Mrs. President

Mrs. President is an opera about the first woman to run for president of the United States. In 1872, Victoria Woodhull ran against Ulysses S. Grant on the Equal Rights Party ticket. Her running mate was Frederick Douglass. Her platform included women?s suffrage and many other much-needed social reforms, but it also included an inflammatory issue which offended America?s puritanical morals: free love. For Victoria, this meant equality between the sexes, but the establishment was threatened by the upending of the status quo. She was branded ?Mrs. Satan.? She tried to enlist the support of the most popular preacher of the day, Henry Ward Beecher who, despite his unblemished reputation, regularly seduced his female parishioners. The moniker ?Mrs. Satan? came into use after Harper?s Weekly published in February 1872, a cartoon of that title by Thomas Nast which parodied Victoria Woodhull and her beliefs.