Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War (review)

like Mary Austin Holley and Jane Cazneau, who actively and publicly promoted Texas immigration. The visible roles of women such as Holley and Cazneau were exceptions, to be sure. Nonetheless, their examples demonstrate the outer limits of respectable female activity and the degree to which women’s advocacy of a political or social cause might have been taken seriously in a public forum. Yet it was from within the domestic sphere that the Texas women most strongly demonstrated their adherence to the philosophy of manifest destiny. Church activities, temperance goals, education endeavors, and other attempts to establish comfortable and safe communities were outgrowths of their dictate to spread civilization through domesticity. Unfortunately, the evidence for this argument is less tangible than the written words of Holley and Cazneau, and much of the conclusions are implicit rather than explicit. We can indeed surmise that the effects of women’s activities helped promote the social concepts associated with American expansionism that were rooted in the assumption of Anglo-Christian superiority. And it is reasonable to assume that women no less than men accepted these ideas. Drawing direct links, however, between the intentions behind women’s community activities and their direct desire to promote manifest destiny is problematic. Nonetheless, the author has done an admirable job of bringing our attention to the often silent half of Texas history and of conceptualizing Texas women’s history within the larger paradigm of United States history.