Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (Early American Studies) [Hardcover]

Rosemarie Zagarri (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0812240278 | ISBN-13: 978-0812240276 | Publication Date: September 19, 2007 | Edition: First Printing

The Seneca Falls Convention is typically seen as the beginning of the first women's rights movement in the United States. Revolutionary Backlash argues otherwise. According to Rosemarie Zagarri, the debate over women's rights began not in the decades prior to 1848 but during the American Revolution itself. Integrating the approaches of women's historians and political historians, this book explores changes in women's status that occurred from the time of the American Revolution until the election of Andrew Jackson.

Although the period after the Revolution produced no collective movement for women's rights, women built on precedents established during the Revolution and gained an informal foothold in party politics and male electoral activities. Federalists and Jeffersonians vied for women's allegiance and sought their support in times of national crisis. Women, in turn, attended rallies, organized political activities, and voiced their opinions on the issues of the day. After the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a widespread debate about the nature of women's rights ensued. The state of New Jersey attempted a bold experiment: for a brief time, women there voted on the same terms as men.

Yet as Rosemarie Zagarri argues in Revolutionary Backlash, this opening for women soon closed. By 1828, women's politicization was seen more as a liability than as a strength, contributing to a divisive political climate that repeatedly brought the country to the brink of civil war. The increasing sophistication of party organizations and triumph of universal suffrage for white males marginalized those who could not vote, especially women. Yet all was not lost. Women had already begun to participate in charitable movements, benevolent societies, and social reform organizations. Through these organizations, women found another way to practice politics.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"'Pathbreaking' is an appellation reserved for few books; 'field-changing' is an even rarer designation. Nonetheless Rosemarie Zagarri's Revolutionary Backlash deserves both. She transforms the field of women's history and the standard political narrative that still dominates United States history."—William & Mary Quarterly

"Widely researched, gracefully written, and nicely illustrated. . . . A welcome corrective to both the usual women's history (without politics) and traditional political history (without women)."—North Carolina Historical Review

"This book makes a significant contribution to the literature of American women's history by defining a period that has received too little attention. The writing is gorgeous. The research is first-rate."—Edith B. Gelles, author of Abigail Adams: A Writing Life

"An engaging book that successfully marries political practice and political theory with gender ideology. It is also a persuasive book. . . . What makes [Zagarri's] study compelling is the pervasive presence of women; we hear their voices as they communicate privately in letters and as they argue publicly for rights. Visual evidences let us see them at political gatherings."—American Historical Review

About the Author

Rosemarie Zagarri is Professor of History at George Mason University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press; First Printing edition (September 19, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812240278
• ISBN-13: 978-0812240276
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,047,259 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars insightful inquiry into "female politicians" and the backlash against them, July 5, 2010

By 

hmf22 (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (Early American Studies) (Paperback)

Zagarri answers a question that has long puzzled me: Where did the cult of true womanhood come from? Why did Americans of the Jacksonian Era believe they needed to box women in so narrowly? Zagarri argues that the cult of true womanhood represented a backlash against the activities of "female politicians" during and immediately after the American Revolution. She argues persuasively that cultural observers were unnerved by women's open partisanship and spirited engagement with political news and that, as the United States settled into "the new republican order" (134), women were channeled away from partisan activity into attitudes and behaviors that would cultivate political tolerance and social cohesion. Women retained a political role, but after 1820 it was an explicitly non-partisan one.

Zagarri breaks new ground in defining the category of "female politicians," women who did not hold elected office but who followed politics eagerly, developing and expressing political opinions of their own (chapter 2). Many of the activities that Zagarri cites seem symbolic at best: women baked "election cakes" for election day, wore partisan rosettes to church, baited suitors who did not share their political views, and so forth. Others seem inevitable: women who managed farms and businesses for husbands absent on political business certainly contributed to the public good, but did they have any choice in the matter? But though many forms of women's political engagement seem rather modest in their impact, Zagarri amply documents women's interest in politics in the era 1760-1820 and also demonstrates that American men took women's political engagement seriously. This is the best explanation I've ever seen of what might have inspired the backlash against women's political engagement in the Jacksonian era and for much of the nineteenth century.

Essential reading for anyone interested in women in the Revolutionary or nineteenth-century United States.