But if the class who should form this party will remain stupidly blind, and continue to maintain these virtually defunct parties by their strength, instead of constructing a new party of their own, nothing which will positively shape the…
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
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It may be set down at once and for all time that the patriotism and devotion professed by this class of orators and statesmen will be certain to continue until after their election is sure, after which it will do to watch them carefully…
This course being directly in the interest of special and favored interests, has the favor and support of capital, while labor looks on with the utmost indifference, and sees its productions filched year after year.
Each year this condition becomes more and more the controlling element of Congress and Legislature, and unless soon remedied, it will lead the country on blindly to its destruction.
The present doings of the people’s representatives, both State and national, are practically limited to getting the most they can for themselves and their friends, while the study of the interests of their constituents and the country is…
We have repeatedly appealed to the productive classes to arouse from the slough of trustfulness and indifference in which they have remained so long, and to bestir themselves about their business of governing themselves.
If the government is not what it should be, it is because the workingmen have permitted it to exist and not perform its duty.
The workingman makes the government, and therefore has it in his hands to unmake it.
Enforced virtue in any direction, except for the protection of the community, is not one of the principles of a free government; but everything that the government can do that will further the interests of the community, come legitimately…
Freedom stamps all that is genuine, and exposes and denounces all that is counterfeit and affected.
In the widest freedom there is the most virtue, because, under restraint, compulsion often passes for virtue, while its semblance only is there.
Let this be as it may, the existence of government upon its present basis of liberty and equality depends upon its checking a power that is being organized to control it.