Gender Slurs in Boston's Partisan Press During the 1840s

Abstract

During the height of the 1840 presidential campaign season, the Democratic editor, Charles Gordon Greene, printed in his Boston Morning Post the following lampoon of the September 10 Bunker Hill Whig Convention: “ ‘Madam, I am astonished that you do not wave your handkerchief; I thought that the women were all whigs,’ said a gentleman to a lady while the procession was passing by them on Thursday. ‘You are mistaken, sir,’ was the answer – ‘the whigs are all women.’ ” Greene efficiently slung this partisan mud at the 80,000 men and women who demonstrated their support for the Whigs at the gathering. The editor fastened upon the opposition's previous pronouncement that “ ‘The Ladies are all Whigs’ ” and inverted it to effeminize men who would vote for William Henry Harrison. “The Whigs are all women,” “Colonel” Greene now declared. On this page of one of Boston's most widely read dailies, the gender of both Whig men and women was questioned and distinctions between them became blurred in unflattering ways. Greene thus defiled both sexes with one swift printed gesture.

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