Respecting "the wise allotment of our sphere": White Women and Politics in Mississippi, 1840-1860

Examining women's involvement in Mississippi politics during the 1840s and 1850s, this article suggests that many literate, mostly upper-class white women took an interest in electoral politics, read the party press, and occasionally spoke in public. The majority of white women from all classes attended one or two functions every campaign season. Their widespread presence underscores the social significance of party politics as a community event. Similar to studies of northern states, this investigation offers evidence that white women participated in the public world of formal politics, denying the fiction of "separate spheres." Yet, unlike many women in the North, these women never expanded this challenge to patriarchy. In the 1850s, white Mississippi women closed ranks to defend a regional ethic based upon white male inviolability. Everything these women said in public and virtually all their actions conformed to traditional gender relations and reinforced the prevailing class and gender hierarchy. Thus, while historians should consider white women's presence at rallies and parades as another indication that totally separate spheres were fictional, we should also note that their involvement more often restrained rather than liberated them.