ay in After plummeting into such great debt from the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), British Parliament enacted several tax acts in hopes of increasing revenue from the colonies. While Parliament felt every act was fair taxing, the colonists responded in protests. In their eyes, the tax acts were violations to their rights and Parliament had no right to tax them considering hey had no representation in the British government. For the first time all thirteen colonies worked together by forming the Continental Congress to form The Declaration of Independence from the Crown. This resulted in the Revolutionary War. However, when learning about the American Revolution, we only learn the history from the man’s view and not often do we hear of the women who made the revolution possible. There is so much truth in the old saying: Behind every successful man there stands a woman.
Woman’s Place in Colonial Society
As told by John Winthrop, one day in 1645, a governor went to Winthrop stressed because his wife had lost her senses. Insanity set in without cause nor reasoning, Winthrop’s answer was her insanity has been set off by reading books. If she had kept her only household affairs, she might have kept her wits. (Berkin p.1) Women were unsuited for an education. In most cases, women would only have up to an elementary school education as all she needed to know. A femme covert’s (women covered) duties were to her husband, children, and caring for the household. Femme soles (women alone) had much more access to broader legal identity than she would as a matron. Single women could sue and be sued, earn wages, buy and sell property, and will her assets to her heirs. When married, everything she owned including the clothing on her back belonged to her husband. (Berkin p.6) Women in the eighteenth century were nothing more than helpmates to men.
Not everyone felt this way of women. On May 19, 1735, John Peter Zenger published arguments for educating women in the New-York Weekly Journal. Supporting the education for women, the two page essay argues women should be educated because they have so much extra time on their hands. It also goes on saying they had a natural gift for speech, they were responsible for educating their children, and they needed to keep busy. “Learning and Knowledge are Perfections in us, not as we are Men, but as we are reasonable Creatures, in which Order, of Beings the Female World is upon the same level with the Male. We ought to consider in this Particular, not what is the Sex, but what is the Species to which they belong.” (Zenger)
On March 31, 1776 Abigail Adams wrote a letter to her husband John while he was in Philadelphia serving in the Continental Congress, asking him to Remember the Ladies and grant more women rights. “ I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.” (Adams) She then proceeded to caution him, as women are a force to be reckoned with “If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.” (Adams)
Domestic Front
For many women, taking a political stand was taboo and therefore had never done so before. Domestic activities soon became political acts. Because most fabric in the colonies was imported from Britain, weaving homespun cloth became an act of political rebellion. The Daughters of Liberty made public demonstrations of their spinning, like the ones at Newport and Rhode Island, where 92 women gathered in a meeting-house and produced 170 skeins of yarn. (Getchell) This Homespun Movement served the Continental Army by producing clothing and blankets for the soldiers and buying American made goods became a patriotic gesture.
Sometimes everyday activities included things women would never do. With the absence of men, women acted as the surrogate husband of the family. She was now in charge of the family farm, finances, and defended the home. In addition to taking the men’s place, many women picked up jobs that soldiers left behind. One example is Susanna Wright, who, in 1771, was acting as legal counselor, unofficial magistrate, and local physician for her neighbors on the frontiers of Pennsylvania. (Amedechiel) It was opportunities like this that allowed women to show their capacity to assume responsibilities males usually would and showed many that women were just as competent, if not more than their husbands, brothers, or fathers. First in Philadelphia, and then in other cities, women went from door to door collecting money for the Continental Army, that some would soon follow. (Skemp)
Camp Followers
Loyalists in Exile
Eventually all loyalists learned a valuable lesson: a crisis of political loyalties rent the fabric of their social world, some learned this harder than others. (Berkin p. 97) Some women were not even loyalists, by choice. Since their husbands were loyal to the crown, they were too. The act of marriage that was once a private act, had now become a political act if you stayed loyal to your husband. But of course no women would disobey their husband as that would be exile in itself and he owns everything.
On September 1, 1774, Esther Quincy Sewall looked out her window to see a mob gathered outside her home. The neighbors and friends surrounding her home were after her husband Jonathan. Jonathan Sewall was the Massachusetts attorney general and a judge of the Vice Admiralty Courts, who earned a reputation as the king’s staunch defender both in courts and press. The crowd wanted to make an example of him, but he was not home and Esther was alone with her two boys. She pleaded them to leave but with no response, rocks began to fly through her windows. In hopes of protecting her children, she gave the mob access to her husband’s wine cellar. After drinking, they left. Both Jonathan and Esther were from families known across New England and ran with elite circles. They had no reason to believe politics would create such a division between them and their friends, until now. Esther Quincy Sewall only became a loyalist because she was Mrs. Jonathan Sewall. (Berkin p.93) A year later, the Sewall family resided in England as exiles from their native land. Men and women, rich or poor who supported the Crown had become outlaws in their own community, no family ties could protect them.
Native Americans
Europeans could never understand the hierarchy of Native American Indian communities, where women had much more power politically rather than just perform domestic activities as done in English homes. Nor could they understand many Indian nations were matrilineal. Native American women had more opportunities to positions of politics and power than their European counterparts ever did. Their children belonged to them and not their husbands. In agricultural tribes including the Iroquois, women held most of the power. They controlled the food supply and men could not go to war if the women refused to give them supplies. (Berkin) Throughout the French and Indian War, the Indians sided with the French because the English treated them as savages and never bothered to understand their way of life. However, when the English won the war, the French were driven out of Canada leaving the Indians to negotiate an alliance with only the Crown. (Berkin p.111) When the American Revolution broke out, the English were the lesser of two evils to side with compared to the Americans. The Americans were “land grabbers”, if they won they would continue to move west and continue to take Native American lands.
These matrilineal societies allowed women, like Molly (Konwatsi'tsiaienni) Brant, to obtain a status as an important political figure. (Amedechiel) Her brother, Joseph Brant, was considered the leader of the Mohawk indians, but in reality he only acted as the muscle. Molly was the diplomat of the two. It was her who consulted with the British in Canada to negotiate: the Mohawk Indians and surrounding tribes would fully support and fight alongside the British or claim neutrality in exchange for tracks of land in Canada to have some place to retreat when the Americans took more land. The Native Americans were strong fighters as they fought for their own homeland, to preserve their liberty against the Americans. Molly Brant and Thomas Jefferson thought they were fighting for the same thing, just on opposite sides.
African Americans
With an end goal to disrupt the economy and food sources of the colonists, the British offered freedom to slaves that would leave the plantation to fight alongside of the British. From this offer, salves too fought for freedom and independence as the Americans were doing so. In response to this offer, the Americans declared any slave caught fleeing the plantation would be executed or sent to the West Indies. Anywhere the British went, slaves followed in hopes of freedom, some women walked miles with babies in their arms to join the British army. Many African American women took advantage of the wartime chaos to run away from their masters and forge new lives for themselves. (Skemp) A majority did not flee, fearing for the safety of their children on the disease ridden camps. Among them were Dianah and Hannah of the Linning Plantation. Before the Revolution, freedom would have been impossible for the elderly woman and half blind daughter. Both mother and daughter gained freedom in Canada, while others were not so lucky. (Berkin p.125) Many did not survive due to insufficient food on the army camps. Most slaves, men and women, fell ill of diseases like smallpox. When the war was lost by the British, all loyalists in America were exiled, including the slaves.
To prevent captains making a profit off of free slaves by selling them, each slave was recorded into a log named The Book of Negroes with his or her name, age, and physical appearances as they boarded the ships headed to Canada. (Berkin p.128) If not all the slaves came off the ship when landed in Canada, the captain and crew would not get paid. While in Canada, slaves were considered free but prejudice and poverty replaced the previous grievance. In America, Washington did not allow African Americans into his army as southerners feared that placing gun in their hands could be dangerous. When the war ended, slave owners tightened their grip on their slaves to prevent so many from fleeing as most did during the war, most being the women who stayed behind to be with families. Life became more repressive after the war. Eventually in the North, gradual emancipation began towards slaves. here…