This dissertation considers how class, religion and regional identity intersected in antebellum Charleston through a detailed analysis of the life and writings of Caroline Howard Gilman. Gilman, a northerner by birth, relocated to Charleston with her husband Samuel in 1819 when he was selected to minister to the City's only Unitarian Church. As the editor of a successful southern periodical and a national woman's almanac, as well as minister's wife, Gilman challenged the traditional gender roles of southern women. Gilman organized and supported benevolent associations with missions that differed from traditional modes of southern charity while expanding women's social networks and public presence. She also endeavored to change southern attitudes regarding female education, which typically provided little intellectual opportunity for women, especially in comparison with the North.

Additionally, the Gilmans supported a number of benevolent associations in Charleston and championed temperance reform, which in the South had only a limited following at best. This study employs the term "transregional" to describe the unique perspective of the Gilmans. Their social and regional fluidity, developed from transregional encounters, influenced social and kin networks in both regions. This dissertation therefore adds to a growing literature that complicates traditional explanations of sectional distinctiveness by recognizing the existence of a disparate white, urban, professional middle-class who desired reform. This dissertation also cautions against exaggerated claims of southern modernity by considering how Gilman, in identifying as southern, consequently accepted, at least publicly, a number of southern values discordant with the more liberal position she advocated on behalf of women.

Slavery permeated cultural values so intensely that widespread change or collective action was almost impossible, and the Gilmans limited any real challenges to the institution of slavery to private acts. Their experiences highlight the possibilities of northern influence while simultaneously exposing the realities of what it meant to be southern.