Answer is C. Firstly attaches the passage. The fields of antebellum (pre-Civil
War) political history and women’s his- tory use separate sources and focus Line on separate issues. Political histori- (5) ans, examining sources such as voting records, newspapers, and politicians’ writings, focus on the emergence in the 1840’s of a new “American political nation,” and since women were neither (10) voters nor politicians, they receive little discussion. Women’s historians, mean- while, have shown little interest in the subject of party politics, instead draw- ing on personal papers, legal records (15) such as wills, and records of female associations to illuminate women’s domestic lives, their moral reform activities, and the emergence of the woman’s rights movement. (20) However, most historians have underestimated the extent and signifi- cance of women’s political allegiance in the antebellum period. For example, in the presidential election campaigns (25) of the 1840’s, the Virginia Whig party strove to win the allegiance of LACE>VirginiaLACE>’s women by inviting them to rallies and speeches. According to Whig propa- ganda, women who turned out at the (30) party’s rallies gathered information that enabled them to mold party-loyal families, reminded men of moral values that transcended party loyalty, and con- ferred moral standing on the party. (35) Virginia Democrats, in response, began to make similar appeals to women as well. By the mid-1850’s the inclusion of women in the rituals of party politics had become common- (40) place, and the ideology that justified such inclusion had been assimilated by the Democrats. | 
