FREE ESSAY ON AMERICAN REVOLUTION

AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Jim Jackson 
J. Parsley
4/18/98
THE DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY
The active participation of women in the Revolutionary War had an effect on the outcome.
Mass political mobilization was a trademark of the protest leading to the independence of
the colonies. Women's role in this mobilization was in the church, market, and family.
Women also formed volunteer societies to provide for the soldier's material needs. Women
also displayed acts of heroism on the battlefield. Despite these facts that are presented
in our textbook of the important role women played in Revolutionary War effort, the image
of the woman's role in the American Revolution has been distorted by popular culture
including films and television shows. 
The colonial woman did play an important role in political mobilization to independence.
Women often fused politics with religion, thus making the church a political institution.
With preachers often theologically interpreting the struggle against the British each
Sunday women often constituted the majority of the congregation. These women would
participate in large public spinning events. These spinning events would often start with
a church service, and the clergy often received the results of the spinning. 
Women as shopkeepers and consumers also had political choices to be made in order to
support the independence movement. Women merchants were pressured to sign onto the
associations, which was a promise to boycott British goods. Some refused such as Anne and
Betsy Cummings of Boston, and they found their names published in the local newspapers as
loyalists. Women were also expected to stop drinking British tea and they were to boycott
British fashions. Many women made their own clothes for themselves and their families.
Other women made similar contributions to the war effort, in Northboro, Massachusetts,
forty-four women spun 2,600 miles of yarn to be used in making uniforms. In addition,
General Lafayette persuaded the women of Baltimore to make summer clothes for his troops.
"Generally, women's role in the production of textiles increased during the war years.
The American Manufactory of Philadelphia employed about 400 women in this line of work
and individual households also made clothing for the army."(pg202) Women also contributed
in the making of bullets by collecting pewter plates, pots, and lead from window
castings. "Mrs. Nathan Sargent of Massachusetts even removed pewter inscriptions from
family gravesites."(pg202) This demonstrates the passion that many women put into the war
effort. Women also had to manage farms and stores while their husbands were serving in
the military. Elizabeth Adkins, recalled when her husband was drafted into military
service in the summer of 1775, "He was gone all summer" and she "had to plow and hoe his
corn to raise bread for the children. Women also served as nurses in military hospitals
where they were at a greater risk of dying from disease than the soldiers in combat."
Another important contribution made by women is the volunteer societies they formed
during the war to aid the soldiers material needs. One of these organizations was The
Ladies Association of Philidelphia, founded in the summer of 1780 by Esther Deberdt Reed,
wife of Josheph Reed, the president of Pennsylvania, it was very successful and urged the
formation of similar groups in other states. Eleven teams of women solicited door to door
in the city and suburbs for money to purchase linen to make shirts for soldiers. 
Bibliography
included