Practice All GMAT Reading Questions

The fields of antebellum (pre-Civil War) political history and women’s history use separate sources and focus on separate issues. Political histori-

ans, examining sources such as voting
records, newspapers, and politicians’
writings, focus on the emergence in the
1840’s of a new "American political
nation," and since women were neither

voters nor politicians, they receive little
discussion. Women’s historians, mean-
while, have shown little interest in the
subject of party politics, instead draw-
ing on personal papers, legal records

such as wills, and records of female
associations to illuminate women’s
domestic lives, their moral reform
activities, and the emergence of the
woman’s rights movement.

However, most historians have
underestimated the extent and signifi-
cance of women’s political allegiance
in the antebellum period. For example,
in the presidential election campaigns

of the 1840’s, the Virginia Whig party
strove to win the allegiance of Virginia’s
women by inviting them to rallies and
speeches. According to Whig propa-
ganda, women who turned out at the

party’s rallies gathered information
that enabled them to mold party-loyal
families, reminded men of moral values
that transcended party loyalty, and con-
ferred moral standing on the party.

Virginia Democrats, in response,
began to make similar appeals to
women as well. By the mid-1850’s
the inclusion of women in the rituals of
party politics had become common-

place, and the ideology that justified
such inclusion had been assimilated
by the Democrats.