This chapter explains the different definitions of politics, both nineteenth-century and modern; how emotions history and political history can be combined to better understand South Carolina women’s responses to secession and their political consciousnesses; the study of epistolary and diary-writing; gaps in the archive relating to secession; and how this work serves as a bridge between antebellum and Civil War studies of women. It also explains that most secession studies do not pay adequate attention to women. It argues that older women were more likely to expect war and destruction from secession, and that women expressed these political ideas through avenues traditionally gendered female and therefore socially acceptable.