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2 Responses to I need info on the affects that the American Revolution had on African Americans and women.?

1. I don’t think it changed their situation very drastically at the time. It did open the door for freedoms to come later on though.

   

   Alexandrov
   September 16, 2013 at 8:11 pm
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2. In ‘America’s Women’ Gail Collins wrote:

   ‘the struggle for independence was going to be one of the many, many moments in American history when the country found it necessary to do a sudden about-face on the conventional wisdom of what women were really like. The late eighteenth-century ideal was fragile and fair, not particularly bright, and certainly not interested in public affairs. But if the colonies were going to suceed in their fight for self-determination, women needed to become political, very fast. In the years leading up tot he Declaration of Independence, resistance to the British was expressed mainly in bocyotts of imported products. For the boycotts to work, women would have to step into the breach and provide the cloth and foodstuffs that could no longer be brought in from overseas. The housewives were also the family shoppers, and they were asked to shun all the “txables” – items that the British imposed levies on without the colonies consent. Getting the cooperation of the women was the critical challenge “without which tis impossible to succeed” said the South Carolina patriot Christopher Gadsen in 1769. Tea, of course, was a very important battleground. It was an extremely popular drink in america – half of all homes had teasets. Women patriots joined enthusiastically in the boycott.

   In 1774, fifty-one women from Edenton, North Carolina, issued a public statement endorsing the boycott, much to the amusement of Britsh journalists and cartoonists, who depicted them as bad mothers, harlot, and heavy drinkers. But they were praised as patriots back home. Southern ladies wore dresses of homespun cloth to their fancy balls, and they joined their husbands and fathers in makingpatriotic toasts and singing patriotic songs. The northern women organized spinning bees and were honored for their production of homemade material, which they proudly presented to local officials.

   If men were going to have to fight, women were going to have to take over their farms and businesses, and insome parts of the country, endure life under an army of occupation. Eliza Pinckney described her situation in South Carolina to a friend “my property pulled to pieces, burnt and destroyed, my money of no value, my children sick and prisoners”. a nOrth Carolina man recalled his widowed mother being “tied up and whipped by the Tories, her house burned and property all destroyed” while he was away in the militia.

   “We are in no way dispirted here” wrote Abigail Adams, who was holding down the fort at the family farm in Massachussetts. “We possess a spirit that will not be conquered. Ifour Men are all drawn off and we should be attacked, you will find a race of Amazons in America.” ABigal spent much of her married life as a veritable widow to the Revolution – her husband John was always off serving his country as a statesman or diplomat. Now, she was sheltering soldiers and refugees from the conflict, and as the war approached Boston, she made contingency plans to grab her children and flee in to the woods. when dysentery struck the area, her home became a hospital “And such is the distress of the neighbournhood that I can scarcely find a well person to assist me in looking after the sick” she wrote. She raised their five children, managed their finances, ran their farm, and kept the house throughout the war.

   In the summer of 1777, more than 100 Boston housewives gathered in front of the store of one thomas Boylston. They were angry about Boylston’s extortionate wartime prices. They were prepared to boycott tea, but not to let a merchant gouge them for coffee. Abigal Adams wrote to her husband that the women “assmelbed with a cart and trucks, marched down to the Ware House and demanded the keys, which he refused to deliver, upon which one of them seized him by the neck and tossed him into the cart” Boylston gave up the keys, and the women opened the warehouse, took out the coffe they required, and drove away. “A large concourse of Men stood amzed silent Spectators of the whole transaction” wrote Abigail in glee.

   The women sometimes took a more aggressive part in the war – one South Carolina man claimed the women in his state “talk as familiarly of sheddin gblood and destryoin gthe Tories as the men do.” In Massachussetts, a group of women disguised in their husbands’ clothes inercepted a tory captain en route to Boston, took the important papers he was carrying and escorted him to the Groton jail. In 17776, when the British troops took control of New York, the city was suddenly engulfed in fire, which protected the retreating Americans. Edmund Burke told the British parliament that the fire had been started by “one miserable woman, who arrested your progress in the moment of your success”.

   A few women donned male clothing and fought with the Revolutinary Army. Deborah Sampson Gannett fought for more than two years before being discovered, and her husbaand wa slater granted a pension as the widower of a revolutionary soldier. Margaet Corbin stepped infor her slain husband at the battle of Fort Washington and was sevrely wounded, losing the use of one arm. The Continental Congress awarded her a pension and she was eventually buried in West Point Cemetery.

   Some women appeared to get a new sense of purpose from their responsibilities as patriots and stand-ins fo rtheir husbands. Letters to husbands away at war graduallytook on a more confident tone, and farms and crops that had been refered to as “yours” became “ours” as time went on.

   No matter what the ladies contribution, the war was not fought to prove that women were recated equal. One of the era;s most quoted letters was written by Abigail Adams to her husband when the Continental congress was meeting to draw up the Declaration of Independence. “In the new code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would remember the Ladies and be more generous to them than our ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands…That your Sex ar enaturally tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such aof you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friends. Whynot then put it out of the power of the vicious and the lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity and impunity.”

   Adams’ response wounded his wife deeply “As to your extraordinary code of laws” he wrote “I cannot but laugh”.’

   

   Louise C
   September 16, 2013 at 9:00 pm
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