Frances Willard

"The right to cast a ballot from a feminine hand occupied the attention and efforts of hundreds of women for more than a century in the U.S. In these two volumes Campbell (University of Minnesota) provides a basic understanding of two processes: the development of the rhetoric used by the women who argued for equal rights, and the constraints and sanctions applied to those women who affronted the norms of society's expectation that true women were seldom seen and never spoke in public. The first volume lays the foundation for the analysis of rhetorical style and content by its fine introduction and by a succession of chapters organized chronologically, with biographical sketches and excerpts from speeches. It includes a chapter specifically addressed to issues of sex, race, and class faced by African American women. Volume 2 is not a continuation of the first, but contains the texts on which the first volume is based. The biographical and historical sections are gracefully written and well organized, but the greatest value of the set lies in the actual words of the feminist leaders and Campbell's skillfull analyses. Every women's studies program must have this available. Upper-division undergraduates and above." Choice

Patricia Ward D'Itri is a professor of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University.

Mattingly examines the rhetoric of the temperance movement, the largest political movement of women in the nineteenth century.

James D. Ivy contends that Texas prohibitionists--predominantly Baptists, and particularly those aligned with a nascent statewide organization--developed a Southern strategy that characterized prohibition as a reform with Southern roots in Texas soil. They overtly distanced themselves from those Northern evangelical reformers that had championed abolition, religious radicalism, or feminism, in order to appeal to male voters anxious about their role in post-Reconstruction Southern society. While their strategy succeeded insofar as they were able to gain the support of a majority of white males with close ties to the former Confederacy, it failed to persuade a majority of Texas voters to embrace prohibition.

This biographical dictionary, the first of two companion volumes, gives new recognition to early women orators--those who spoke despite efforts to silence them. Following Campbell's introductory chapter, the volume provides extensive entries on 37 key orators. Subjects include suffragists, the first lawyers, ministers, physicians, labor organizers, newspaper editors and publishers, historians, educators, even soldiers. Each entry provides brief biographical information, then focuses on the woman's public life in discourse. Each entry includes an analysis of the subject's rhetoric and information on primary sources, critical works, key rhetorical documents, and selected sources of historical and biographical information. The work is fully indexed.

Against the Tide is a collection of in-depth biographical essays on the most important women reformers in American history. This reader will be useful in any history course that deals with the important contributions made by women to the development of our government and society from the early republic to today. The volume combines scholarly vitality with readability, making it appropriate for all levels of students.

How should politicians act? When should they try to lead public opinion and when should they follow it? Should politicians see themselves as experts, whose opinions have greater authority than other people's, or as participants in a common dialogue with ordinary citizens? When do virtues like toleration and willingness to compromise deteriorate into moral weakness? In this innovative work, Andrew Sabl answers these questions by exploring what a democratic polity needs from its leaders. He concludes that there are systematic, principled reasons for the holders of divergent political offices or roles to act differently.Sabl argues that the morally committed civil rights activist, the elected representative pursuing legislative results, and the grassroots organizer determined to empower ordinary citizens all have crucial democratic functions. But they are different functions, calling for different practices and different qualities of political character. To make this case, he draws on political theory, moral philosophy, leadership studies, and biographical examples ranging from Everett Dirksen to Ella Baker, Frances Willard to Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr. to Joe McCarthy.Ruling Passions asks democratic theorists to pay more attention to the "governing pluralism" that characterizes a diverse, complex democracy. It challenges moral philosophy to adapt its prescriptions to the real requirements of democratic life, to pay more attention to the virtues of political compromise and the varieties of human character. And it calls on all democratic citizens to appreciate "democratic constancy": the limited yet serious standard of ethical character to which imperfect democratic citizens may rightly hold their leaders--and themselves.