Is it finally time for Madam President? Hillary Clinton's recent resurgence is raising hopes that a woman may finally become America's head of state.

It is 44 years since Senator Margaret Chase Smith became the first serious female contender for the presidency. Hers was a brave, self-funded and forlorn campaign for the Republican nomination, punctured by press incredulity that a woman's ambitions were not limited to the vice-presidency.

Yet, she was not the first to aim high. Although women were not constitutionally guaranteed the vote until 1920, there had never been anything in that famous document stating that only a man could be president. So, in 1872, the Equal Rights Party decided to test the water by nominating Victoria Woodhull.

Despite being 33, the candidate had already led a colourful life. Born in a small Ohio cottage to impecunious parents, her spiritualist mother was so convinced that her daughter was destined for great things that she christened her after the recently crowned British Queen. Minimal formal education did not prevent her and her sister, the even more alluring Tennessee Claflin, from living the American Dream. Appropriating the ageing financier Cornelius Vanderbilt as a sugar daddy, the sisters became the first female stockbrokers on Wall Street.

A race like a crackpot Dynasty

The contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton matches any fiction

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Life as capitalists did not prevent them espousing progressive causes, which they promoted in their own newspaper, Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly. Woodhull became the first woman to address a congressional committee.

But besides the commitments to greater social and sexual equality, it was her admission that she believed in “free love” that got Woodhull unwanted attention. To demonstrate her critics' double standards, she focused on the extramarital affairs in which supposedly upstanding men indulged. A bestselling edition of Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly named a leading preacher, the Rev Henry Ward Beecher, as an adulterer. This led to the arrest of Woodhull for sending obscene material through the post.

Consequently, she spent election day in jail (another first for a would-be president). Her votes - such as they were - went uncounted. Ironically, one woman, Susan B. Anthony, did manage to vote in the election and was subsequently fined for her impertinence. She voted Republican.

The country was far more excited by the looming Beecher trial. It ended in a mistrial, but not before its salacious details had titillated the nation. Almost forgotten in the media scrum and having fallen out with her political friends, Victoria Woodhull emigrated to England. She married a banker and ended her days as a lady of the manor.

Hillary Clinton has yet to claim her as an inspiration.

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