Revolutionary Backlash

Rosemarie Zagarri. Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.

Traditional histories of political involvement by women generally begin Antebellum reform movements, culminating in the Seneca Falls convention which has long served as the traditional starting point of formal feminism in American history. Without denying the importance of Seneca Falls or the Antebellum feminist movement in general, Zaggari argues that that particular "feminist moment" is best understood not as the birth of a new level of activism by women, but rather as the culmination of decades of prior political activity by women, and the reaction which ultimately limited it. The Early Republic had been a period in which white women had a much higher degree of public participation in political life than subsequent generations would be accorded. The reasons why that was, and why women lost that freedom of participation, are tied to the role in which race and gender defined full citizenship in the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian years.

Women in the early Republic had many concerns about their rights--"rights" much more broadly defained than suffrage. The language of the Revolution was universal in scope, and just as African-Americans used that language to argue for full inclusion in the polity after independence, so did white women argue that civil law, family law, and other social and legal strictures required their consent just as the Revolution itself had laid claim to legitimacy based on the consent of the governed.

For a time, there was room and even encouragement for female participation in the political realm, even if most white men resisted the revolutionary logic of extending freedom and equality to women and African-Americans. Female patriots gave legitimacy to Revolutionary and Whig rhetoric And during the early national period there was initially a generally welcoming attitude towards "female politicians" speaking and writing on behalf of Federalist and Republican positions. However, involving women in partisan politics threatened their gendered role as protectors of social morality and private, domestic harmony. The quest to push women out of politics began.

Within a few decades it succeeded, so much so that by the late 1820's many older women found that they could surprise their daughters and granddaughters by explaining that in their youth women were allowed and sometimes even encouraged to take independent positions on political matters and even enter the public sphere while doing so.