| | Myth & Reality
Women and the Revolution
While many of the men who led the American Revolution and wrote theConstitution have taken on heroic stature in American history books, werarely read or hear about the heroic roles played by women during theseformative years.
The absence of women from the Philadelphia meeting represented theirlack of political standing and also reflected a very negative view oftheir ability to participate in political life. Perhaps typical was theview expressed by John Adams in 1776 when he argued that women andchildren lack the independence of judgment needed for politics, andthat "their delicacy renders them unfit for practice and experience inthe great businesses of life." This reflects a pervasive myth that womenhave played a passive role in our nation's history. The reality,however, is quite different.
Women played a significant role in the politics leading up to theAmerican Revolution. A critical issue in England's relationship with itsAmerican colonies during the middle 1700s was the amount of Britishgoods - especially cloth goods and tea - the colonies would purchase fromthe mother country. British policies, for example, intentionallydiscouraged the manufacture of cloth goods in the colonies. What theycould not stop, however, was the home spinning of cloth goods and theability of women to control the household purchase of foodstuffs. Whenthe British passed an unpopular law or imposed an onerous tax, womenorganized local spinning circles and boycotts in protest. Through suchsteps, the importation of British goods was affected enough to warrantmention in Parliament from time to time.
The history of the Revolution itself also provides evidence of activeparticipation by women. There was the story of the nighttime ride ofsixteen-year-old Sara Luddington, daughter of a local militia commanderin Fredericksburg, New York, who rode through the countryside tomobilize members of her father's unit who were needed to launch acounterattack on British troops in the nearby town of Danbury,Connecticut. And there was the story of Deborah Sampson, who disguisedherself as a man and fought the British for more than two-and-a-halfyears before being discovered because of an illness. Years laterCongress granted her widower a pension based on her service as arevolutionary soldier.
Sources: Based on material from Linda Grant DePauw, FoundingMothers: Women of America in the Revolutionary Era (Boston: HoughtonMifflin, 1975), especially chap. 7; and Sara M. Evans, Born forLiberty: A History of Women in America (New York: The Free Press,1989), especially chap. 3.
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