"Public attention for ⋯ essentially private matters" : Women seeking assistance from president James K. Polk

Journal of the Early Republic

Volumn 24, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 107-123

  Rohrs, Richard C ^a  

^a OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 62449143758     PISSN: 02751275     EISSN: 15530620     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (New York, 1967), 162.
2. Cynthia A. Kierner, Beyond the Household: Women's Place in the Early South, 1700-1835 (Ithaca, 1998), 97, 99, 100, 102, 124, 125-27
3. Julie Roy Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement (Chapel Hill, 1998), 87, 89
4. Anne M. Boylan, "Women and Politics in the Era before Seneca Falls," Journal of the Early Republic, 10 (Fall 1990), 363, 364, 365
5. Maty Hershberger, "Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition: The Struggle against Indian Removal in the 1830s," Journal of American History, 86 0une 1999), 15, 25, 33
6. Paula Baker, "The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920," American Historical Review, 89 (June 1984), 621, 625, 631, 632, 633
7. Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven, 1990), 1, 67-69, 71, 92-93
8. Elizabeth R. Varon, "We Mean to Be Counted": White Women & Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1998), 10
9. Elizabeth R. Varon, "Tippecanoe and the Ladies, Too: White Women and Party Politics in Antebellum Virginia," Journal of American History, 82 (Sept. 1995), 519
10. Mary Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (New York, 1981), 100, 123
11. Norma Basch, "Equity vs. Equality: Emerging Concepts of Women's Political Status in the Age of Jackson," Journal of the Early Republic, 3 (Fall 1983), 308.
12. Catherine Allgor, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government (Charlottesville, 2000), 138.
13. See also Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence, 73.
14. For a brief discussion of the women who called on Polk in his office seeking government jobs, see Paul H. Bergeron, The Presidency of James K. Polk (Lawrence, KS, 1987), 140-41. There were also occasional letters or visits from women from other countries.
15. Bergeron, The Presidency of James K. Polk, 226.
16. Ruth Crocker, "'I Only Ask You Kindly to Divide Some of Your Fortune with Me': Begging Letters and the Transformation of Charity in Late Nineteenth-Century America," Social Politics, 6 (Summer 1999), 140, 141
17. Scott A. Sandage, "Gender and the Economics of the Sentimental Market in Nineteenth-Century America," Social Politics, 6 (Summer 1999), 106, 111. Of all the letters addressed to Polk by women during his presidency, the origin of sixty-six can be identified. The greatest number came from the District of Columbia, New York, Virginia, and Polk's home state of Tennessee. Letters from residents of the federal district often followed earlier conversations with the president in his office or referred to husbands who had lost government jobs during the transition between the John Tyler and Polk administrations. Many of the women from Tennessee were acquaintances of the Polks or friends of political supporters from the Volunteer State. The geographical distribution of the letters also reflects the relative population of the states. In 1850, New York had the largest state population; Virginia had the fourth largest population and Tennessee the fifth. Women living in states or territories where slavery existed or in the District of Columbia wrote forty or 60. 6 percent of the letters. Women living in states or territories where slavery did not exist wrote twenty-six or 39. 4 percent of them. Unfortunately, the nature of the evidence precludes the possibility of determining the economic status of these women.
18. See Cindy Sondik Aron, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Civil Service: Middle Class Workers in Victorian America (New York, 1987), 56-57, 58; Sandage, "Gender and the Economics of the Sentimental Market," 111.
19. See Emily K. Abel, "Hearts of Wisdom": American Women Caring for Kin, 1850-1940 (Cambridge, MA, 2000), 43.
20. See Sandage, "Gender and the Economics of the Sentimental Market," 109, 113, 114-15.
21. Fanny G. Simpson to Polk, July 31, 1847, Polk Papers
22. See also Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (New Haven, 1982), 35, 36, 39
23. Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (Urbana, 1987), 32, 70, 72, 73
24. Raymond A. Mohl, Poverty in New York, 1783-1825 (New York, 1971), 261
25. See Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935 (New York, 1994), 28,51, 192.
26. Faust, Mothers of Invention, 17.
27. Allgor, Parlor Politics, 142, 141, 143.
28. Varon, "Tippecanoe and the Ladies, Too," 494-521
29. Ronald J. and Mary Saracino Zboray, "Whig Women, Politics, and Culture in the Campaign of 1840: Three Perspectives from Massachusetts," Journal of the Early Republic, 17 (Summer 1997), 277-315
30. Jayne Crumpler De Fiore, "'COME, and Bring the Ladies': Tennessee Women and the Politics of Opportunity during the Presidential Campaigns of 1840 and 1844," Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 51 (Winter 1992), 197-212.