Four feral women and the rise of sectionalism in the 1850s.

This article studies how the national media reacted to four feral woman episodes between 1843 and 1857. In 1843 and 1848, newspapers reprinted stories about two feral women without sectional variations in coverage. This national consensus collapsed after a feral woman in Texas was identified as African. Northern newspapers then broke from the consensus. Dramatic sectional differences in coverage also appear after the Wild Woman of Cincinnati show in 1856 and during an Alabama Wild Woman incident in 1857. We can see gender and racial ideologies driving the North and South apart when we study antebellum feral woman episodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]