Most patriotic heroes who revolted against the British monarch in the 1700s were male, but a handful of notable women played important roles as well. Author and history educator Carol Berkin reveals the little-known but vital actions of a handful of steadfast women in her 2005 book, “Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence.”
Within 194 pages are detailed true accounts focusing on women from all walks of colonial life: from Margaret Corbin, who manned a cannon at Fort Washington, to Deborah Champion, who hid Continental Army dispatches under her food in a special saddlebag compartment, to Eliza Wilkinson, who documented fear and hardships for women left alone due to husbands fighting.
“The whole world appeared to me as a theatre, where nothing was acted but cruelty, bloodshed, and oppression” is a line from one of Wilkinson’s letters, included in the book, that captures sentiments regarding the war.
In the book’s introduction, Ms. Berkin wrote: “It was ... a brutal home-front war, waged by a largely agricultural society against the most powerful and well-trained military and naval force of the Western world.”
Using guns, bayonets, knives, and even pitchforks, American men fought closely against the British Redcoats. And, while their wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters may have rarely used a weapon, what they bravely wrote and said often helped the cause. Some women stealthily used their fairer-sex status to hide important briefs, maps, weapons, and more from unsuspecting British soldiers.
Ms. Berkin notes that the three women most focused on in history classes, even in universities, are Abigail Adams (wife of John Adams), Betsy Ross (American flag seamstress), and Mary Ludwig Hays, who earned the notable nickname “Molly Pitcher” for carrying water to thirsty Patriots defending Fort Monmouth, in New Jersey. Yet, countless women risked their lives and the lives of their children and extended family members to play a part in securing freedom and a future in what became these United States.
Lydia Darragh was a Quaker, but also worked as an American spy during the War for Independence. Socialite Esther DeBerdt Reed raised $7,000 (more than $30,000 today) for the Continental Army through Philadelphia’s Ladies Association. Elizabeth Burgin took baskets of food and supplies to American prisoners aboard floating British prison ships in New York’s harbor.
Ms. Berkin makes it clear that “Revolutionary Mothers” is not a commentary on establishing some sort of feminist view or to insinuate that women’s contributions before, during, and after the Revolution were equal to that of men’s. In fact, she states: “'Revolutionary Mothers’ is neither a romantic tale nor an effort to stand traditional history on its head by making women the central players in the war for independence. It does not tell one woman’s story, but many, and not all of those stories end in triumph or victory. Instead, this book examines a war that continually blurred the lines between battlefield and home front, and it views that war through the eyes of the women who found themselves, willingly and unwillingly, at the center of a long and violent conflict.”
However, what became evident in small circles and in private families—after the war—was that many Revolutionary War-era women’s fortitude, intellect, actions, and furtiveness contributed greatly to what became recognized as the American spirit.
In Ms. Berkin’s concluding chapter, she points out, “Women’s participation in the war had given concrete empirical evidence of their ability to think rationally and make ethical judgments. … The generation of Revolutionary War women had proved their mettle.”
