In Colonial America, women were often discouraged from taking an interest in politics & were usually expected to focus only on traditionally 'feminine' matters, such as homemaking, gardening family healthcare & producing and raising children. These gender roles were challenged during the American Revolution (1765-1789), when women played crucial roles in achieving the independence of the United States.
From the earliest signs of tension between the 13 Colonies & Great Britain, colonial women expanded their political voice. Women were the driving force behind boycotts of British imports, shunning British tea in favor of local herbal substitutes, & holding spinning bees to reduce dependence on British cloth.
Female writers, such as Mercy Otis Warren (1728 – 1814) & Phillis Wheatley (1753 – 1784), helped turn public opinion against British rule, while hundreds of women accompanied the Continental Army to perform essential duties like washing, nursing, & cooking.
Some women, like Margaret Corbin (1751 – 1800), Mary Ludwig Hays (1754 – 1832), & Deborah Sampson (1760 – 1827), even took up arms & fought against the British. Although women were not viewed as politically equal to men after the war, their involvement proved to be a vital first step in the long struggle for women's rights in the United States.
Role of Women in Colonial America
In October 1608, the 'second supply' of English settlers arrived at the Jamestown Colony of Virginia to supplement the population of original settlers. Among these new arrivals was Thomas Forrest, a gentleman financier, who was accompanied by his wife, a woman listed in the ship's manifest only as 'Mistress Forrest', & her maid, Anne Burras.
Mistress Forrest & Anne Burras were the first 2 English women to settle in Jamestown; Burras would marry later that year & earn the additional distinction of becoming the 1st English woman to give birth in Virginia. English women continued to sporadically arrive in Jamestown over the course of the next decade until 1619 when the Virginia Company decided to send large groups of women to foster a self-sustaining population.
In 1620, 90 single women, many of them from poor families, arrived in Virginia as the first of the so-called Jamestown brides, or 'tobacco brides'. They were married off to Jamestown's male settlers, each of whom paid the Virginia Company a dowry of 120-150 pounds of tobacco. Additional groups of Jamestown brides continued to arrive in the following years.
Women were expected to remain within the 'feminine sphere' & to display only feminine traits such as modesty, cheerfulness, patience, & chastity. The colonists of Jamestown implemented a gender hierarchy similar to that which existed in England.
This system revolved around the doctrine of coverture, which stipulated that once a woman was married, she was under the complete authority of her husband & no longer enjoyed an independent legal status. A married woman, or feme covert, was legally considered to be one with her husband; she could no longer own property or sign contracts, & any money she earned belonged to her husband.
Once a woman married, she was usually confined to the role of homemaker, devoting her hours to cleaning, cooking, ironing, sewing, gardening & healthcare. Divorce was difficult to obtain & was often only permissible if a pre-existing condition rendered the initial marriage invalid.
As a result, many colonial women felt anxiety about marriage, with one woman referring to marriage as a 'dark leap' from the familiarity of her parents' house into an unknown future controlled by a man whose personality she may have misjudged (Norton, 42). Still, married life was more desirable than remaining a single woman – or feme sole – for too long, as spinsters were fairly near the bottom of the social hierarchy.
Of course, the status of colonial women varied from colony to colony, & widely depended on social class. Wealthy women, for instance, were usually better educated than lower-class women, as were women from Puritan New England who were often taught how to read in order to study the Bible. But women were expected to remain within the 'feminine sphere' & to display only feminine traits such as modesty, cheerfulness, patience, & chastity.
They were discouraged from expressing interest in subjects that were considered masculine, particularly politics. attempts by colonial women to involve themselves in politics were met with punishment. Anne Hutchinson (1591 – 1643) was banished from Massachusetts in 1637 after challenging the authority of male religious leaders. The approaching American Revolution encouraged colonial women to develop political opinions & to voice them, helping the slow progression of women's rights in the US.
Political Involvement of Women
In the 1760s, tensions between the 13 Colonies & Great Britain began to rise when Parliament passed a series of tax policies that many colonists condemned as unconstitutional. After protests against the Stamp Act (1765) & Townshend Acts (1767-68) turned riotous, Parliament dispatched soldiers to colonial cities such as Boston to restore royal authority, which only further escalated the conflict.
Despite the notion of politics as an man's activity, letters & diary entries from the period show that many colonial women were infuriated by these political developments. They were as affected by the Parliamentary taxes as the men & were outraged by the occupation of Boston by British soldiers.
Many patriotic women ignored conventional gender norms to protest these policies. They marched alongside men in demonstrations, harassed Loyalists & tax officials, & seized goods from merchants who were believed to be hoarders for profits.
Colonial women became a driving force in the boycott of British goods. In response to the Tea Act of 1773. They stopped purchasing tea imported by the British East India Company & refused to serve it in their homes. Instead, they started to rely on local herbal teas & coffee. Women across Boston publicly swore to abstain from drinking British tea to "save this abused country from ruin & slavery" (Schiff, 178).
On 25 October 1774, a group of 51 women met at the home of Elizabeth King in Edenton, North Carolina, to sign an agreement to boycott all British imports for the "publick good" (Norton, 161). This Edenton Tea Party, was one of the initial organized political actions undertaken by women in US history.
Colonial women supported the boycott of British goods by organizing spinning bees. Since most clothing was made from British-imported cloth, women decided to reduce dependence on Britain by spinning cloth themselves. Spinning bees would begin early in the morning, with a group of 20 to 40 women gathering at the home of their local minister (some groups were as large as 100). They would spend the day spinning cloth while discussing politics or engaging in friendly competitions with one another. Then, at nightfall, they would disperse after a relevant sermon from the minister.
Many spinning bees were organized by the Daughters of Liberty, a group of politically active women that had been founded in Boston in 1766. Alongside popularizing the boycotts, the Daughters of Liberty organized political protests.
One of the group's founding members, Sarah Bradlee Fulton (1740 – 1835), came up with the idea of disguising the Sons of Liberty as Mohawk natives during the Boston Tea Party to conceal their identities from British officials. After the 342 crates of tea had been dumped into Boston Harbor, Fulton hid some of the perpetrators in her home & removed their face paint. For this, she has been referred to as the 'Mother of the Boston Tea Party'.
While Fulton was on the front lines of Patriotic protest, other women used pen & paper. Mercy Otis Warren, for instance, was a New England playwright who wrote multiple satires lambasting the Loyalists & encouraging the Patriots. Phillis Wheatley, an African woman who was enslaved in Boston, wrote multiple poems celebrating the American Revolution as well as its leaders. The works of Warren & Wheatley were immensely popular & helped shift public opinion in favor of the Patriots.
Despite the usual rigidity of gender roles in Colonial America, male revolutionary leaders encouraged female involvement, as the issue was considered too important to count women out. Pamphlets & broadsides encouraged women to continue boycotting British goods, with Samuel Adams even stating, "with ladies on our side, we can make every Tory tremble."
As war with Britain loomed on the horizon, Patriot women helped prepare for combat. In September 1774, Massachusetts women worked to make food & gather supplies for men in the militias. One observer remembered seeing, "women & children making cartridges, running bullets…[while] crying & bemoaning & at the same time animating their husbands & sons to fight for their liberties, tho' not knowing whether they should ever see them again" (Norton, 167).
The Baroness Frederika Charlotte Riedesel (1746 – 1808), wife of a Hessian general, recorded in her diary that she heard an American girl exclaim: "Oh, if I only had the king of England here, with what satisfaction I could cut his body in pieces, tear out his heart, dissect it, put it upon these coals, & consume it" (Middlekauff, 551). The violence & blatant politicalness of the girl's statement shocked the German baroness.
When the war finally came in April 1775, many women joined the Continental Army. Most 18th-century armies traveled with women, known as 'camp followers', who would perform essential duties as washerwomen, seamstresses, nurses, & cooks. These camp followers had to put up with the conditions of life in the army camp, which were often miserable, & they had to endure the scorn of the American officers, many of whom viewed them as little more than nuisances.
The usual work of women in the army was washing & mending the soldier's clothes (for every 50 or so soldiers at the fort, one woman would be assigned the work), & working as nurses in the hospitals. 18th century nursing meant cleaning chamber pots, & changing bedding & blankets. Women cooked for their families, but it was only on rare occasions that they cooked for other soldiers.
Print c 1790 Philadelphia Museum of Art
Women who traveled with the army had to work to be able to stay. In exchange for their work, the camp followers received a ration of food (1/2 pound of meat & 1/2 pound of bread/flour). They were also supposed to be paid for their work, but with the soldiers hardly ever seeing proper pay, it’s unlikely that the women fared any better. These women had to follow many of the same orders & daily routines that the soldiers did.
There were several reasons why women might choose to become camp followers, despite these hardships. Some were driven by a sense of patriotism or by a love for their husbands & sons, whom they were loath to part from. Others were unable to support themselves & chose to accompany the army rather than risk starvation & poverty. Some women, like Martha Washington (1731 – 1802), did not stay with the army all the time but often visited to support their husbands during winter encampments.
Though women were considered non-combatants, several Patriot women wound up bearing arms against the British. Margaret Corbin, for example, accompanied the Continental Army as the wife of an artilleryman, John Corbin. When John was killed at the Battle of Fort Washington (16 November 1776), Margaret took his place & continued to fire his cannon until she was incapacitated by several wounds. She survived the battle & would go on to become the first woman to receive a US military pension.
Two years later, Mary Ludwig Hays was serving as a water carrier during the scorching hot Battle of Monmouth (28 June 1778), running back & forth to deliver water to dehydrated soldiers. When her husband, also an artilleryman, passed out from heat exhaustion, Hays did not hesitate to take his place, firing his cannon for the remainder of the battle.
Another woman who fought in the war was Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a male & enlisted in the Continental Army in 1782 under the alias of Robert Shurtleff. Sampson was wounded in the thigh during a skirmish with Loyalists in Westchester County, New York; fearful that the army surgeons would discover her identity, she slipped out of the field hospital & removed the bullet herself, using a penknife & sewing needle. The next summer, however, she came down with a fever & a physician discovered her gender while treating her. Sampson was honorably discharged & went on to marry a farmer. In 1805, Congress awarded her a monthly pension for her service.
Not all Patriot women who aided the war effort were part of the Continental Army. Sybil Ludington (1761 – 1839) was a 16-year-old girl from New York, who, on 26 April 1777, discovered that the British were launching a raid on Danbury, Connecticut, where a stockpile of weapons was stored. Ludington leaped atop her horse and, despite a heavy rainstorm, rode 40 miles (64 km) through New York's Putnam & Dutchess counties to alert the militia. Some report that due to her efforts, the Patriot militia was able to drive the British back the next day at the Battle of Ridgefield.
While several women supported the war as camp followers, the vast majority remained behind the front lines as civilians. Nevertheless, many civilian women supported the war effort in any way they could. In 1780, Esther de Berdt Reed (1746 – 1780), wife of the governor of Philadelphia, organized a female-run fundraiser that raised over $300,000 for the Continental Army.
The spinning bees persisted throughout the war, with women shifting their focus to making shirts & uniforms for soldiers.
With their husbands gone, Patriot women in several towns took to enforcing the law, exposing & punishing those who had violated boycott agreements.
But most civilian women were preoccupied with running their husbands' estates & managing their affairs while the men were off at war. This granted middle- & upper-class women a kind of freedom that, prior to the revolution, they sekdom used. Their husbands were often too preoccupied with their military or political work to dictate orders to their wives, leaving the women with much autonomy in regard to their homes & family finances.
The civilian women were not spared from the destructiveness of the war. Those who owned homes in cities that were occupied by the British army – such as New York & Philadelphia – found themselves obliged to provide quarters for British & Hessian officers. While some officers were polite to their American benefactors, others were troublesome & rowdy; on several occasions, British & Hessian soldiers entered homes uninvited & took whatever they wanted.
As in many conflicts, sexual assault was utilized as a horrific weapon of war. After their inability to catch Washington's army in the New York & New Jersey Campaign, some British soldiers vented their frustrations by sexually assaulting American women in British-occupied New York City. Lord Francis Rawdon, a young British officer, expressed the frequency of such assaults in a letter, writing that "a girl cannot step into the bushes to pluck a rose without running the most imminent risk of being ravished…"
Despite Lord Rawdon's distasteful attitude, the British courts-martial took acts of sexual violence more seriously & dispensed severe punishments for soldiers who were convicted. Civilian women also ran the risk of becoming collateral damage if they did not evacuate their homes during a battle. As the Battle of Connecticut Farms (7 June 1780) raged outside, Hannah Caldwell (1737 – 1780), the wife of the town's reverend, took shelter in her home with her children. But a stray bullet crashed through the window, killing Caldwell in front of her daughter. Civilian women were as affected by the war as the camp followers.
On 31 March 1776, Abigail Smith Adams (1744 – 1818) wrote a letter to her husband, John Adams, who was serving as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia: I desire you would Remember the Ladies & be more generous & favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care & attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion & will not ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation (Adams Family Papers).
Adam's letter reveals how much the political voice of American women had developed during the tumultuous years before the revolution. Having been largely barred from colonial political involvement since the founding of Jamestown, colonial women found themselves thrust into a revolutionary movement. Women fought, bled, & died for the cause of American liberty.
In the postwar United States, some women were given slightly more freedoms than they had had prior to it; for instance, the need to raise virtuous citizens of a republic encouraged women to receive some degree of education so that they might instruct the next generation of Americans.
In New Jersey, women were also temporarily granted the right to vote, thanks to the vague wording in the state constitution; a law passed in 1807, however, ended women's right to vote in that state, & it would be many decades before women in the US recovered their suffrage.
The American Revolution was an important step in the women's rights movement in the United States. It gave American women a political voice, however limited & temporary, & influenced the fight for women's rights in the following centuries.
See Harrison Ford;s article in The World History Encyclopedia
Bibliography
Books
Adams, Abigail Letter to John Adams, March 31, 1776 Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society
Berkin, Carol Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence Vintage Books, 2005
Brown, Marley R. Metalworking at Monticello: Archaeological and Historical Evidence Journal of the Ceramics and Cultural Heritage Society, 2011
Chappell, Edward A. Jamestown: Architectural Studies University of Virginia Press, 2015
DePauw, Linda Grant Founding Mothers: Women of America in the Revolutionary Era Houghton Mifflin, 1975
Ellet, Elizabeth F. The Women of the American Revolution 3 vols. Baker and Scribner, 1848-1850
Holton, Woody Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution Simon & Schuster, 2021
Kerber, Linda K. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America University of North Carolina Press, 1980
Knott, Sarah Sensibility and the American Revolution University of North Carolina Press, 2009
Lawhon, Ariel The Frozen River Doubleday, 2023
Mayer, Holly A. Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community during the American Revolution University of South Carolina Press, 1999
McCullough, David 1776 Simon & Schuster, 2005
Middlekauff, Robert The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 Oxford University Press, 2005
Norton, Mary Beth Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 Cornell University Press, 1980
Riedesel, Frederika Charlotte Letters and Journals Relating to the War of the American Revolution and the Capture of the German Troops at Saratoga Translated by William L. Stone, Albany, 1867
Schiff, Stacy The Revolutionary Era and Women’s Influence Harvard University Press, 2014
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 Knopf, 1980
Warren, Mercy Otis The Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution Manning and Loring, 1805
Young, Alfred F. Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier Alfred A. Knopf, 2004
Articles
Breen, T. H. Baubles of Britain: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century Past & Present, no. 119, 1988, pp. 73-104
Discusses how consumer habits, including the boycotting of British goods, became a form of political activism led in part by colonial women.
Dayton, Cornelia Hughes Taking the Trade: Abortion and Gender Relations in an Eighteenth-Century New England Village The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 1, 1991, pp. 19-49
This article provides insight into gender roles in colonial America, focusing on reproductive rights and social norms.
Kierner, Cynthia A. Women, Gender, and Political Culture in the Early Republic Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 21, no. 2, 2001, pp. 219-225
Explores how women gained informal political influence in the post-revolutionary period despite legal and societal restrictions.
Klein, Rachel Women’s Work in Revolutionary America: A Reassessment The Journal of American History, vol. 97, no. 3, 2010, pp. 742-768
This article reevaluates the economic roles women played during the Revolution and how their labor contributed to wartime efforts.
Schocket, Andrew M. Little Women: Gender and Patriotism in the American Revolution American Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 3, 2004, pp. 475-498
Analyzes how women’s contributions to the Revolution were later mythologized and reshaped by American cultural memory.
Smith, Barbara Clark Food Rioters and the American Revolution The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 1, 1994, pp. 3-38
This article examines how colonial women played an active role in political protests through food riots and economic resistance.
Zagarri, Rosemarie The Rights of Women in the Early Republic Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 29, no. 1, 2009, pp. 1-29
This article explores how the American Revolution influenced early feminist thought and shaped women's roles in the political landscape.
