Description
Book SynopsisThe 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 th
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"'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 *
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Rights of Woman
Chapter 2. Female Politicians
Chapter 3. Patriotism and Partisanship
Chapter 4. Women and the "War of Politics"
Chapter 5. A Democracy—For Whom?
Epilogue: Memory and Forgetting
Acknowledgments
