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We Mean To Be Counted: White Women And Politics In Antebellum Virginia (Gender And American Culture)

Over the past two decades, historians have successfully disputedthe notion that American women remained wholly outside the realm of politics until the early twentieth century. Still, a consensus has prevailed that, unlike their Northern counterparts, women of the antebellum South were largely excluded from public life. With this book, Elizabeth Varon effectively challenges such historical assumptions. Using a wide array of sources, she demonstrates that throughout the antebellum period, white Southern women of the slaveholding class were important actors in the public drama of politics. Through their voluntary associations, legislative petitions,presence at political meetings and rallies, and publishedappeals, Virginia's elite white women lent their support to suchcontroversial reform enterprises as the temperance movement and the American Colonization Society, to the electoral campaigns of the Whig and Democratic Parties, to the literary defense ofslavery, and to the causes of Unionism and secession. Against the backdrop of increasing sectional tension, Varon argues, thesewomen struggled to fulfill a paradoxical mandate: to act both aspartisans who boldly expressed their political views and asmediators who infused public life with the "feminine" virtues ofcompassion and harmony.

Series: Gender and American Culture

Hardcover: 248 pages

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press; 1 edition (March 9, 1998)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0807823902

ISBN-13: 978-0807823903

Product Dimensions: 1 x 6 x 10 inches

Shipping Weight: 6.4 pounds

Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Best Sellers Rank: #889,680 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #118 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Gender Studies > Women in History #1344 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Elections & Political Process > General #1476 in Books > History > Americas > United States > Colonial Period

The historical consensus is that white women in the antebellum period were excluded from political participation. Varon argues that elite middle class women were active in political participation, but they did not attempt to occupy the public sphere of men. Instead, women organized benevolent societies, worked as mediators, petitioned, volunteered, wrote, and attended public meetings. This book is not to show us women were always a cohesive force with a long term goal of suffrage or equality, indeed not because Southern women were generally quite content with the social order. We Mean to be Counted merely rejects the premise that women were entirely excluded from politics by showing that, no, there were women involved. Whether 10 or 10,000, women still found a place for themselves and their talents.According to Varon, women were believed by their nature to be disinterested, moral forces of restraint and education for men and children. In occupying a public sphere through political activity, women were fulfilling the duties of their private sphere of motherhood and wifedom. Organizations such as girl schools and colonization societies were seen as perfect for the nature of a woman, and any political knowledge passed on to her through participation in parties such as the Whig party (Whig Womanhood) was only so that she could use her intelligence to form a patriotic family. Initially also, Southern women were to act as sectional mediators between the North and South. As time went on, though, and slavery debates heated up, the concept of "Confederate motherhood," with its fervent belief in preserving the south as it was.Varon has written a well rounded perspective on elite white antebellum women and their roles in politics, which she supports convincingly with her source usage.

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