Lockwood in ’84

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 Benjamin Butler, 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 Victoria Woodhull 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 California 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 San Francisco 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 Grover Cleveland 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.

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