We Mean to Be Counted - (Gender and American Culture) by Elizabeth R Varon (Paperback)

About the Book

We Mean to Be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia

Book Synopsis

Over the past two decades, historians have successfully disputed
the 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 published
appeals, Virginia's elite white women lent their support to such
controversial 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 of
slavery, and to the causes of Unionism and secession. Against the backdrop of increasing sectional tension, Varon argues, these
women struggled to fulfill a paradoxical mandate: to act both as
partisans who boldly expressed their political views and as
mediators who infused public life with the "feminine" virtues of
compassion and harmony.

Review Quotes

A very good book that all women s and southern historians need to read.

"Journal of Southern History"

This book clears a window into a previously obscure realm of southern white women s history.

"American Historical Review"

A very good book that all women 's and southern historians need to read.

"Journal of Southern History"

A very good book that all women_s and southern historians need to read.

"Journal of Southern History"

A very good book that all womena[s and southern historians need to read.

"Journal of Southern History"

A very good book that all womens and southern historians need to read.

"Journal of Southern History"

A well-written, carefully argued examination of Virginia women's public roles.

"Left History"

This pathbreaking Ýbook¨ will appeal to both scholars and nonspecialist audiences.

"Choice"

"A well-written, carefully argued examination of Virginia women's public roles.

"Left History""

A very good book that all womenUs and southern historians need to read.

"Journal of Southern History"

This pathbreaking [book] will appeal to both scholars and nonspecialist audiences.

"Choice"

Varon argues convincingly that women took an active role in antebellum politics in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

"The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography"

About the Author

Elizabeth R. Varon is professor of history at Temple University.