Reviews of Books

Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government. By Catherine Allgor. Jeffersonian America. (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2000. Pp. x, 299. $29.95.)

Taken together, these two works represent a giant leap in our collective exploration of the terrain of gender and American politics. Each is a highly textured account of the forming of early American political culture, seen from the choice vantage point of the national capital. Susan Branson's study of Philadelphia, These Fiery Frenchified Dames, spans the 1780s and 1790s during that city's tenure as the center of the federal government. Catherine Allgor's Parlor Politics picks up where Branson leaves off, taking us to the new capital, Washington City, at the moment of its creation in 1801 and through its turbulent first three decades. Each book makes a powerful argument that elite white women were integral to political life in the early republic and that the prevailing interpretation of "republican womanhood" does not capture the range of women's public, political activism or the extent of the controversies and debates to which that activism gave rise.	1
Branson's study is organized thematically, with sections devoted to four arenas for female activism—print culture, political ceremonies, theater, and salons—that co-existed with and sometimes overlapped the male domain of formal politics. The first section sets the well-known advocacy of women's rights by Judith Sargent Murray in the United States and Mary Wollstonecraft in England in a broader literary discourse about gender roles, which was carried on primarily in such Philadelphia periodicals as the Lady's Magazine and Columbian Magazine. These miscellanies excerpted Murray and Wollstonecraft and offered a public forum for discussing their ideas. The initial reception of the radical Wollstonecraft was favorable, Branson shows; with a striking openness to new views, Philadelphians, male and female, gave voice to a wide range of opinions on the subject of woman's place. Particularly noteworthy were the commencement addresses delivered in 1794 by two female scholars at the city's prestigious Young Ladies Academy. For that official occasion, the student speakers chose to praise and echo Wollstonecraft, whose name would be anathema in respectable circles ten years later. The articles, dialogues, poems, and other literary sources Branson brings to light suggest that the advent of republican motherhood, with its emphasis on female duties, did not preclude lively discussion of the "Rights of Woman."	2
The second section of Branson's study, focusing on political ceremonies, makes the provocative and original point that the French Revolution accomplished for American women what their own Revolution had not: it propelled them into the public sphere. Initially, the French struggle provided exemplars of female activism in the form of brave citoyennes, whose political initiatives were brought to avid American audiences through the medium of newspapers. In Philadelphia, female supporters of the French cause displayed their sentiments by wearing cockades and participating in pro-French celebrations; some demonstrations were "explicitly conducted by women, for women, with the express purpose of honoring the women of France" (p. 79). Such events, publicized in the press, elaborated a new political identity for American women as actors on the public stage. This politicization intensified amid the widespread revulsion against the French Terror. The ascendant Federalist party capitalized on growing fears of France by inviting women to join in patriotic rituals such as militia presentations and Fourth of July ceremonies; women were mustered in defense of the republic against the French threat and in support of the Federalists against their political opponents. When the Democratic Republican George Logan embarked on a self-appointed mission to negotiate peace with France in 1798, the Federalist press was quick to accuse him of treason. But the vitriol was not restricted to Logan; it was heaped on his wife as well. Deborah Logan's share in the abuse, Branson perceives, reveals just how deeply women were implicated in the politics of the First Party System.	. . .