Radical Reform Rhetoric and the Ethics of White Manhood in Antebellum America

Abstract

Argues both abolitionists and women’s rights activists understood that the positions of slaves and women in American culture were deeply woven into America’s social fabric; that swift, broad-reaching reform was necessary; and that any significant change could be realized only through an ideological reform of national identity. Discusses ways activists proposed immediate abolition and an aggressive reconstruction of gender dynamics based on the ideology of separate spheres, attacking patriarchy and its institutions, and seeking to reform the nation and its people through a moral agenda. Claims these reformers thought reorganization of national identity required concomitant ethical reform of the hegemonic masculinity represented by white, middle-class, Protestant men.