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Chapter 4 Women and the ‘‘War of Politics’’ As she reflected back on her life, Catharine Maria Sedgwick recalled the trials and tribulations of growing up as the daughter of a Federalist congressman . She remembered the 1790s as a time when party feelings divided towns, dissolved friendships, and pitted neighbor against neighbor . At home she witnessed the battle firsthand. Partisan antagonisms wrenched her Massachusetts community in two. Her father, whom she believed to be ‘‘one of the kindest-hearted of men,’’ was also a vehement partisan. True to his Federalist sentiments, he contemptuously referred to ‘‘the people’’ as the ‘‘greasy, unwashed multitude’’ or the ‘‘miscreants .’’1 From her window she could see the town horse, Clover, ‘‘converted into a political instrument.’’ As he trudged up a big hill each day he became ‘‘a walking gazette,’’ carrying a placard with Federalist slogans . Strolling back down to the valley, he returned with the ‘‘militant missives’’ of the Democratic Republicans covering his ‘‘ragged and grizzled sides.’’2 From the vantage point of 1835, however, what seemed most remarkable to Sedgwick was the degree to which women had participated in the melee. Women had been full and active participants in the party battles . At church, Federalist women proudly displayed symbols of their party affiliation, wearing golden eagles on their dresses or bonnets. Partisanship influenced personal friendships and private passions. Sedgwick ’s friend Fanny Atwood nearly failed to marry the love of her life—not because of his personal failings or lack of economic prospects but because he happened to belong to the ‘‘wrong’’ political party. While her family was staunchly Federalist, he was a Democratic Republican . Sedgwick marveled at the depth of these hostilities, especially among women. ‘‘I now look,’’ she said, ‘‘almost unbelieving of my own recollections, at the general diffusion of political prejudices of those times. No age nor sex was exempt from them.’’ Women, men, and unsuspecting horses were all enlisted in the battle between parties.3 After Jefferson’s election in 1800, it was clear that party conflict would not end anytime soon. The rise of party politics not only undermined the country’s political unity but destroyed its social cohesion as well. 116 Chapter 4 Hostilities were so deep that passion replaced rationality in public and private discourse. People stopped speaking to friends and neighbors. Communities divided in two. Even families split apart. ‘‘Soon the most intimate ties of relationship were sundered. The political contagion operated like the contagion of the plague in Athens. The father forsook the son and the son forsook the father.’’ Instead of being a refuge from the outside world, the home became another arena for tumultuous disputation and partisan wrangling.4 In this environment women’s continuing involvement in politics intensified social tensions and deepened the split between Federalists and Republicans. Although male politicians continued to invite women to support their causes, the prescriptive literature of the day began to convey a different message. A new discourse arose urging women to withdraw from party politics. Using their roles as wife and mother, they could act as peacemakers and mediators between warring factions of men. Deploying their feminine traits strategically, they could instill a spirit of political toleration and openness to debate in their husbands and children. Instead of acting as partisans, they would become impartial patriots. As early as the Panic of 1819, the message seemed to be having an impact. Parties and the Spirit of Violence American men and women feared political parties not only because of their effect on government but also because of their influence on society . Parties destroyed sociability—the sense of comity, civility, and cooperation that made union possible. Unlike European nations whose inhabitants shared a long history and common traditions, the United States was a new nation, a heterogeneous society whose government was far off and at a distance. Differing economic interests, religious differences , and regional loyalties all threatened to tear the nation apart. The country’s success depended not only on a commitment to shared political principles but also on a spirit of mutual affection and cooperation that would overcome these differences. Party conflict eroded the fragile bonds linking families into communities, communities into states, and states into a nation. The existence of political parties affected social relations as well as political affairs. ‘‘Every social feeling, every generous emotion, every noble sentiment,’’ noted one commentator, ‘‘is usually sacrificed on the altar of Party Spirit.’’ The spirit of parties, observed...

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