Women of the American Revolution
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Everyone who has studied the history of the United States of America has heard of Paul Revere, George Washington, and Benedict Arnold, but who has heard of Molly Pitcher, Sybil Luddington, or Eliza Lucas? Was it not Abigail Adams who told her husband John Adams to, “Remember the ladies”? And James Otis, brother of Mercy Otis Warren, another mother, said, “Are not women born as free as men? Would it not be infamous to assert that the ladies are all slaves by nature?” (Roberts 49). These women, and many more, were active in the Revolutionary War; they are considered “mothers of our country.” However, not all of them picked up muskets and went into battle. Some chose to fight for America with an arrow or a cannon, others with a pen or a needle (Zitek). However, some of the women that helped were actually just teenage girls. The women that participated in the Revolutionary War contributed to both the Patriot and Loyalist sides, and provided a means of help for many soldiers.
Of course, the revolution began as a serious conflict between the colonies of America and England following the French and Indian War from 1754-1763 (Kamensky 31). England was in debt from the war, so Parliament decided to introduce, and then raise taxes in the colonies to settle the debt (Kamensky 32). The revolution began in 1775, at the Battle of Lexington and Concord; out of two million colonists, one-third were Patriots, one-third were neutral, and one-third were Loyalists (Kamensky 32). King George III employed some of these Loyalists as royal governors, judges, tax collectors, and customs officials (Kamensky 32)). The revolution was fought everywhere in colonial America, which led to many women being involved, seeing as some battles occurred on a farm, or armies raided houses for food and money (Kamensky 34).
When the war began, ten percent of businesses in Boston, Massachusetts were run by women (Zeinert 12). When Boston Harbor was closed, women had to make everything for themselves and their families, such as fabric for clothing, candles, and soap; to encourage these women, public spinning bees were held and participating women and girls were treated as heroines (Zeinert 13). In fact, early on in the war, the short supply of fabric in the colonies led to court suits fought over such things as a missing handkerchief or a burn in someones blanket (Collins 50). In New England, a general court ordered women, boys, and girls to spin three pounds of thread a week for at least 30 weeks a year (Collins 50).
Women in the 1700s were not encouraged by any means to assist or participate in fighting of any kind, and were expected to behave in a certain way (Zeinert 8). Their lives consisted of marrying young, raising a family, managing households, and, most importantly, obeying their husbands (Zeinert 8). For a woman to never marry made her into an outcast. A quote from Karen Zeinert in her book, Those Remarkable Women of the American Revolution, reads, “Scandalous, outlandish, and totally inappropriate: Any woman in colonial times who stepped out of her acceptable female role and into a traditionally male role, like that of a soldier, could expect to be labeled this way. Some women were bold enough to take it a step further than this character in an 18th-century book by disguising themselves as men” (Zeinert 7). One woman named Eliza Wilkinson actually asked her husband for the right to think for herself (Zeinert 42). Colonial homes operated by a system called “couverture,” a system in which husbands owned their wives, where the women had some rights to inheritance of property, but they owned nothing, not even their own jewelry (Roberts 12). Some colonies allowed divorce, unlike England, and this difference between the mother country and her daughter was another factor dividing them and causing disputes (Roberts 12).
The lives of the following women were outside the normal routine, in the way that all these women published newspapers. Clementina Rind, Margaret Draper, Mary Crouch, Ann Catherine Green, Elizabeth Timothy, and Mary Katherine Goddard were all women in the colonies of America who lived outside the average female role (Zeinert 46). Mary Katherine Goddard was the most successful female publisher during the American Revolution. She became involved in writing after her father died. She and her mother, along with her brother William, who was a printers apprentice, began the Providence Gazette in Rhode Island in 1762 (Zeinert 47). Unfortunately, the paper failed, and William left for Philadelphia to work for another journal. Mary and her mother join him, and end of doing most of his work. When William leaves again to buy a printing shop in Baltimore, his mother dies, and Goddard accompanies him and starts her own paper, the Maryland Journal, in February of 1774 (Zeinert 47). Goddard printed almanacs, pamphlets, and special order throughout the entire war, although she had a difficult time finding supplies, such as proper paper (Zeinert 47). With these papers, Goddard assisted Patriots in keeping up-to-date on the wars latest events and replaced rumor with fact (Zeinert 47). Her professionalism gained the attention of prominent Patriots, and the second Continental Congress asked for her help in printing extra copies of the Declaration of Independence for state legislatures (Zeinert 47).
Many girls wrote in journals throughout the war, providing their personal opinion on battles and the war itself. In 1771, thirteen-year-old Anna Green Winslow of Boston wrote, “As I am, as we say, a daughter of Liberty, I choose to wear as much of my own manufactory as possible” (Salmon 58). In 1774, twenty-year-old Jemima Condict of Pleasantdale, New Jersey wrote, “It seems we have troublesome times coming, for there is a great disturbance in the earth and they say it is tea that caused it. So then if they will quarrel about such as trifling thing as that what must we expect but war, and I think or at least fear it will be so” (Salmon 64). In 1769, the Boston Evening Post wrote, “industry and frugality of American ladies must exalt them in the eyes of the world and serve to show how greatly they are contributing to bring about the political salvation of a whole continent” (Roberts 39). Therefore, it seems that no matter how inferior women were in colonial Americas society, they still knew of the happenings of the war, and they certainly had their opinions.
Deborah Read was a woman who was very opinionated of the war, and she stepped out of a womans role and into a mans when her husband left to go to France, seeing as she helped to run the entire postal system of the colonies (Roberts 25). Deborah was fifteen years old when she met seventeen-year-old Benjamin Franklin when he began boarding with her and her mother (Roberts 25). In 1724, Franklin asked