Review

General Books

Lori Ginzberg's entry in Harlan Davidson's useful American History Series exemplifies the utility and potential artistry of brief synthetic treatments of important historical issues. Engagingly written, Women in Antebellum Reform is organized into chapters treating the roots of reform, charity and class relations, "drink, sex, crime, and insanity" (a kind of catchall for movements dealing with perceived immorality and aberrance), antislavery, and women's rights. Though these movements did not follow each other in a neat series, their peaks and immediate results may be traced in great arcs over a timeline, and sometimes these movements gained momentum and recruits from the "previous" big thing, as with the relationship between antislavery and the women's rights movement. From the participants' perspective, too, we might see that this series of movements spans the political spectrum from more mainstream to more radical and risky, the latter certainly characterizing both antislavery and the cause of women's rights in the nineteenth century.	1
Ginzberg begins appropriately with the roots of reform in the political and social trends that fed the Second Great Awakening and created ways, and even mandates, for women to take responsibility in public life, despite and as part of their "separate sphere." One of the strengths of Ginzberg's approach is her attention to the complexities of group and individual motivation for taking the unconventional paths required by reform movements. While her subjects illustrate her contention that every story is different, she also finds the courage to offer some generalizations. "Put simply," she writes, "the movement one joined was closely tied to one's social standing, religious affiliation, and marital connections. In general, more conservative charitable work was likely to attract the wives and daughters of local business and professional leaders, women who attended the most respectable churches and who had little inclination either to rock the boat or to alienate those with whom they shared the upper decks" (p. 10). She goes on to characterize the more radical movements as populated by more "tenuously" middle-class persons from more liberal churches, and the temperance and moral reform movements as staffed by individuals from both the previous groups. In connection with working-class reformers she mentions both union organizers and freethinkers, although it is not clear that freethinkers were identified with the working class by anything but biographical accident. In a good section on Fanny Wright in chapter 5 (regarding "roads not taken"), she talks about how Wright's ideas moved working-class women in New York, but one would like to know more about why freethinking ideas and working-class liberation and justice movements might have been ideologically connected. Ginzberg has an ear for a story, and uses vignettes of individual women's experiences to great effect in portraying the course of commitment to a cause. She retells the fairly familiar story of Prudence Crandall's Connecticut school for African American girls in the context of many New Englanders' racism and vociferous opposition to antislavery. It is good to be reminded of the mix of passions aroused by women activists in even the most "liberal" and egalitarian communities of the United States.	2
One of the hallmarks of the American History Series is the bibliographical essays at the back. Ginzberg's bibliographical choices manage to be both selective and embracing, including "classic" titles by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Perry Miller, as well as more recent monographs on women and reform. She also cites published primary sources and mentions several kinds of sources, such as annual reports, that are markedly useful to historians of these topics. This book will be useful to students in a variety of courses, from the United States survey to more specialized courses on the antebellum period, intellectual and cultural history, women's history, and of course reform movements. It is manageable by students at the community college level as well as helpful to advanced undergraduates and graduate students both for Ginzberg's interpretive contributions and her bibliographical hints and judgments. Indeed, even if they don't adopt this particular title, instructors will find that this volume, like others in the series, offers a brief, up-to-date, erudite treatment by an expert in the field that can be incalculably helpful in preparing lectures and discussion sessions.	3
Oregon State University   Mina Carson

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