The Two Faces of Republicanism: Gender and Proslavery Politics in Antebellum South Carolina

Abstract

Prompted by theories about the complexities of power in modern society, a number of historians, feminists most prominent among them, have joined the recent debate over the proper definition and boundaries of "the political." The stakes are high. As one feminist philosopher put it, "this question about the limits of the political is precisely a political question."! In advocating an expanded approach to political history that transgresses the limits of formal politics and confounds conventional distinctions between public and private spheres, Joan Scott and others have raised the intriguing possibility of a gendered history of politics. 2

Sequence and strategy in the secession of the American South

“…First of all, nullification occurred in "the midst of the state's greatest religious revival" (McCurry 1992(McCurry :1248. The language of popular evangelicalism made easier the project of popular mobilization outside the inner circle of planters and merchants.…”