An Army of Women

As early as 1856, the women of Kansas knew the value of bold political statements. That year, 12 Lawrence women brandishing hatchets, axes and other implements attacked a log-cabin saloon and proceeded to dispose of "every drop of liquor they could find". In the decades that followed, Kansans witnessed the first state-wide suffrage campaign (it failed) and the first constitutional prohibition against alcohol (it succeeded). By 1887, Gilded Age Kansas had become home to reformers and agitators of all kinds and was dubbed the "great experimental ground of the nation". Looking at both private and public lives of women and men in rural and urban Kansas, Michael Goldberg offers sweeping evidence of the role of gender in Gilded Age American politics. Goldberg's broad scope and use of both traditional and unusual sources - including folkways, poems, songs and novels - allow readers to understand the movements both as part of a national framework and within the context of the state and local cultures that were their primary concern.