| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Alisse Portnoy. Their Right to Speak: Women's Activism in the Indian and Slave Debates. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 288. $49.95.
Alisse Portnoy's excellent book developed as an attempt to resolve a contradiction. In 1830, Catharine Beecher quietly organized women to petition the federal government, protesting the removal of Native Americans in Georgia and Alabama. In 1837, she very prominently denounced women's involvement in antislavery petitioning. This apparent contradiction in Beecher's understanding of woman's appropriate role turns out to be a rich vein for scholarly analysis. Portnoy argues that only by studying the rhetoric of Indian removal, African colonization, and the immediate antislavery movement together can we fully understand the politics of the movements themselves. In addition, she argues that studies of women's political activism structured by gender are insufficient, since they exclude analysis of the rhetorical constructions available to women.	1
Portnoy uses the techniques of rhetorical analysis to dissect constructions of the Indian removal and slavery issues. She focuses on the work of Jeremiah Evarts, who moved the Indian removal debate from the political and legal ground on which Democrat Andrew Jackson laid it out to the moral, religious, and domestic ground that helped to mobilize male and female Whigs. Evarts framed the problem as one touching on families, homes, and missionary work to an oppressed people. Using these arguments, Evarts and then Beecher could call on women to exercise their right to speak on an issue of national political importance without appearing to call for women's involvement in politics.	. . .

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