Susan B. Anthony, who knew Lockwood well, also refused to support the campaign, and complained about the candidate to a friend: “[I]f we women could all pull together! But we can’t—each has a plan & a plea.” Anthony continued to hope that the Republican Party would embrace the cause of woman suffrage. Lockwood knew better and, in a letter to Stow, wrote that the Republicans claimed to be the party of progress yet had “little else but insult for women when [we]…ask for recognition [of suffrage].”

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Lockwood paid Anthony little mind. She recruited other leaders of the women’s movement to organize electoral ballots on her behalf while Anthony, after hearing Lockwood give a campaign speech in New York, cattily commented that the Washington lawyer spoke too much like a male candidate—and had dyed her hair. “So human,” wrote Anthony, “are poor mortal strongminded women!!”

Strong-minded aptly described Lockwood, who made the decision not just to run but to join other candidates who wanted to change the way presidential campaigns were waged. Earlier in the 19th century, candidates communicated their views through the newspapers and were often berated for public campaign speeches. Lockwood believed that candidates should tour the country and speak, in person, to voters. She had canvassed for Horace Greeley in 1872 and knew something about how to drum up a crowd and sell campaign paraphernalia. She was the candidate of a party without a treasury and quickly devised a business model that permitted her to reach the voters. She offered herself as a paid lecturer, crisscrossing the country with money earned from talks before audiences at state fairs and civic associations. People came out to hear her in large numbers. She drew 500 at the opera house in Cleveland, a thousand in Flint, Mich., and an unknown number while making whistle-stop appearances on a train traveling from Louisville, Ky., to New York.

Her open, inviting campaign style made the political cartoonists take notice. On October 11 The Judge, another satirical weekly, poked fun at her with a jibe titled “The New Ticket: The Campaign Is Now Open.” A week later she was considered such hot news that Judge ’s editors put her on the cover in yet another satiric cartoon titled “Belva, dear!” Frank Leslie’s poked gentle fun at the lady candidate by publishing a drawing of the recent Belva Lockwood Club parades, organized by men who wore shapeless Mother Hubbard dresses, that were meant to belittle her campaign.

The November 4 election was tight and, when the ballots were tallied, Democrat Grover Cleveland squeaked by Blaine with a margin of less than 30,000 votes. With more than 10 million votes cast, Butler polled 175,000 votes, and Lockwood collected just under 5,000 votes in the eight states where men and women had gotten up ballots in her name.

Media spoofing continued despite the end of the campaign. Well-known Puck cartoonist Bernard Gillam put a scantily clad Lockwood at the head of the line of losers and their advisers in a sketch titled “The Busted Side-Show.” Commenting on the impact of an election that included several third-party candidates, The Judge also ran a cartoon in which Lockwood, Butler and Prohibition Party candidate John Pierce St. John pointed fingers at one another over the caption “Your Fault I Was Not Elected.” At Christmas Gillam again drew Lockwood and Butler, this time as “The Outcast Orphans.”

Lockwood, however, viewed her campaign efforts as entirely positive although others in the suffrage movement did not. Attorney Mary Greene, a member of a professional group for women lawyers called the Equity Club, claimed that the candidate had been “laughed at, whether just or unjust.” While in some quarters this may have been the case, Lockwood believed that, in a test of democracy, she had run as an acknowledged contender and had spoken her mind. Her talents had been celebrated along with the cause of women.

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