Examining women's involvement in Mississippi politics during the 1840s
and 1850s, this article suggests that many literate, mostly upper-class
white women took an interest in electoral politics, read the party press,
and occasionally spoke in public. The majority of white women from
all classes attended one or two functions every campaign season. Their
widespread presence underscores the social significance of party politics
as a community event. Similar to studies of northern states, this
investigation offers evidence that white women participated in the public
world of formal politics, denying the fiction of "separate spheres." Yet,
unlike many women in the North, these women never expanded this challenge
to patriarchy. In the 1850s, white Mississippi women closed ranks to
defend a regional ethic based upon white male inviolability. Everything
these women said in public and virtually all their actions conformed
to traditional gender relations and reinforced the prevailing class
and gender hierarchy. Thus, while historians should consider white
women's presence at rallies and parades as another indication that
totally separate spheres were fictional, we should also note that their
involvement more often restrained rather than liberated them.