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xvi SHORT-ANSWER PRACTICE 1. Identify one key difference between Kerber and Zagarri in their interpretations of opportunities for women after the Revolution. Compare the main ideas of their arguments. 2. To what extent does each of these historians believe that women sought new opportunities for civic participation? Justify your claim with specific examples from each source. 3. In considering these two excerpts and Chapter 9 %u2019s discussion, why do you think the possibility of women%u2019s political participation was so controversial? Describe the social, cultural, and political circumstances that shaped people%u2019s attitudes. was not to tell her male relatives for whom to vote. She was a citizen but not really a constituent. . . . The notion that a mother can perform a political function represents the recognition that a citizen%u2019s political socialization takes place at an early age, that the family is a basic part of the system of political communication, and that patterns of family authority influence the general political culture. Yet most premodern political societies %u2014 and even some fairly modern democracies %u2014 maintained unarticulated, but nevertheless very firm, social restrictions that isolated the female domestic world from politics. The willingness of the American woman to overcome this ancient separation brought her into the all-male political community. In this sense, Republican Motherhood was a very important, even revolutionary, invention. It altered the female domain in which most women had always lived out their lives; it justified women%u2019s absorption and participation in the civic culture. ROSEMARIE ZAGARRI Revolutionary Backlash S ource : Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 1%u20132. In the immediate wake of the Revolution, women%u2019s prospects seemed promising. Writing in 1798, Massachusetts author Judith Sargent Murray congratulated her %u201cfair countrywomen%u201d on what she called %u201cthe happy revolution which the few past years has made in their favour.%u201d At long last, she said, %u201c%u2018the Rights of Women%u2019 begin to be understood: we seem, at length, determined to do justice%u201d to women. Such was her %u201cconfidence%u201d that she expected even more changes to be forthcoming. %u201cOur young women,%u201d Murray declared, are %u201cforming a new era in female history.%u201d . . . A male writer viewed the situation, particularly with respect to women, with alarm. %u201cThat revolutionary mania,%u201d he maintained, %u201cwhich of late has so forcibly extended its deleterious effects to almost every subject%u201d had infected women as well. . . . Yet both the threat and the promise of a new era for women seem to have come quickly to an end. In 1832 the historian Hannah Adams observed, %u201cWe hear no longer of the alarming , and perhaps obnoxious din, of the %u2018rights of women.%u2019 %u201d Why had just a few short decades produced such a changed perception of women%u2019s rights, roles, and responsibilities? [Zagarri%u2019s book is] about the transformation of American politics from the American Revolution to the election of Andrew Jackson. It is not the typical story of the rise of democracy and the emergence of the common man. It is a tale about how the Revolution profoundly changed the popular understanding of women%u2019s political status and initiated a widespread, ongoing debate over the meaning of women%u2019s rights. It shows how the Revolution created new opportunities for women to participate, at least informally, in party and electoral politics and how these activities continued into the era of the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans. Yet . . . [b]y 1830 a conservative backlash had developed. . . . At the same time, the broadening of political opportunities for white males, especially the growth of political parties and the expansion of the franchise, diminished the importance of nonvoters, including women, in the electoral process and led to an increasing focus on a more restricted group, white male electors. The era of democratization for men thus produced a narrowing of political possibilities for women. The Decline of Notables and the Rise of Parties How did Andrew Jackson and the new Democratic Party transform national politics? The American Revolution weakened the elite-run society of the colonial era but did not overthrow it. Only two states %u2014 Pennsylvania and Vermont %u2014 initially gave the votetoallmaletaxpayersandmanyfamiliesoflowrankcontinuedtodefertotheirnotables Northernlandlordsslave-owningplanterswas not to tell her male relatives for whom to vote. She was a citizen but not really a constituent. . . . The notion that a mother can perform a political function represents the recognition that a citizen%u2019s political socialization takes place at an early age, that the family is a basic part of the system of political communication, and that patterns of family authority influence the general political culture. Yet most premodern political societies %u2014 and even some fairly modern democracies %u2014 maintained unarticulated, but nevertheless very firm, social restrictions that isolated the female domestic world from politics. The willingness of the American woman to overcome this ancient separation brought her into the all-male political community. In this sense, Republican Motherhood was a very important, even revolutionary, invention. It altered the female domain in which most women had always lived out their lives; it justified women%u2019s absorption and participation in the civic culture. In 1832 the historian Hannah Adams observed, %u201cWe hear no longer of the the %u2018rights of women.%u2019 %u201d Why had just a few short decades produced such a changed perception of women%u2019s rights, roles, and responsibilities? [Zagarri%u2019s book is] about the transformation of American politics from the American Revolution to the election of Andrew Jackson. It is not the typical story of the rise of democracy and the emergence of the common man. It is a tale about how the Revolution profoundly changed the popular understanding of women%u2019s political status and initiated a widespread, ongoing debate over the meaning of women%u2019s rights. It shows how the Revolution created new opportunities for women to participate, at least informally, in party and electoral politics and how these activities continued into the era of the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans. Yet . . . [b]y 1830 a conservative backlash had developed. . . . At the same time, the broadening of political opportunities for white 352 Comparing Secondary Sources How Did the American Revolution Affect the Status of Women? Historian Linda K. Kerber coined the term republican motherhood to describe a new civic role that opened up for women %u2014 particularly white, middle-class women %u2014 in the generation after the American Revolution. Despite the Revolutionary commitment to equality, Kerber argued that American women had little appetite, and men had no tolerance, for women as independent actors in politics or the public sphere. However, in the passage quoted below, Kerber contends that women gained better educational opportunities by arguing that they had to cultivate patriotism and civic virtue in their sons. This achievement was radical in its own way, since republican motherhood involved ordinary women in public affairs in a new way. The idea of republican motherhood is now widely accepted. Rosemarie Zagarri does not contest it directly. But in the excerpt below, she argues that there was support for a more radical possibility in the first decades after the Revolution: the independent participation of women in public affairs. This possibility has not received much attention because it did not last long. By 1830, a conservative backlash against women%u2019s participation in politics foreclosed earlier opportunities. Thus, while not denying the value or significance of the idea of republican motherhood, she suggests that other political roles were open to women in the earliest years of American independence. LINDA K. KERBER Women of the Republic S ource : Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 269%u2013284. Americans did not choose to explore with much rigor the socially radical implications of their republican ideology. Only haltingly did a few develop the obvious antislavery implications of egalitarian rhetoric. Nor did they explore very deeply the implications of female citizenship; the Revolution and the Republic that followed were thought to be men%u2019s work. %u201cTo be an adept in the art of Government,%u201d Abigail Adams observed to her husband, %u201cis a prerogative to which your Sex lay almost an exclusive claim.%u201d . . . They devised their own interpretation of what the Revolution had meant to them as women, and they began to invent an ideology of citizenship that merged the domestic domain of the preindustrial woman with the new public ideology of individual responsibility and civic virtue. They did this in the face of severe ridicule, responding both to the anti-intellectual complaint that educating women served no practical purpose and the conservative complaint that women had no political significance. . . . To accept an openly acknowledged role for women in the public sector was to invite extraordinary hostility and ridicule. . . . Only the Republican Mother was spared this hostility. In the years of the early Republic a consensus developed around the idea that a mother, committed to the service of her family and to the state, might serve a political purpose. Those who opposed women in politics had to meet the proposal that women could %u2014 and should %u2014 play a political role through the raising of a patriotic child. The Republican Mother was to encourage in her sons civic interest and participation. She was to educate her children and guide them in the paths of morality and virtue. But she boys and some girls. In other regions, there were few publicly supported schools, and only 25 percent of the boys and perhaps 10 percent of the girls attended private institutions or had personal tutors. Although many state constitutions encouraged support for education, few legislatures acted until the 1820s. Then a new generation of educational reformers established statewide standards. To encourage students, the reformers chose textbooks such as Parson Mason Weems%u2019s The Life of George Washington (c. 1800), which praised honesty and hard work and condemned gambling, drinking, and laziness. To bolster patriotism and shared cultural ideals, reformers required the study of American history. As a New Hampshire schoolboy, Thomas Low, recalled: %u201cWe were taught every day and in every way that ours was the freest, the happiest, and soon to be the greatest and most powerful country of the world.%u201d Boxed Features Throughout the Book Offer Targeted %u00a0Skill-Building and PracticeComparing Secondary SourcesThe AP %u00ae Comparing Secondary Sources feature brings historical argumentation directly into each chapter, helping students understand how to work with secondary sources, and culminating in a set of Short-Answer Practice questions designed to help scaffold the skills needed for SAQs on the exam. %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. 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