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After the war, women marched in parades, lobbied and petitioned legislators, attended sessions of Congress, and participated in political rallies—lending their support to particular candidates or factions. Elite women published novels, poems, and plays.
May 14, 2024 · During the American Revolution, women were the driving force behind the boycotts of British goods like tea and cloth. They also aided the army as camp followers, helped raise money to support the war, and managed their husbands' estates while they were away.
- Overview
- The American Revolution
- The Daughters of Liberty and homespun
- Revolutionary women
- What do you think?
Women supported the American Revolution by making homespun cloth, working to produce goods and services to help the army, and even serving as spies.
By the time the British imposed the Coercive Acts, or the Intolerable Acts, as they became known in the North American colonies, revolutionary sentiment and activism had been on the rise.
The Coercive Acts, passed in 1774 as punishment for the Boston Tea Party, during which Boston radicals dumped over 300 crates of British tea into the harbor, was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back of continued loyalty to the mother country. These acts convinced many colonists that they could no longer afford to live under the increasingly tyrannical rule of the British and contributed to uniting the colonies in opposition to continued colonial control.
After the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, the Daughters of Liberty was formed. Established in 1765, the organization was comprised solely of women who sought to demonstrate their loyalty to the revolutionary cause by boycotting British goods and making their own. Martha Washington, wife of George Washington, was one of the most prominent Daughters of Liberty.
Not only were women at the forefront of efforts to impose boycotts on British goods, they also spearheaded domestic production efforts. Because most textiles in the colonies were imported from Britain, weaving homespun cloth became an act of political rebellion. The Daughters of Liberty made public demonstrations of their spinning, such as the one at Newport, Rhode Island, where 92 women gathered in a meeting-house and produced 170 skeins of yarn.1
Although women were barred from serving in the army or in the militias, they assisted the cause in crucial ways. Wives, girlfriends, daughters, and sisters of soldiers and officers joined their camps to perform important tasks. Martha Washington accompanied her husband, General George Washington, during much of the war. These camp followers, as they were called, cooked, cleaned, sewed, mended uniforms, tended to the ill and injured, and even herded farm animals, milked cows, and foraged for food. One observer described the women as akin to "beast[s] of burden, having bushel baskets on their backs, by which they were bent double."3
Some women showed their dedication to the cause by putting their own lives in danger. There are documented cases of American women acting as spies. These women would enter the British camps and places of recreation so as to ferret out information they could pass on to the rebels. British General Thomas Gage was married to an American woman, Margaret Kemble Gage, who possibly served as a conduit of information about British plans to the rebels. Though it has never been decisively proven, Mrs. Gage seems to have served as a spy for the Americans.4
In the Battle of Monmouth, women—usually the wives or girlfriends of the American soldiers—delivered water to the troops to keep them cool in the heat. One of the gunners, William Hays, was wounded in action, and his wife, Mary Ludwick Hays, took over his position. She had also served in the battle at Valley Forge, and may have actually fought in the battles. She later received a pension from the government for her wartime service and has gone down in history as Molly Pitcher.5
One woman, Deborah Sampson of Massachusetts, disguised herself as a man so that she could join the army. Enlisting under the name Robert Shurtliff, she was wounded in a skirmish in Tarrytown. While being treated by a doctor, she refused to tell him that she had taken a musket ball in her thigh because she was afraid of being found out. Instead, she cut it out herself and sewed the wound back up. Sampson was later discovered, honorably discharged, and awarded a pension for her service.6
What was so subversive about homespun?
In your opinion, what was the most important way that women contributed to the American Revolution?
How do you think women’s wartime service might have affected their view of gender roles in the post-revolutionary period?
[Notes and attributions]
Sep 10, 2018 · The American Revolution was a military conflict, a political movement, and an event with social and cultural causes, consequences, and meaning for the diverse group of women who lived in British and eastern Native North America.
Women in the American Revolution played various roles depending on their social status, race and political views. The American Revolutionary War took place as a result of increasing tensions between Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies. American colonists responded by forming the Continental Congress and going to war with the British. The ...
This chapter examines the experiences of women during the American Revolution, focusing on how they affected the war and how the war affected them. Wartime violence made many women (and men) into victims and survivors; fear of violence is sometimes as potent as violence itself.
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Jan 26, 2017 · Women played critical roles in the American Revolution and subsequent War for Independence. Historian Cokie Roberts considers these women our Founding Mothers. Women like Abigail Adams, the wife of Massachusetts Congressional Delegate John Adams, influenced politics as did Mercy Otis Warren. It was Abigail Adams who famously and voluminously ...
