the men meaning to disparage Lockwood parad- public paid to hear. She was a widowed mid- ed on city streets wearing Mother Hubbard dle-class woman (her second husband, who was dresses, a new cut of female clothing with an more than 30 years her senior, had died in unconstructed design that freed movement 1877), and her livelihood depended on the and was considered improper to wear out of earnings of her legal practice. So the time she doors. devoted to politics had to pay. When the elec- tion was over, she told reporters that she had n November 3, the day before the a satisfaction denied the other candidates: Oelection, Lockwood returned from a She had come out of the campaign with her campaign tour of the Northwest. She had expenses paid and “$125 ahead.” stayed “at the best hotels; had the best sleep- Lockwood took to the field in October. ing berths.” Her last stop was Flint, She made at least one full circuit in Michigan, and she told a Washington October, beginning in Baltimore, Phila- reporter that 1,000 people had attended her delphia, and New York. Mid-month she (paid) talk there, a larger number than delivered speeches in Louisville and in congressman Frank Hurd drew the following Cleveland, where she appeared at the Opera night. When asked on November 4 where she House before 500 people. In a loud and would await the election news, she replied that nasal voice, she attacked the high-tariff posi- her house would be open throughout the tion of the Republicans on the grounds that evening, “the gas will be lighted,” and it would injure American commerce. But reporters were welcome to visit. The historic she also assailed the free-trade policy of the first campaign by a woman for the presiden- Democrats, arguing that they were “willing cy of the United States had ended, though in to risk our manufacturing interests in the politics, of course, nothing is ever over.

18 Wilson Quarterly The boisterous mustachioed members of the Belva Lockwood Club of Rahway, New Jersey, enlivened the 1884 campaign when they took mockingly to the streets in their poke bonnets and Mother Hubbards.

When the ballots were tallied, Cleve- ply dumped into the waste basket as false land was declared the winner, with an votes.” In addition, she charged that many of Electoral College vote of 219 to182. In the the votes cast for her—totalling at least popular vote, he squeaked by with a mar- 4,711—in eight other states (“New gin of 23,000. Hampshire, 379 popular votes; New York, 1336; Michigan, 374; Illinois, 1008; Iowa, n 1884 the United States had yet to adopt 562; Maryland, 318; California, 734 and the Ithe “Australian” ballot, which has the entire Electoral vote of the State of names of all candidates for office printed on Indiana”) had been “fraudulently and illegally a single form. The system then in effect, dat- counted for the alleged majority candidate.” ing from the beginning of the Republic, She asked that the members of required that each political party in a state Congress “refuse to receive the Electoral issue ballots that contained the names of returns of the State of New York, or count that party’s slate and the electors pledged to them for the alleged majority candidate, for them. A supporter cast his vote by depositing had the 1336 votes which were polled in the ballot of his chosen party in a box. Some said state for your petitioner been counted states required that voters sign the back of their for her, and not for the one Grover ballot, but the overall allocation of ballots was Cleveland, he would not have been award- not controlled by polling place officials, and ed a majority of all the votes cast at said elec- stuffing the box was not impossible. It was also tion in said state.” (Cleveland’s margin of possible for officials in charge of the ballot votes in New York was 1,149). Lockwood boxes to discount or destroy ballots. And also petitioned Congress for the electoral that, Lockwood claimed, is precisely what vote of Indiana, saying that at the last happened. moment the electors there had switched In a petition sent to Congress in January their votes from Cleveland to her. In fact, 1885, she wrote that she had run a cam- they had not; it was all a prank by the good paign, gotten up electoral tickets in several ol’ boys of Indiana, but either she did not states, and received votes in at least nine of know this or, in the spirit of political the- the states, only to determine that “a large ater, she played along with the mischief vote in Pennsylvania [was] not counted, sim- and used it to her advantage.

Autumn 2002 19 Belva Lockwood

The electoral votes of New York (36) Lockwood always spoke proudly of her and Indiana (15) had been pivotal in the campaigns, which were important but not 1880 presidential race. With her petition singular events in a life that would last 87 and credible evidence, Lockwood—per- years. She was a woman of many talents haps working behind the scenes with con- and interests. Blocked from political office gressional Republicans—hoped to derail or a high-level government position Cleveland’s victory and keep him from because of her sex, she sought new realms becoming the first Democratic president after the campaigns of 1884 and 1888 since James Buchanan in 1856. She failed where she might raise questions of public when the legislators ignored her petition, policy and advance the rights of women. which had been referred to their Representing the Philadelphia-based Uni- Committee on Woman Suffrage. On versal Peace Union, she increased her work February 11, Congress certified the elec- on behalf of international peace and arbi- tion of New York governor Grover Cleve- tration at meetings in the United States and land as the 22nd president of the United Europe. She participated in an often-inter- States. locking network of women’s clubs and pro- fessional organizations. And she main- ubsequent interviews suggest that tained a high profile in the women’s SLockwood was satisfied with the cam- suffrage movement, which struggled paign, if not with the vote counting. The U.S. throughout the 1890s and the first two Constitution had betrayed women in the decades of the 20th century to create a win- matter of suffrage, but it did not, as she said, ning strategy. In the spring of 1919, the prohibit women’s speech and women’s can- House of Representatives and the Senate didacies. As a celebration of the First acted favorably on legislation to amend the Amendment, Lockwood’s campaign was a Constitution to give women the right to great success. It served the interests of vote; the proposed Nineteenth Amendment women (though it angered Susan B. went out to the states in a ratification Anthony), the candidate, and the country. process that would not be completed until Lockwood ran as an acknowledged con- August 1920. But Belva Lockwood never tender and was allowed to speak her mind. got the right to vote. She died in May 1917. American democracy was tested, and its performance did not disappoint her. ockwood remains the only woman to After the election, while maintaining her Lhave campaigned for the presidency law practice, Lockwood embarked on the life right up to Election Day. (In 1964, Senator of travel that she had long sought—and that Margaret Chase Smith of Maine entered she continued until her early eighties. Not several Republican primaries and received 27 unlike 21st-century politicians, she capital- delegate votes; in 1972, Representative ized on the campaign by increasing her Shirley Chisholm of New York ran in a presence on the national lecture circuit; number of Democratic primaries and won she even made at least one product 151 delegates.) In 1914 Lockwood, then 84 endorsement (for a health tonic). She had years old, was asked whether a woman long worked as a pension claims attorney, would one day be president. The former and, while traveling as a lecturer, she used candidate answered with levelheaded pre- the publicity surrounding her appearances science and the merest echo of her former to attract clients who needed help with thunder: “I look to see women in the United applications and appeals. In 1888, the States senate and the house of representatives. Equal Rights Party again nominated her as If [a woman] demonstrates that she is fitted its presidential candidate. She ran a more to be president she will some day occupy the modest campaign the second time around, White House. It will be entirely on her own but she still offered a broad domestic and for- merits, however. No movement can place eign policy platform and argued that her there simply because she is a woman. It “equality of rights and privileges is but sim- will come if she proves herself mentally fit for ple justice.” the position.” ❏

20 Wilson Quarterly