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Free Hearts and Free Homes: Gender and American Antislavery Politics
By exploring the intersection of gender and politics in the antebellum North, Michael Pierson examines how antislavery political parties capitalized on the emerging family practices and ideologies that accompanied the market revolution.
From the birth of the Liberty party in 1840 through the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1860, antislavery parties celebrated the social practices of modernizing northern families. In an era of social transformations, they attacked their Democratic foes as defenders of an older, less egalitarian patriarchal world. In ways rarely before seen in American politics, Pierson says, antebellum voters could choose between parties that articulated different visions of proper family life and gender roles.
By exploring the ways John and Jessie Benton Fremont and Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln were presented to voters as prospective First Families, and by examining the writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lydia Maria Child, and other antislavery women, Free Hearts and Free Homes rediscovers how crucial gender ideologies were to American politics on the eve of the Civil War.
From the birth of the Liberty party in 1840 through the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1860, antislavery parties celebrated the social practices of modernizing northern families. In an era of social transformations, they attacked their Democratic foes as defenders of an older, less egalitarian patriarchal world. In ways rarely before seen in American politics, Pierson says, antebellum voters could choose between parties that articulated different visions of proper family life and gender roles.
By exploring the ways John and Jessie Benton Fremont and Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln were presented to voters as prospective First Families, and by examining the writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lydia Maria Child, and other antislavery women, Free Hearts and Free Homes rediscovers how crucial gender ideologies were to American politics on the eve of the Civil War.
268 pages, Paperback
First published June 30, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 30, 2011
Yes, not something I would usually read, but I found some of it interesting. I was going to take a course, of which this book is required reading. Even though I dropped the course, I still found myself going back to the book. It is very specialized, not something the general reader would like. And, the author does occasionally over-reach in his interpretation of gender politics, which is in the current academic trend in history interpretation. The author is not separating the politics of history interpretation from the subject sufficiently. He is playing to the main audience of this book, an largely academic, feminist centered, professional historian. His charge of rape against those who spoke restricted woman's roles in mid-19th century society are too numerous.
So, why do I keep going back to the book. Pierson's research is extensive, and he does write fairly well. His attempt to intertwine gender ideology and politics on the eve of the Civil War is interesting. He does make some interesting assertions on the changing role of women in society in the wake of the industrial revolution, the emerging middle, consumer class, and the impact on family structure and woman's role in the fight for woman's suffrage and abolition.
I will finish this one more chapter and then put it away. I have not read the entire book and don't plan to.
So, why do I keep going back to the book. Pierson's research is extensive, and he does write fairly well. His attempt to intertwine gender ideology and politics on the eve of the Civil War is interesting. He does make some interesting assertions on the changing role of women in society in the wake of the industrial revolution, the emerging middle, consumer class, and the impact on family structure and woman's role in the fight for woman's suffrage and abolition.
I will finish this one more chapter and then put it away. I have not read the entire book and don't plan to.
February 22, 2013
Free Hearts and Free Homes is an interesting, engaging work about a topic that is so often overshadowed in the average history classroom concerning the antebellum period. Pierson [full disclosure: he was my professor] manages to deftly weave together gender and antislavery politics in a fashion that makes it quite clear that they were inextricably linked, a fact that many contemporaries attempted to outright ignore in that period, which consequently has shaped our understanding of that particular period until the emergence of the New Social History movement. Pierson's tales of Senator Thomas H. Benton's spitfire daughter Jessie Benton Fremont and her dashing husband the presidential candidate John C. Fremont were particularly memorable and riveting.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews