[Vision2020] Let's Not Forget the Ladies of the American Revolution

Wed Jul 2 11:58:52 PDT 2008

Hail to the Vision!

This is my radio commentary/column for this week.  

As a way to celebrate the Bicentennial in 1976 I researched and published an article on the religious views of the Founding Fathers.  My interest was piqued when I heard, on NPR of course, that Theodore Roosevelt called Thomas Paine a "dirty little atheist."  One of the points that I argue in this piece is that only Paine among them can be correctly called a "deist."  You can find it at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/foundfathers.htm.

Back then I neglected the Ladies of Liberty, so here is my small gesture to make up for for the slight.

Nick Gier

LET'S NOT FORGET THE LADIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs which treat us 
only as the servants of your sex. . . . I desire you would remember 
the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them. . . .

--Abigail Adams to her husband, March 31, 1776

The women of the early American Republic were not allowed to vote or even to own property; indeed, they were the legal property of their husbands. Nevertheless, they did as much as the men to win independence from Great Britain.  

Over the past decades feminist writers have brought long neglected facts to light, and now NPR's Cokie Roberts has weighed in with some stellar research in her two books Founding Mothers, covering the Revolution, and Ladies of Liberty, covering 1796 to 1825.

Today there is still is much debate about women in combat, but Roberts and other historians have found a number of women who were in the thick of fighting the British.  As was the custom in those times, wives and children followed the troops from battle to battle.  In addition to their domestic duties, American women routinely cleaned and loaded muskets and artillery pieces. 

On June 28, 1778, during the Battle of Monmouth, Mary Hays, even though much of her skirt had been shot off by a British cannon ball, took over the firing her wounded husband's artillery piece. After a long struggle for vindication, the State of Pennsylvania eventually gave Hays a military pension of $40 per year. 

After her husband was killed at Fort Washington, Margaret Corbin took over his cannon, and, as Roberts describes, "fought bravely, sustaining three gunshot wounds, until the British took over the post."  The Daughters of the American Revolution were successful in having Corbin reburied at West Point, the only Revolutionary War veteran to have attained that honor.

Martha Washington also accompanied her husband into battle, staying with troops during the horrible winter in Valley Forge.  Some claim that many more would have deserted that winter had it not been for Martha's morale boosting visits. After the war she lobbied in Congress for better support for veterans.

Some early American women were far ahead of their men with regard to the status of women and slaves.  Abigail Adams begged her husband not to put "such unlimited power into the hands of husbands," and warned him that such arbitrary power is a thing "very hard, very liable to be broken." 

In another letter to her husband, who appeared to share his wife's views on the slavery, Abigail argued that slavery "always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me--to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have. You know my mind on this subject."

During the Revolutionary War rebel women organized boycotts against British goods, and, 150 years before Gandhi, spun their own thread in defiance of Manchester cloth.  Declaring that sugar and coffee are things "female part of the state are loathe to give up," Abigail Adams wrote her husband that about 100 irate women stormed the warehouse of a coffee dealer whom they claimed was hoarding the precious commodity.  She added that "a large concourse of men stood amazed, silent spectators of the whole transaction."

Charles Pinckney, who lost to James Madison in the 1808 election, declared that "I was beaten by Mr. and Mrs. Madison. I might have had a better chance if I had faced Mr. Madison alone."  Later in the century historian James G. Blaine argued that had it not been for his wife, Madison would have lost his re-election bid in 1812 to Federalist candidate DeWitt Clinton.

One of Roberts' juiciest discoveries was in a letter by Louisa Catherine Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams.  During the long debates about the Missouri Compromise, the good Congressmen managed to father 40 illegitimate children.  Louisa Adams proposed that the philanderers donate their $2 per month pay raise to establish a Foundling Hospital for their ill begotten progeny. 

As a mother of two writing in her home's playroom and emerging each night to cook dinner, Roberts said that she wrote her books with America's girls in mind.  In the same NPR interview, she also said that her research allows us to "get to know the men better, because they are three dimensional when women are writing about them.  They're not just bronze and marble."

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