Radical Reform Rhetoric and the Ethics of White Manhood in Antebellum America‪.‬

Both abolitionists and women's rights activists understood that the positions of slaves and women in American culture were deeply woven into America's social fabric. They believed swift, broad-reaching reform was necessary and that any significant change could be realized only through an ideological reform of national identity. They proposed immediate abolition and an aggressive reconstruction of gender dynamics based on the ideology of separate spheres. They attacked patriarchy and its institutions, seeking to reform the nation and its people through a moral agenda that was far more egalitarian and that included a much broader notion of equality than what was currently accepted. For radical reformers, the profound reorganization of national identity they deemed necessary was in many ways predicated upon a concomitant ethical reform of the hegemonic masculinity represented by the white, middle-class, Protestant men of the period. **********