DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 111 732

AUTHOR De Pauw, Linda GrantTITLE Four Traditions: Women of New York During the'

American Revolution.INSTITUTION New York State 'merican Revolution Bicentennial

Commission, Albanyl; New fork State Education, Dept.,Albany. Office of State History.

PUB DATE 74 VNOTE 42p.

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EDRS PRICE MF-$0.76 HC-$1.95 Plus PostageDESCRIPTORS *Colonial History (United States); Cultural

Background;'*Cultural Traits; *Females; Feminism;Higher Education; National Defense; *RevolutionaryWar (United States);,Secondary Education;' SocialSciences; Sociocultural Patterns; United StatesHistory; Violence; War; Womens Studies;.WorkingWomen

IDENTIFIER'S *Bicentennial; New York

SO 008 577

ABSTRACT1

The role bf New York women in the American Revolutionis discussed in a survey/of four cultural traditions in 17th and 18thcentury New York -- Iroquois, African, Dutch, and English The purposeis to provide a historical record on the subject of women's history.Women from the four cultural traditions were bound by differentconventions which influenced their reactions to the Revolutionary

, crisis ,and affected,the ways in 'which that crisis would change their --lives. American women were as deeply influenced -by the Revolution aswere American men, though not always to their benefit. The successful

--war for independence' marked a signifitant turning point in the statusof women. Docuthented stories are recounted of-individual women'sactivities during the Revolution in each of the chapters titled: FourTraditions; Choosing Sides; Soldiers, Refugees, and Camp Followers;Tyeason and.Espionage; and Aftermath. Some of the stories depictheroic acts, but some show wrongdoings as well. They all indicate theimportance and tecdssity of the roles women played and the tasks theyundertook during the Revolution. (Author/ND)

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`THE NEW YORK STATE

AMERICAN REVOLUTION

BICENTENNIAL COMMISSION

. -John. R. G. Pell, Chairman New York CityDr. E. K. Fretwell, Jr., Vice-Chairman Buffalo

Walter Averill II ..

4 PoughkeepsieMaj. Gen. John t. Baker TroyMrs. Jeannette 0. Bay lies . ScarsdaleMrs. Mary H. Biondi ,

( OgdensburgJ. Moreau Brown ChappaquaRev. Laman H. Bruner

i Albany

Mrs. Jane des Grange)Robert A. FuscoJudge' Guy A. GravesNathan S. LangdonH. Bert MackSteven L. MarkowskiDr. I. Frank MogaveroRobert MosesLester R. MosherNeal L. MoylanSen. Dalwin J; NilesJudge Nicholas M. retteJoseph Verner Reed, Jr.Harry Rigby, Jr.Dr. Sett Spellman'Mrs. Mildred F. Taylor Lyons

Col. Frederi k P. Todd Cornwall-on-Hudson.

Stony Brook.Waterford

SchenectadyGreenwich

MaspethBfooklyn

Grand IslandNew York City

BinghamtonDelmar

JohnstownJamaica

New York CityKingston

Albany'

\.Louis L. Tucker Executive Director

Office of State HistoryState Education Department

'99 Washington Ave., Room 1807Albany, New York 12230

Second Printing 1975

00004Cover by Jenness Cortez

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CONTENtS

PAGE

Foreword v

Introduction

Four Traditions 3

Choosing Sides 12

Soldiers, Refugees, and Camp Followers 19

Treason #nd Espionage 29

Aftermath 34

Suggestions for Further Reading 38

N.I..A

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FOREWORD

ONE OBJECTIVE-OF THE NEW YORK STATE American RevolutionBicentennial Commissidn is to encourage research and writingin new areas of New York State history. In this booklet, Asso-ciate Professor of History at George Washington Unive?sity,Linda Grant De' Pauw, author of The Eleventh Pillar: New YorkState and the Federal Constitution and consulting historian farthe Women's Coalition for the Third Century, introduces alittle known topic: The role of New York women in the Ameri-

- can "Revolution. American women were as deeply influencedby the Revolution as were American men and, as Professor

rDe Pauw argues, not always to their benefit. Yet women havelargely been ignored by historians of the Revolutionary" periodas well as by historians of early America generally, even thoughthe successful war for independence marked a significant turn-ing point in the status of women. htis survey of four culturaltraditions in 17th and 18th century New York Iroquois,African, Dutch, and Englishwill hopefully fill part of the gapin the historical record and prompt other historians, pro-fessional and amateur alike, to 'delve more deeply into thesubject of women's history.

John H. G. Pell'Chairman, New York State AmericanRevolution Bicentennial Commission.

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INTRODUCTION .

AT THE TIME OF THE REVOLUTION, half of the people in New Corkwere female. All of them,iroquois, Dutch, African, and English,lived in societies that placed definite restrictions on women.Nevertheless, in the last part of the eighteenth century, womenin New York participated in the economic, political, andmilitaryas well as the social, religious, and intellectiialof their day more fully than members of their sex would again\until well into the present century.lo extensively did' womenparticipate in all aspects of Americin society that the mostcasual foray into the area of women's Astory in the Revotionary era leaves one astonished at the Nmount of fascinatingand highly significant material that has never found itsinto general studies of the Revolution:

The reason that women do not appear as a matter of course ingeneral historical works is that until the last few years womenwere of considered Suitable subjects for professional historicalresearc . Nor have those graduate students now being trainedin t area of women's history begun to publish extensively.Consequently the broad foundation of scholarly znonographsand biographies on which° a genet al study;--induding apamphlet such as thigoUght to be based simply does notexist. This pamphlet does not pretend to summarize acceptedscholarly opinion in the field, because there is no body ofcurrent schcilarshijo. But the author hopes that readers of thispamphlet will aeee,thit there certainly ought to be a body ofhistorical literature ori women, since the addition of the femalehalf of the population to the story can expand our understand-

ing of the Revolution in New York significantly. The authorwill welcome comments and corrections from readers and willbe especially grateful to learn of unpublished research andprojects now in-progress. °.

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FOUR TRADITIONSti

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THE TRAhrri NS that determined the acceptable limits ofactivity for omen were not uniform in late eighteenth centuryNew 'York.bound by -action to thwhich that c

By 1775retreated bebut they warea 1200 m*

oquois, Butch, Negto, and Englishwomen wereifferent conventions which influenced their re-

Revolutionary crisis and affected e ways insis would change their lives.e original Indian inhabitants of New York hadore a. century and a half of European advances;re still numerous and powerful, dominating anes long and 600'miles wide. All the peoples of the

Iroquois Six Nations practiced a rigid division of labor by sex.They employed no servants or slaves oiliside the members oftheir own families, and since .fliefr technolOgy ,was primitive,Iroquois females worked extremely hard. The men providedfish and game; agriculture was an occupation delegated,whollyto the women. Except fOr the initial clearing of the land, womendid all the.field work. They cultivated,extensive fields of maize,kidney. beans, and tobacc0 while female children gatheredwild fruits and berries which were dried for winter use.

Women were also responsible for preparing the food andmaintaining the camp, a responsibility which indudad carryingon their backs all equipment and household utensilsas wellas children too young to walk whenever the tribe moved or .

went on a. hunting expedition. In their spare time, Iniquoissquaws plaited -brigHy colored baskets, fashipned woo -dendishes, spoon, hovels, and bowls and cradles of birchbark. They also ewed the Indian equivalent of shoes andstockings legg gs and moccasins decorated with intricateembroidery of wampum, dyed moose hair'or porcupine quills.

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Although the Iroquois women worked' harcltasks con-sidered beneath the dignity- of warriors; they nevertheless

0,enjoyea potions of respect. and power in Ikoquois society.

--While a wire had no status and was the servant of the family,the Mothers of the tribejoyed exalted rank. Their opinionswould be sought in tribal clauncils. Women's views would bepresented by a male spokesman when warriors'met; anti if the

.warriors could not agree on an issue, it was automatically re-ferred to the council bf mothers. Iroquois matrons could' and,did; determine policy, on the gravest issues. They could evenveto a declaration of war or decide whether a captive taken in

war shoulcebe tortured and killed or adopted into the tribe.The Iroquois custom of adoption reveals that they were a

peop remarkably free of racial prejudice. While and Indian, captivs, both children and adults, became in all Ways equal

' .to natural members of the Iroquois farrillytwhen adopted. Rune-way black slaves Might also be adopted by Indian parents andI could then marry into the tribe. A significV reflection onthe Iroquois mode of life is the contentment of afloptees,

, ..especially Women. Pe' laps as many as 71 percent of adult whitecaptives who werjadopted preferred not to return to whitesociety, and there is no doubt that captured chltiren soon forgottheir white parents and learned to love theit:.Ind'ian mothers.In 1765, after Pontiac's War,,ie exchange of captives wasarranged at Albany. Some women travelled hundreds of milesto reclaim children who had been taken frorri4them as mtkh asa decade earlier. An eye-witness wrote: "Thpse who hadadopted them). . . were very unwillingto 'part With them. In thefirsqlace because they were growing very fond bf them; and

4 againtbecause they thought'the children Would not be so happyin Our manner o life, which appearetito thembyth constrained

Q arid effeminate. . . . It was affecting .to' seth$.- deep and silentSorrow of the Indian' women; and of the children, who knewno other mdther, and- clung',foundly. to their bosoms, from._whence theLwere not torn.Without the most piercing shrieks;while their own fond Mothers were,distressed )eyond meas.ure.'. I shall never forget the grotesque figures and,wild looks of, these young savages; nor the trerritkirig haste with which theirMothers arrayed them the new clothes the etha-ci brought for.them, as hoping that., with the Indian dress, they would throwoff their habits and attachments.". ,

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This exchange of captives was arranged by. a prominentDutch New Yorker, Margaretta Schuyler, whose influence withthe natives continued ,a tradition among Hu on Valley'women. From the period of the first contact betwee the Dutchand Iroquois, women seem to have had t special talent forLearning the Indian ,languages and, possi* beause of thehabitual Indian respect for mothers, fagining the confidenceof Indians. When Governor Petrus Stuyvesarit made hisoriginal treaty with the ix Nations in the Mid-seventeenthcentury, he used, a woman as his interpreter; and soon anuipper of Dutchwomen were travelling in the Indiancountryas traders and land agents. Their success in these dealingspiqued the French who competed with the Dutch for theIndian 'Slide: A Frenchman described one of these female

'4 Dutch traders in 1679: "This woman, although not of openlygpdless life, is more wise than decent. . . . Sheds a truly worldlywoman, proud and conceited, arid sharp in trading with wildpeople as well as tame ones. . . . She lias a husband who is hersecond one. He remains at home quietly while she travels overthe country to carry on the trading. In fine, she .is one of theMach female-traders who understand the business so well."

Trading in the Indian country was only one example of thebusiness activities of Dutch women. The economic enterprise 'of Hollanders' wives was considered remarkable .by other

bpeans. Since the Dutch conception of social order was,grounded not upon individual efforts but upon the jointendeavors of family members, each member of The family wasexpected to work to increase the family fortune. No matter howcapable and active her husband might be, a Dutch wife feltobliged to exploit anx available opportunity to make money onher own. Far from feeling threatened or offended b\y such"vigorous feminine actiN/ity, Dutch men were proud of theirwives' business acumen_ In 1721, for instance, a Dutch NewYorker wrote his brother: "Two nights 'agoe atteleven o'clock,my wife was Brought -to bed of a Daughter and is in as goodhealth as can be Expected, and does more than can be Expectedof any woman;'for still within a few hours of her being broughtto bed She was in her Shop, and ever Since has given the priceof Goods to her prentice, who comes-to her and asks it when

.Customers come in. The very next day after She was broughtto bed she Sold goods to-above thirty pounds value. Add-here

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the business matters of her Shop which is Generally Esteemedthe best in NeW York, she with a prentice,of about 16 years ofage perfectly well manage's without the Least help from me, youmay guess a little of hersuccess."

Of course a dutch woman's business activities could not beconducted until the essential "women's work" was done. Dutchwomen traditionally married' early sometimes as young asfifteen and bore many children. Their respNsibility for feed-ing the family included tending the kitchen garden, cooking,and preserving. The men cared for ,"the hardy plants" (corn,cabbage, and potatoes) in the fields, and men plowed thewomen's gardens in the spring. But after that "no foot of manintruded" as the women those of "the better sort" as well aswives of common peopleplanted, cultiyaled, and harvestedtheir crops of kidney beans, asparagus, celery, cucumbers, andherbs. To clothe their families, the women practiced spinning,weavingc-seWing, and constaknitting. Dutch women werealso<proud of their ornamental needlework. Albany girls eventook their work baskets when they went picnicking. When afamily on the upper Hudson made a log raft to float with theirwood down to the Albany market, the mother was lkkely totake her spinning wheel and spin during the tripally,Dutch wives were known to. keep their hOfines exceptionallydealt.

Perhaps the Dutch would have been forced to sacrifice'cleanliness if they had not had household slaYes. In the middle

Thanthe eighteentkcentury, there/Were more slaves in New YurkThan in any colony north of Maryland. Slaves represented fully

a d5 percent of the population. As late as 1771, after a sharp in-crease in the white population, slaves still reprekented-ahnost12 percent of the total population. New York slaves, however,did not work.in gangs in the ,fields. Few families owned morethan one or two blacks, and these were usually personalservants who worked together with their masters or mistressek,udder circumstances that encouraged the growth of warmperional relationships. Slar and mistress would be broughttogether as toddlers, share The games and adventures ;.f child-hood, share housekeeping duties and, when the young mistressmarried, the young woman slave became part of the newlywe&sdowery.

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- 4,oquois sodiety uknew *nothing of slavery noJ of servitudeR

outside the family, so they greq ently, regarded 'slaVeS "with

contempt and dislike . and by uld have no communicationwith them." The New icork Indians despised thoSe Who, Would

not choose .death over slavery, But in the white societies of the' -eighteenth century, many people besides slaves served outside

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file family-r indentured servants,. apprentices, and the poorwhO did doinestic work for, strangers Or pay. And in 'coin-parison with most servile institutions, the Duel system 9fslavery seemed remarkable .for its mildness. The, insoletce of

ew York Negroes especially of those in New Yorktity wasn torious throUghout America. "It- is astonishing, when

recollect it," wrote 'a Scotswoman who had lived in Albany,"what liberty of speech Was allowed to those active and prudent[slave], mothers. They would chide, reproVe, and expostulate

in a manner that we would not endure from our hired servants."Unfortunately for the blacks in New. York, the Dutch in-

fluence was giving way to the English at the time of the Revolu

tion; and. the English suffered froM racial prejudices that madeEnglish'Slavery more burdensome than Dutch. The Dutch had

no slave cOcle before the English came. They tight of theblack servants primarily as humans rather than roperty, as

' their attitude toward free blacks proved. The DUtch accepted free

4., blacks in the .militia and permitted interracial,marriaie, -Free

blacks could own land, slaves, and even white indentured .servants.,Btt the English found Dutch tolerance abhorrent. By

the time of the Revolution it had become illegal for blacks to own

land or to be legally married in church,' and the raw did not

recognize the possibility of a slave woman being raped.

Before the Revglution, black women in New Ybrk dealt with A

the institution ofslavery by manipulating the system to gain

the greatest possible benefits. Open rebelli would havebeen even more futile for a slave woman than for a man; and

running away, especially if ,one had children, was almost im-possible. A woman -could not easily go to sea or escape toIndian country. It is not surprising, therefore,. to find that black*

women comprised well under'20 percent of runaways in New

York. Besides, New York mistresses were generally kind and

considerate to their-slaves. White mistresses would take care

of their slaves' children, placing them as ,servants with good

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people in nearby homes if their mother trained them welltA, faithful Servant could expect to be provided for in her old age.

No sensible woman would risk losing such security urtles avery attractive alternati4e .presented itself.

In the Hudson River valley, women of Iroquois, utch, andAfrican background lived close together in,the mid- hteenthcentury and shared their traditions and feminine s s. SomeMohawk women betin to spend the summers encamped atAlbany, selling their handiwork to the white women and talk-ix% with them about everything from embroldery to religion.The Indians would not speak to slaves, but 6e Dutch womenconversed-with their servants (many of whom reached adult-hood in Africa before being enslaved) and heard of strangecustoms, manners and gdvernments, some of which such asmatriarchal tribal systems, were more like those of the Iroquoisthan those of the Dutch. Through Dutch intermediaries, blackwbmen alstr learned of Indian 'ways, used the baskets andbrooms their mistresses bought from the Indians, and cris:b`"covered the convenience of backpacking )blbies. _6

This accommodation among women of three cultures did.notextend to the Englis English racial prejudices were too strortg.The English felt antipathy for Indians and blacks and didnot find the Put h much more appealing.. As lee as 1787 anEnglish American w-rote:."Sooner than marry any woman onearth that has Dutch blood: in her veins, either for Love orMoney or both united, I would ravish my grand Mother, livea Beggar, & die of famine in a ditch." On the other side, theDutch were repelled by the English settlers who moved intoNew -York by way of New England. They considered theEnglish "conceited, Litigious, and selfish beyond measure,. , . very vulgar, insolent and truly disagreeable people." Thenumbers of English settlers steadily increased, however,inevitably altering the Dutch character of New York. By thetime of the Revolution, New York City was English, not Dutch.EXen in Albany, the area of heaviest Dutch concentration,women found it necessary, if unpleasant, to learn to read andwrite the English language. "I hope wen You right to meagain," sixteen-year-old Anna Gansevoort Wrote to, her brotherin 1769, "you will right as I do haf dutch and haf Engleis. Idon't no the meaning of haf the words." But then Dutch

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In this respect, Dutch and English_practices were similar.English and Dutch women in New York learned enough read-ing, writing, and arithmetic to get by, but female educationwas generally more practical. Like the Dutch, English girlswere taught to do the things their mothers didcook, care forbabies, nurse the sick, tend the kitchen garden, and, whenthose tasks were done, spin, weave, sew, and knit or help outin the family business. Among the English, however, marriedwomen were limited to "helping out;" they could not legallyengage in business enterprises in their own right as couldDutch women. Indeed, the English common law recognized nopersonal or property rights of any sort for married, women.They were considered "one flesh" with their husband's, andthe head of that flesh was his.

Dutch women, on the other hand, were equal to their hus-bands before the law. A Dutch marriage contract usuallysecured a woman's property rights. But even withoht a contract,Dutch law presumed a community of possessions. Furthermore,the Dutch rejected the English practice of primogeniture (bywhich all of the family property descended to the eldest son)and instead divided the fortune equally among all the children.When a young DutchciWoman married, she received part of hershare of the estate as a marriage portion and the rest as a legacy.Since a Dutch woman retained control of her propert, shecould use .,i1" in her _own business; 6r if she invested it with herhusband, she would have a proportionate influence on allmajor management decisions. If she invested more than herhusband, she could exercise control. English wives, however,always held subordinate positions. Even if their husbandsallowed them to work ipdependently as laundresses or shpp-keepers or schoolteachers their wages went to their hhsbands,and all business and legal transactions were performed in hisname.

Ustially the English wife was nothing more than an unp&idassistant in her husband's business. In the pre-industrial age,most business and industry centered in the home or in a shopor workshop downstairs or out back. It was consequentlynatural for a shopkeeper's wife to wait on customers, for a

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printer's wife to learn to set type, or for a tavernkeeper's wifeto keep the accounts and order supplies. Indeed, despite thelegal limitations on Englishwomen's economic activity, theyperformed a wide variety of tasks in almost every occupation.Perhaps the most bizarre was one Mrs. Dugee whose husbandpromoted her appearance in New York City as "the FemaleSamson." "I. She lies with her body extended between twochairs and bears an =anvil of 300 lb on her breast, and willsuffer two men to strike it with sledge hammers. H. She willbear six men to stand on her breast lying in the same position.III. She will lift the above:anvil by the hair of her head. IV. Shewill suffer a stone of 700 lb. to lye on her breast and throw. itoff six feet from her." Mr. Dugee did his part by dancing "thestiff-rope with iron fetters on his feet."

One hopes that Mrs. Dugee was able to retire when Mr,Dugee died, but usually a widow found it necessary to carryon the family business. Fortunately there was an allowance inthe English common law to make thin possible. A widow (ora spinster) couirbe designated "feme sole" and was thenallowed to carry on business enterprises on her own, much asDutch women could. If a widow did not remarry, she mightbecome owner and proprietor of any sort of businessf.and anumber of women entrepreneurs appear on the lists of NewYork City freemen. But spinsters were very rare and "Wfdowsusually remarried within months of their husband's death.

English women, then, like Dutch and Iroquois women, weredeeply involved in the productive activities of their com-munities. And despite the apparent legal restrictions Oh femaleactivity, women other than slaves had a measure of influencethat would make ifielf strongly felt as 'the Revolutionary crisisdeveloped in the years before 1776.

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CHOOSING SIMS

°'I PARDON Mil MY LOVI3 FOR TALKING polittcs to yoli," Alexanderamilton wrote his fiancee Elizabeth Schuyler in 1780. "Whatave we to do with anything but love?" Hamilton was N-ecting a new-fangled English notion that women at any rate

ladies did not concern, themselves with political activity. ButNew York women had taken part in politics since the seven-teenth century; they would not learn to be ladies until after theRevolution. .

In the early days of settlement, political influence amongboth the English and the Dutch was determined by wealth andsocial status. Superior peoplewhether male or female hadit; inferior people whether male or femaledid not. WhenLady eborah Dunch Moody established a town at Gravesend,Long Island,n 1646, she enjoyed most of the rights suitable toan English noble. Common law: limitations did hot bindnobility. Whether married or not, nOblewbrnen could beknights of the kingdom, vote for members of Parliament,

I preside over courts, and, of course, carry on any kind ofbusiness activity in their own names. So Lady Moody governedher estate; and when the Governor of New Amsterdam wan edan election held, he wrote to her. She not only voted but coup edthe ballots as well. Latjr ih the seventeenth century Margare toVan Schlectenhorst, . widow 'of Philip P. Schuyler, felt it herbusiness to support er Albany neighbors in their resistanceto the rebel leader, Jacob Leisler, supplying fund's needed topay soldiers.

In Europe only the few people with substantial fortunesenjoyed political rights. But in America, Where propertyownership was widespread, political rights came to be enjoyed

AT the middle. class as well. Women in New York City weretechnically eligible lo serve on the watch and, because of theirstatus as burghers or freemen, to vote in municipal elections.

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In practice, however, the property-holding women seem tohave had the burdens but not the benefits of full citizenship.In 1733 some of thesedisfranchised women published a protestin the New York Journal: Me, the widows of this city, have hada Meeting, and as our case is something Deplorable, we begyou will give it Place in Your Weekly Journal, that we may berelieved, it is as follows: We are House Keepers, Pay our Taxes,carry on Trade and most of us are she Merchants, and as we insome measure contribute to the Support of Government, weought to be entitled to some of the Sweets of it;:but we findourselves entirely neglected, while the Husbands that live inour Neighborhood dre daily invited to Dine at [the Englishgovernor's] Court; we have the vanity to think we can be fullas Entertaining, and make as brave a Defence in Case of anInvasion and perhaps not turn Taile so soon as some of them."

This petition drew no response and New' York women wererarely able to exert- political pressure through establishedpolitical nItitutions, and never in significant numbers. But,as in bus ess, women did manage to exert some influence inpolitics. :W en attended the weekly "assemblies" of theprincipal families that were often, in fact, political meetings,and the opinions of a prominent woman such as MargarettaSchuyler frequently would be sought out. New York womenalso proved that they shared the abilify of men to organizeprotest mobs, a typical form of political expression in an agewhen the franchise was restricted. For instance, MagdalenaZeh led her female neighbors. against Sheriff Adams in 1715when he challerfged their squatters' rights along the SchoharieRiver. Armed with brooms, rakes, and hoes, the,y dragged theunfortunate man through barnyards, rode hinl on. a rail, andfinally dumped him on a bridge on the road back to Albany.

Such instances provided valuable training for the brewingimperial conflict. In 1765, with the passage of the Stamp tact,New 'York and the other American colonies began a decade ofalinOst uninterrupted political delgOte. New York womenplayed a role in the ensuing controversy. "Politics, politics,politics!" complained a visitor to New York City in May,1775. "Merit women, children, all ranks and professions madwith Politics." Not all New Yorkers favored the riew spirit ofprotest and resistanceindeed fully half of them did not. But

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from the beginning women appear among those who enthusi-astically embraced the, patriot cause.

A particularly feminine way of opposing the Stamp Act wasto protest the custom° of marrying with a license which hadto be purchased from the governor and which now required astamp. Although the New England custom of posting banziSsina church was considered ineleput by New Yorkers, patrioticwomen thought that the New England practice might provide

)A means for circumVenting the controversial Brjtish ordinanceand for saving money as well. "As no Licenses for Marriagecould be obtained since the first 15f November for Want ofStamped Piper," reported the New York Gazette on December 6,1765, "we can assure the ublick several Genteel c ouple[s]were publish'd in the differdnt Churches of this City last Week;and we hear that the young Ladies of this Place are determinedto Join Hands with none but such as will to the utmost en-deavour to abolish the Custom of marrying with License . ."

Women also felt that they could partkipated in symbolicdemonstrations such as those which delighted the Sons ofLiberty. Ale'xander McDougall, who had been jailed.for publish-ing a pamphlet against the Quartering Act, was visited on theforty-fifth day of the year by forty-five gentlemen Who dinedwith him on forty-five pourids of beefsteak cut from a bullockforty-five months old, in order to drzunatize the similarity ofthe American merchant to the Englishman 'John Wilkes whohad been 'condemned for his publication, North Briton #45.Later, forty-five virgins appeared at McDougall's prison celland sang him forty-five songs. A tory observer sourly suggestedthat they were all forty:five years old.

Early in the period of colonial protest, *the colonists de-termined that the best way to force Britain to respect the rightsof Americans was to boycott British goods, especially those,like tea, that bore an import tax. This strategy made it necessaryfor American women to practice frugality and to increasedomestic manufacture of such essential items as cloth. TheNew York Gazette published some advice for "daughters ofliberty," clipped from a Boston paper six days after the imple-mentation of the TaArnshend duties:

First, then,.throw aside your topknots of pride,Wear none bilt your own country linen,

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Of Economy boast, let your pride be the most,-To show clothes of your own make and spinning.

What if home-spun, they say, is not quirt so gayAs brocades, yet be not in a passion,

-For when once it is known, this is much worn in t'pwn,One and all will cry out 'Tis the fashion.'

Throw aside your Bohea and your Green Hyson tea,And alb things with a new-fashion duty;Procure a good store of the choice Labrador [a tea substitute]For there'll soon be enough here to suit ye;

These do without fear, and to all you'll appearFair, charming, true, lovely; and clever,Tho' the times remain darkish, young men may be sparkish,And love you 'much stronger than ever.

New York women followed the example of women in New ,England as they forswore tea,und worked to set new recordsin spinning linen. Spinning, like knitting, quilting, and otherhand work, was customarily carried out in the company offriends and neighbors. While the women worked, they almost5ertainly talked politics. Certainly they viewed the work itself

--/as a /bkind of political activity.' A 1769. newspaper reports:- "Three young Ladies at Huntington on Long Island, namely

Ermine, Leticia and Sabrina, having met together, agreedto try their Dexterity at the Spinning- wheel accordingly thenext morning they sit themselves down, and like the VirtuousWoman, put their Hands to the Spindle and held the Distaff;'at Evening they had 26 Skeins of good Linen Yarn each Skin[sic] containing 4 ounces, all ,which were the effects of thatDay's Work only. N.B. It is hoped that the Ladies of Connecticutand Rhode Island, who have shown their skill and Industryat the spinning wheel will be sincerely pleased to find theirlaudable example so well imitated in Huntington, and that ithas kindled 'a spirit of generous Emulation in the Ladies ofNew York Government; we hope the same Spirit will spreadthro' the Continent. That the Ladies while they vie with each '

other in Skill and Industry in this profitable Employment,. may ,(, vie with the nien, in contributing to the Preservation and

Prosperity of their Country, and equally Stare the Honour of it."

'60019

'16

Thal the women took their sewing circles seriously is furtherillustrad by the fate of a young Man who was foolish enoughto intekhipt one in Kinderhook, New \fork, in order to deliverhis uncomplimentary views of-the Continental Congress. Thewomen, "exasperated at his impudence, laid hold of him,stripped him naked to the 'waist, and instead of tar coveredhim with Molasses, and for feathers, took the downy tops offlags [flax], which grow in the meadows, and coated him w..ell,and then let him go."

The increased production of dothing that began in supportof the non-importation movement became evmmore vital tothe patriot cause once war broke out in 1775. "tbviding shirtg'and stockings for the American forces was traditionally"cavemen's work." Even though the New York Committee ofSafety urged everyone to grow more flax and to stop eating

'Iamb so that more wool could be produced, the conversion offiber into cloth was the responsibility of women. The spinningwheels, looms, and knitting needles were operated almostexclusively by women. Never the sort to sit with idle hands,women became even more industrious during the war years.Plain people knitted, officers' wives knitted, and even loyalistgirls given refuge in patriot territory spun flax for soldiers'shirts. As the war progressed, the New York legislature passedan "Act to Procure Shoes and Stockings for the New York

1

Troops" which empowered assessors to stipulate -a quota ofstockings to be provided by each woman and to levy fines of

# ten dollars fat every pair not provided.Supplying clothing for the army was almost exclusively a

feminine responsibility, although a few men were freed frommilitary service to weave and to make shoes. Women alsohelpe&,secure two other essentials: gunpowder and shot. InMarch of 1776, the New York Ccdtmittee of Safety appointed acommittee in each county to encourage the production of-salt-peter, a responsibility which women shared with men. Threethousand-leaflets describing the methods of making saltpeterand gunpowder were distributed, and the local committeesreported good response. Women also held scrap drives. Pewterdishes, door knockers, fishnet weights, window weights, eventhe equestrian statue of George III that had once stood onBowling Green in New York City, ended up, in melting pots to

00020

17

fbe turned into shot'and cannon balls. 4nd finally, as the warprogressed, women supplied horses' and provisions and pro-vided for ,?ie other needs of,officers and men as they passedthrough their neighborhoods. Women took, in return the papermoney and certificates of dubiolis value issued bythe fledglingAmerican ioverrunent.

Meanwhile, loyalist women'in New `fork were probably as'numerous as patriots, if less active. The patriots denounced asTories all who Were not fervent Whigs, although many New-Yorkers were merely indifferent. The Dutch tradition did notComprehend the "CromWellian politics" of rebellion that in-flamed New England Yankees. While many Dutch New Yorkersof both sexes embraced the patriot cause, many others weredeliberately apolitical. So while loyalist wpmen may havebeen as numerous as patriots, they were less visible. The singleorganized -activity,,bf loyqist women in New Y4ok appears to tihave been the raising. of Money in New fork City to purchaseand outfit a privateer called The Pair American..Perhaps the most valuable support for the British in New

York came from the Iroquois. For almost a century, the. SixNations had been a crucial weight in the balance of powerbetween French and English in North America. Now, in thestruggle between Americans and Engligh, the Iroquois couldbring significant aid to either side. Even though in 1775 thegeneral' council of the Iroquois League decided to remainneutral, each of the Six Nations was left free io choose side's.As the British and the Americans wooed the tribes, womenexerted their cuitomary. influence. Particularly,significant wasthe activity of Mary Brant? the Mohawk widow of Sir WilliamJohnson. Her personal power in the governmental dtructure ashead of a society of Six Nation Matrons was reinforced by theprestige of her late husband. It was said that in the councilsof the Iroquois "one word from her goes farther with them thana thousand from any white Man without Exception." It prckb-ably even went farther than that of most Indian men. There isreason to believe that Mary Brant-exerted more influence inthe Confederacy than her bettereknown, younger brother,Joseph. She was equally loyal to England, and she worked tokeep the western tribes of the Six Nations solidly allied with

4

the British. -*

00021_,.,

In the end,. the Cayugas, Senecas, Onondagas, and mjost of

the Tuscarora sibpsfrv,rith the Mohawks .in -support of K3Ing

George III; only ihe Oneidas and some of the 'Tuscaroras aided

the colonists. The Indians who favored the patriot cause were

influenced by the Reverend Samuel Kirkland, a'New England

missionary, and his wile, Jeriisha Bingham Kirkland, who was

"considered "mother" of the' Oneida nation and who was a

leader among the women of the tribe.The Revolution opened some important possibilities for the

'black women bf New York. As whites became sensitive to their

own political "slavery," they became increasingly sensitive

to the more concrete slavery of blaCks. It seems 'probable that

New York blacks relied on Revolutionary rhetoric to win hand-

some Concessfons'frorn their owners. Black men could win their

freedom by serving in the patriot army, and manumissions of,

both male and female slaves increased significantly after the

war began: But the desire for personal freedom that motivated

black interest in the Revolution did nnt necessarily dictate an

attachment to the patriot cause. Not only were black women

among those who followed the British troops as servants to

officers and their families,, but the first promise of freedom

came from ftif royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, who

guaranteed emancipation to any able-bodied slave who joined

the British army. Although this promise was extended only to

men, a few black women are known tb havefled to the British,

hoping to be freed. In New York City one black mother was so

inspired by the promise of freedom held out by Dunmore that

she reportedl§ named her child in his honor.

As the war began, then, white, red, and black women, chose

sides. They continued to make their presence felt as the con-

flict grew.

(t-

000224

SOLDIERS, REFUGEES, AND CAMP FOLLOWERS_

: _- . o s .q ; .

0 13,)3sprrs HER.. sPRAWt.tha TstatrroRY, New York ranked no .higher than seventh in population-when the Revolution'evolution ilegan.Yet nearly one-third of the military action of the RevoltitiOnary ...

. .

War took place in New York. Througliout the war, thepatriot 'population was vulnerable to land and water attacks by Brjlish,, .

tloyalistg, and Indians. ,..,,.; .Even before the British fleet arrived in New York 'harbbr, :

loyalists were strong in Queens, Richmond, Westchester,'Kings, and Manhattan.Vashington could: riot hope to' preventthe occupation- of the vital port Of New York City/,and theContinental Army was fortunate to "escape destruCtion. Afterthe Battle of Long Island in August, "1776, the Americgn grperalsMet 'in the home of Christina Ten 13roeck:.Livingston (whose/husband had' belatedly gone to Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence) and laid Otitis to evacuate theoaimYto Mtrha . It was a well conceived operatio'n, but it_ wasalmost upset y a loyalisr*oinar: named Mrs. Rapalye,1013upset

...near the embarktion site on Brooklyn Heights. Whenshe wastawakehed in the middle of the night by thenoiseof10,000 men boarding rowboats under her'windows, she senther black slave boy to the-British with a warning. But the boy'

0 rail into a company of Hessians who spoke no English, pndthey responded p his babbling by locking hint in the guard-house. By the =time he was released the next mornifig, theAmerican army .with all of its horses and artillery was inManhgttan.

.

Less than three months later, however, Manhattan also hadto be abandoned after the disastrous defeat of the Americangarrison at Fort Washington on , ,November 16, 1776. Amongthose killed that day Was.a.Virginia man named

WhenCorbin

in the 1st Company of Pennsylvania Artillery. When he fell;, .

.. . '21.

his twenty-five year old wife, 'Margaret Coibin, took overhis position at'a small cannon? It was a vulrierable position,and she too was soon wounded, One of hei arms was al-,most severed and a breast was badly lacerated by grapeshot.She was moved to Philadelphia with other casualties andassigned to the Invalid Corps. Recognizing that her woundswould leave her permanently crippled, Congress acknowledgedher gallantry, by awardingohera pension of half-pay and "onecompleat suit of cloaths" annually for the rest of het life. She .,settled in Westchester County, New York, 'where she diedabout 1800.

We know more about Margaret Corbin than we do about'' . Most of the women who 'Sc.companiefrthe American army. But

there were undoubtedly many like her in every campaign ofthe war. They would take up a 'rifle or serve at a 'field pieceonly in an emergency, but meanwhile there were parts of armylife that were considered "women's work." Nursing, cooking,mending uniforms, washing, and foraging were tasks alleighteenth century armies assigned to women. It was cus-tomary to provide half-rations, for g certain number of womenand quarter-rations for the children Who necessarily marchedwith their mothers. Some women of the Revolutionary eradearly preferred following the y to staying at home. Suchofficers' wives as Mrs. ElenrY'Kno andoMrs. Nathanael Greene-surely did, and Martha Washing n hoasted that she hardthe first and lait shot* every cam ign during the war. It

guns were silent, th children9also enjoyed themselves. A six-year -old

probable-di t, as long ag the weather was good and the

year-old girl who followed the British troops in New Yorkduring the French and Indian War later remembered how fineit had been to see her father csevery day. She had been able torun outdoors, freed from the tedious needlework that she couldnot be compelled to do while marching through the woods.

Many New York women, however, followed the troops outof necessity rather than choice.' When New York City wasoccupied by the British, .large numbers of patriots fled. Eliza-beth Ainsley Lewis, whose husband had 'gone to Philadelphiato sign the Declaration of Independence, was seized by theBritish and imprisoned in New York City for three months.

. 91'0 experience broke her health and she died soon after her

0 0 024

I I

A

release.. No woman who had actively aided thepatriot cause

could risk falling into enemy hands. Many escaped to West-

chester Dutchess; or U1Ster Counties, or crossed Long Island -

*Sound Into Connecticut. Since the abandonment of their

'homes left them ,destitute, many of titese women were forced

to follow the Amean armies. . .

The notion that there should be am allowance to support a

soldiei's family when the family did not accompany the

troops was unheard "of. If dependents were to be fed from

stores; they had to work. "I cannot see why ;the soldiers

Wives in Albariy should be supported at public s)q)e-e,"

wrote General Washington in 1778. "They may get most

eNtravagant Wages for any kind. of Work in the Country and to

feed theist when that is the case, would be robbing the public,

and encouraging idleness. If they would come down and atten

as N(urses to the Hospitals they would find immediate em-

ploy jment]." There were so many New York refugees,- how-

ever, that Washington's army was eventually overwhelmed-by

women and children. In 1781 Washington ordered General

'Benjamin Lincoln "to take the present opportUnity of deposit-

ing at West Point such of their Women as are notable to under-

go the fatigue of frequent marches and also . .. Baggage Which

they can in any wise dispense with." Washington, however,

opposed the attempts of the Secretary at War and the Super-

intendant of Finance to limit the ntunbkr of women drawing

rations to one:fifteenth the number of men. He pointed out

that "the Regiments Of [New). York . . . fled with their families

When the enemy obtained possession of those places and have

no other means of Subsistence. The Cries of these-Women; the

sufferings of their Children, and the complaints of the Hus-

bands would" admit of no alternative. . . In a word, I was

obliged to give Provisions to the extra Women in these Regi-

ments, or lase by Desertion, perhapsto the'Enemy, some of the

oldest and best soldiers in` the service."

The number of New York refugees increased as Britain's

Iroquois allies began raids in the Mohawk Valley and along the

upper Hudson. On June 1, 1777, General John Burgoyne in-

vaded New York from Canada and began a drAre toward Albany

as part of a major campaign designed to separate New England

from the other states. A second force uncir Lieutenant Colonel

06025,I

23,

*Barry St. Leger was to -advance toward Albany througli theMohawk Valley. The 'Americans were rebuilding. a decayingfortification atFort Stanwix at the. western end of the valleyWhen the Iroquois maw their first aggressivemove, shootingant scalping tWo soldiers ,of the Fort Stanwix garrison 'onJune26. The garrison prepared to withstand a siege, and the

,sick and gd wounded 'along' with most 'of the soldier4' familieswere sent back to Albany. Eight wives, remained; however, to6uPpcirt the troops?one of them, after being seriously woundedby a shell late in the siege, game birth to a baby girl, St. Leger'sforces attacked Fort Stanwix oh 'August 3. Tradition has it thatas the firing began a strange object appeared over the walls.It was reputedly the first American flag ever, to fly in the faceof the enemyan informal affair pieced together fiom a whiteshirt, an old blue, jacket, and the red petticoat of a soldier'swife. Relief was on the way in the person of General Nicholas'Herkimer with eight hundred militiamen and a party of Oneidawarriors, including the Oneida commander's wife \who wasarmed and ready for battle. But the Mohawk leader MollyBrant warned St. Leger, and the rescue mission failed. Thesiege was finally lifted by Benedict Arnold on August 24.' Meanwhile, families in the upper Hudson valley Areparedto leave their homes and retreat to Albany. Catherine Schuyler,

ofeCeneral Philip Schuyler who was commanding theAmes moving to block Burgoyne, went into her fields andfired the growing crops before abandoning the estate II oldSaratoga. The refugees were fleeing from more than the British;they knew from experience the savagery of Indian raids.Indians did not conform to European rules of war. Indiansseemed to kill indiscriminately without regard for age or sexand did not always distinguish betWeen patriots and loyalists.The horror that, the British had introduced into the`'war byencouraging the Iroquois to'fight was symbolized by ,the caseof Jane McCrea.

Jr! McCrea lived with her brother, a colonel in the Ameri-can army, near Fort Edward on the Hudson River above Albany.As frequently happened in war--lbrn New York, Jane MCCreadid not allow her brother's politics to interfere with her lovefor a loyalist named David Jones, a lieutenant serving underGeneral Frazer in Burgoyne's command. When Fort Edward

r00026

a

24

was evacuated by the Americans in July, 1777, Colonel McCreaurged his sister to go with his family to Albany. She refusedand went instead to the hOme of her friend, "Aunt" SarahMcNeil. Apparently she planned to wait for Burgoyne's armyto occupy Fort Edward, after which she could marry Jones andfollow the army with the other officers' wives. Unfortunately.,the Indians reached Fort Edward first. On July 25 they toma-hawked and scalped eight members of the Allen family, in-,

chiding two children who had been dragged from under a bed.On July 27 the American garrison abandoned the lost outpostabove Fort Edward with Indians in hot pursuit. Running pastthe McNeil house, a fleeing soldier shouted a warning; andSarah McNeil quickly hurried Jane, her black slave woman,Eve, and Eve's baby down into the cellar. But "Aunt" McNeilwas an extraordinarily heavy woman, and when she tried tofollow the others she was caught in the trap hole. The Indiansdragged her out. Peering into the cellar they also discoveredJane; Eve and her baby hid in the darkness. At first the Indiansplanned to take Jane alive. But they soon encountered another

r party and,'in the course of a quarrel over who should im-prison the young woman, Jane McCrea was tomahawked andscalped.

The impact of the murder of Jane McCrea was immense. Thestory was quickly embellished. In New York City, rumors werethat she had been raped by the Indians three times before shewas scalped. Many New Yorkers Who had been neutral or evenloyal to the British now joined the patriots. Furthermore, theMcCrea atrocity forced Burgoyne to reprove his Indian allieswho were already growing restless, with the result that manyof those who remained deserted him. Consequently, Burgoyne'sposition was eroding rapidly as he moved south towardSaratoga, f011owed by perhaps eight thousand men, twothousand women, and an undetermined number of children.

While the opposing forces moved toward confrontation atSaratoga, there was a brief flurry of excitement in CaptainAbraham Hunt's company, the 1st Massachusetts Regiment,serving with General St. Clair. It Was discovered that CorporalSamuel Gay, who had enlisted the previous February, wasactually "a woman dressed in mens doaths." The corporal waspromptly discharged, and there is no record of what become of

00027

25

her. A few years later, however, a Massachusetts private joinedthe same regimdnt under the name of Robert Shurtleff andserved with Washington at West Point, receiving a wound in askirmish at Tappan, New York. Only after the war did PrivateShurtleff reveal that "his" name was really Deborah Sampson.The ex-private demanded, and collected, a pension fromCongress.

Most women with the armies, of course, were content toappear in their own clothing. On October 7, 1777, during theBattle of Bemis Heights, the voices of American women couldbe heard over the gunfire, wailing their fear for the safety oftheir husbands or vigorously, cursing the enemy. When the'sun set, they crawled over the battlefield, stripping the dead'and wounded of the clothing that their own men would needwhen winter came. Ten days later, Burgoyne's entire armysurrendered to the Americans at Saratoga. During the preced-'ing battles, English and Hessian camp followers found refugein a farmhouse cellar that was also used as a makeshift hos-pital, the entire operation being directed by the woman ofhighest social rank present, Baroness von Riedesel, wife of theHessian general.

The baroness, or "Mrs. General" aS she was often called, kepta detailed journal which gives a sharp picture of the life of aRevolutionary war camp follower. She' was not, of course,. anAmerican. Iessian soldiers, like'English and Irish soldiers,brought their wives with them when they came to the colonies.But the king's soldiers acquired a good number of Americanwives after they arrived. Many American girls favored the qEnglish cause, and the European soldiers found them veryattractive. As Burgoyne's captured army marched from Sara-toga to a camp near Cambridge, Massachusetts, a youngGerman soldier recorded his impressions of the indigenousfemale population: "The womenfolk in this whole extensiveregion . . . are slender and straight, fleshy without being stout.They have pretty little feet, very solid hands and arms, a verywhite ski?1 and a healthy complexion without having to paint.. Their teeth are very white, their lips pretty, and their eyesvery laughing and aniinated. At the same time, they havenatural good manners,.a very unconstrained manner, a frank,gay face and natural ',Oldness. . . . Dozens of these pretty girls

00028

27

stood by the road everywhere and let us pass NI review, latighedat us mockingly now and then or now and then they coquet-tishly extended an apple with a curtsy."

The, march to Cambridge was very hard on the soldiers'li

wives. While officers and their wives enjoyed the hospitalityof the American General Schuyler and rode to Boston in rela-tive comfort, common soldiers and their families went on footthrough the Berkshire mountains. The ground was rough andthe weather cold. Finally it began -to snow. An English lieu-tenant, assigned to the baggage guard where the women aridchildren were, left this description: "The roads across werealmost impassable . [and when they reached the top of thepass] there cu ne a heavy fall of snow. Affer this it was im-possible to describe the confusion; carts breakinedown, otherssticking fast, some oversetting, horses tumbling with theirloads of baggage, men cursing, women shrieking and childrensqualling. . . . In the midst of the heavy snow storm, upon abaggage cart and with nothing to shelter her from the in-clemency of the weather but a bit of oil cloth, a soldier's wifewas delivered of a child." By the time they reached Boston, theprisoners, were a dreadful sight. "I never had the least Ideathat the Creation produced such a sordid set of creatures inhuman Figure," wrote a Boston woman, "poor, dirty, emaciated-men, great numbers of women, who seemed to be the beasts ofbtirden, having a bushel basket on their back, by which theywere bent double, the contents seemed to be Pots and Kettles,various sorts of Furniture, children peeping thro' gridironsand other uterisili, -Sorsty very young infants who were bornon the road, the W' omen bare feet, loathed in dirty raggs.. ."So distressing was their appearance that an order went out from'the city authorities forbidding the camp women from showingthemselves in public "for fear the pregnant women in Boston'should be marked."

Burgoyne's defeat; decisive though it was, did not halt thewarfare along the New York frontier. After the Americanvictory, General Schuyler prepared a wampum belt for the SixNations infonsling them of5the events at Saratoga and suggest-ing that they come to terms with the Continental Congress.The news spread as the belt passed &Om tribe to tribe. Butwhen it reached the Cayuga, a white loyalist widow, Sarah

,00029

20

McGinnis, who wao living with the Indians, asserted the fightof an Iroquois matron to intervene in matters of diplomacy.She.vized the belt and persuaded the tribe to alter the message

..to one more favorable to the British before passing it on.And so the border warfare continvd. In 1778, Indian raids

terrorized the settlers. Indian women occasionally accompaniedwar parties, armed with tomahawks, and participated in thepillaging. Rumors that flew in the' backcountry described ahalf-blooded Indian woman, Catherine or Esther Montour, whosang "a wild, weird song" as she tomahawked prisoners. Whitewomen were also active during the Indian warfare. There aredozens of recorded cases of individual tragedy or heroism.Mrs. Elizabeth Petrie Shell and her husband and sons, forexample, defended their cabin near present-day Herkimeragainst an attack by Indians and loyalists. Mrs. Shell loadedThe guns. When the enemy pushed their guns through chinksin the wall, she smashed them with an axe. The enemy finallyretreated, but only after capturing her two twin boys. Anotherbackwoods woman, Jane Campbell of Otsego County, actively

.suppofted the Committee of Safety and the local militia. Shewas captured by Indians in November, 1778, adopted into theSeneca nation, and finally released in 1780. Nancy Van Alstyneof Clnajoharie became such an experienced Indian fighter thatshe was known as "Patriot Mother" of the Mohawk Valley, apeculiarly suitable tribute since she had fifteen children ofher own:

Meanwhile, as some women battled in he wilderness andothers trudged from camp to camp with the armies, anothercldss of women experienced the war in an urban setting andturned to more sophisticated activity..

qt.

00030

TREASON AND ESPIONAGE

AMONG Ian AMERICANS WOUNDED at the Battle of Saratoga was.Mai& General Benedict Arnold. Although .Arnold was aninspiring military, leader, he had trouble getting along withalmost everyone.4xcept the soldieri under his command: Sincehis wound disabled him, he was assigned as military com-mander of Philadelphia, a post for which he was temper-mentally unfit. He quickly alienated the civil authorities, hisfellow officers, and most of the. civilian population. In faCt,Arnold found those Philadelphians who had collaborated withthe enemy while the city was occupied by the British easierto deal with than the patriots. Indeed he got along with someof those collaborators very well. On April 8, 1779, the thirty-eight year old American general married nineteenirearToldPeggy Shippen, a dainty, delicate girl with large gray-blue,eyes, pale blond curls, fierce loyalist principles, and a mindlike a razor. -

At Peggy Shippen's birth, her father wrote that the newbaby, "though of the worst sex, is yet entirely welcome." Whenher brother proved to have no head for business, EdwardShippen gave his little girl an education inbusiness and politicsthat made her capable of conducting the most complicatedfinancial arrangements with skill and confidence. Once marriedto Arnold she had an opportunity to try her hand at politiC,s.Arnold 1,vas no match for her. He had always been easilyfluenced by youthful advisers, and he was much in love withhis vivacious little wife. Within a month of his marriage, hehad decided to switch his allegiance to the British.

Contact was made with Captain (later Major) John Andre,General Henry Clinton's aide in New York City, whom Peggyhad met during the British occupation. Eventually it wasdecided that the most useful thing Arnold could' do for. heBritish was to surrender the forfificatiori at West Point to thern.

.4 -29

a 00031

3

30

To do thft he needed first to be appointed to that post. Peggy

helped y enlisting the help of, the New York patriot leader,

Robert R. Livingston. On August 3, 1789, Arnold got tbe assign-

ment. The plot misfired, but barely. Andre was captured on his

way to meet Arnold, and Arnold himself fled to the British

lines in New York Citypn September26. When a compromising

letter from Andre to Peggy. Arnold was discovered inehila-

aelphia by the SupremelExecutive Council of Pennsylvania,

the newspapers_ argued that its exit;tence disproved "the

fallacious and dangerous 'sentiments so frequently avowed in

this city that female opinions are of no \consequence in public

matters. . . . Behold the consequence!" )

Fortunately for the American, West Point was not lost. But

patriot intelligence operations in New York City were crippled

since Arnold knew about some people who had spied on him.

New York Cify has been called "the spy center of the Revolu-

tion." From 1776 until 1783, it was'occupied by the British and

filled with royal officers, soldiers, and loyalists who knew

'things General Washington wanted to know. Hundreds of

patriots fled the town when the British arrived, and thousands'

of British and Hessian troops, loyalists, and runaway slaves

arrived to take their places, causing acute shortages of every-

thing from housing to food and firewood. Many New Yorkers

who had been neutral or loyal when the British arrived became

patriots after suffering the hardships of British occupation. In

August, 1778, a rilece of New Jersey Governor William Living-

ston received permission to visit her sister (whose husband

had been neutral) in New York City. She now found that her

sister's "political principles are perfectly rebellious," and she

felt confident that the whole family would soon be patriots.

"The sentiments of a great number have undergone a thorough

change since they have been with the British army," she re-

ported, "as they have many-opportunities of seeing flagrant

acts cif injustice and cruelty of which they could not have

belieVed their friends capable." Rape was one of the grievances

that made patriots put of neutrals, for American women took

it more seriously than the British officers. "The fair, nymphs

of this isle [Staten Bland] are in wonderful tribulation," an

English officer wrote cheerfully to a friend in London, "as the

fresh meat our 'men have got here has made them riotous as

00032

31

satyrs. A girl cannot step into the bushes to pliick a rose with-out running the most imminent risk of being ravished, and theyare so little accustomed to these rigourous methods that theydon't bear, them with the proper resignation, and of conse-quence we have the most entertaining courts-martial eyeryday."

There was soon enough concealed hatred of the British amongthe inhabitants of the occupied town to produce many whowould gladly pass on secrets overheard in taverns, coffeehouses; or brothels. Others could code the messages, copythem in invisible ink, and then smuggle them from Long Islandinto Connecticut between the bound covers of a book or hiddenin the sole of a boot. The agents of the American intelligenceorganization that performed this task used code names andhid their identities so well that. the names of some are stillunknown. But the outline of the operation is clear, and weknow that a number of women were involved.

The intelligence system known as the Culper Ring wasestablished in 1778 on Washington's orders by Major BenjaminTallmadge. He was related to Anna Strong, wife of Judge SelahStrong of Strong's Neck, Long Island, whose home was con-venient to several. inlets that could receive small boats movingunobtrusively across the Long Island sound to patriot-heldConnecticut. An offshore boat could be signalled if Mrs. Stronghung a black petticoat and a predetermined number of whitehandkerchiefs on her clothesline. One of Anna Strong'sneighbors, AbrahathrWoodhull, was then recruited as "SamuelCulper" and began intelligence missions into New York under

-cover of visits to his sister, Mary Underhill, who ran a boardinghouse on Queen Street. "Samuel Culper" recruited "SamuelCulper, Junior" Robert Townsend of Oyster Bay who fre-e

quently made business trips into the Cityand Townsendbrought in several of his relatives: Sarah Townsend in OysterBay, and Phoebe Townsend Lawrence, who lived with her hus-band in Bayside. The conspirators badly needed a permanentagent in New York City. On August 15, 1779, '=Samuel Culper":wrote in code: "Every 356 [letter] is opened at the entrance of727 [New York], and everyone is searched. They have some345 [knowledge] of the route our 356 [letter] takes. . .. I intendto visit 727 [NewYork] before long and think by the assistance

.00033

o.

\ 32

of a 355 of my acquaintance, shall be able to outwit them all."A "355" was a "lady." We do not know her name, but she wasone of the most valuable agents in the American service.

Agent 355 may have passed on intelligence on the Arnold-Andre plot; at any rate Arnold eventually found out about her.When Townsend learned that Arnold had come over to theBritish, he warned his Manhattan agents to leave the city or gounderground. When almost a month had passed since Arnold's 9defection and no `arrests were made, Townsend wrote: "I am,happy to think that Arnold does not know any name . . [W]operson has been taken up on his information." But the verynext day several arrests were made,. and 355 was confined onthe prison ship Jersey. Five months later she was dead afterbearing4a child named Robert ,Townlend, Junior, But if her"control's was the father, they never

While -She was in prison, 355 was visited several times by aaQuaker woman from Brooklyn, Deborah Franklin. It was'probably Mrs. Franklin who carried the infant ashore. She was

one of a number of charitable women Who risked the dis-pleasure of the authorities by bringing food to the Americanprisoners of war and, when possible, helping-them to escape.In 1781 one of these women, Elizabeth Bergen, was awardedan annual pension by Congress. After the war Sarah Whaley,Mary Whetten, and Mrs. Adam Todd were formally commendedby General Washington.

New, York City women were drawn into active service ir(thepatriot cause 6ecause the deplorable situation of the prisonerscould not be ignored. The American prisoners were treatedabominably and were in urgent need of help. Their conditionwas made particularly wretched because the provost marshal,William Cunningham, was a half-demented sadist. At hisdeath (he was hanged for forgery in 1791) he confessed to themurder of more than 2000 of the prisoners who had been in hischarge during the war. Some were starved, some were hanged,and some were deliberately poisoned with arsenic. Hundredsmore died of disease in the overcrowded, filthy cells, wherethey had inadequate clothing, little fuel, and only pollutedwater to drink. When Cunningh was drunk, he would roarthrough the prison coidors, curse g and kicking over the potsof soup the women haalrought.

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Cunningham was drunk on Novel/ lber 25, 1783, the day theBritish were to evacuate New York City following the signingof the treaty of peace. The citizens of New York had preparedfor General Washington's triumphal entry into, the city byhanging out flags. After drinking heavily all night, Cunninghamstumbled through the streets shouting "some scores of double-headed damns" and tearing down every red, white, and bluebanner he saw. When he came to Day's Tavern on MurrayStreet and grabbed , for the flag, his anti-American activitieswere brought to a halt!Mrs. Day attacked him in the street andbeat him with her fists until "the powder flew from his wig."The war was over; there would be no more Britisll tyranny inNew Yofk.

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WHEN THE BRITISH LEFT NEW YORK City they took approxi-mately four thousand blacks with them. Probably just under athird were women and just over a quarter children. Some ofblacks had deliberately run away to the British lines in hope offreedom; others were "property" confiscated from rebels bythe British armies. Most of those who sailed away with theBritish ended up in Canada or in the British Caribbeanislands, and most of them remained enslaved. Many blackswho sailed away with the British in anticipation of freedoinwere sharply disillusioned.

Those blacks who through choke or fate remained in NewYork at the end of the war did somewhat better. On the marchfrom Saratoga to .Cambridge, the Hessian soldiers were im-pressed by seeing "many; free Negro families who dwell ingood homes, have means, and live quiteln- the manner of theother inhabitants." The ideology of the Revolution and thedisorder created by the war crippled and within a fewdecades d9stroyed the institution of slavery in New York.Many slaves ran away during the war; only a few went over tothe British. Black men who served with the American forcesearned both freedom and land. Slaves belonging to loyalistswere freed outright, and many patriot slave owners freed theirslaves on principle. In 1799 New York legislated an end/toslavery.

Progress for black women in New York was painful slow,for they suffered the double handicaps of sex and race. But asthe eighteenth century ended, individual black women beginto leave sharper images in the historical record. Several freeblack Women appear on the tax lists of 1789 as property owners.In 1793 Catherine Ferguson, who had purchased her own free-dom, took twenty white children and twenty-eight black

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children frefin an almshouse and established "Katy Ferguson'sSchool for the Pox" in New York Citcr. And about 1797 a slavegirl was born in Ulster County, New York, who would even-tually gain fame as the feminist lecturer, Sojourner Truth.

While black wonien made some gains from the war, Indianwpmen lost. When the British left New York, thousands ofWo

dquoisjoined the exodus. The Mohawks emigrated to Canada

in a body; other tribes moved farther into the western portionof Iroquois lank The power of the Iroquois was destroyedforever in the United States. Iroquois matrOns retreated withtheir tribes and never again influenced the mainstream .ofAmerican history. Pronwtly after the war the Americans beganto encroach on the Indiki territory, and encroachments beganfirst on the lands belonging to tribes that had sided with thepatriots. As early as 1786 a Rhode Island religious leader namedJemima Wilkinson sent an exploring party into Indian land andsoon afterward established a "New jerusalem"!near What isnow Schenectady, New Yqk. By 1790, the colony had a popula-tion of two hundred and sixty.

A third group of women leaving New York with the Britishwas composed of loyalists and British and Hessian camp-followers. Some of the latter returned to homes they had leftyears earlier, but others were American women who werefollowing their soldier' husbands to strange lands. Some mili-tary wives and mis esses, however, who seem to have beenrega7rded as casu as .cost bdglage, became displaced persons:It was not alw s convenient to transport the families ofsoldiers with the troops. In 1779 when a British' army wasmoved from New York City by ship, families that were leftbehind were sent to 'Cork, Ireland, although many of them werenot Irish. In 1781, wives and families were forced to remain inNew York City when the British troops sailed, off to join Corn-wallis in the South. Many of the husbands were killed ordeserted in the course of the final Campaign of the war, and theirwives consequently were left to survive as best they could inthe expensive, overcrowded, city.

When slaves, Iroquois, loyalists, and army wives had gone,the women remaining in New York after the war had to con-sider how their lives might change now that they were citizensof the United States of America. There was some reason- to

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think that it ought to linprove.,Abigail Adams had pointed outin 1776 that the principles c the Revolution were incompatibleWith the restrictions the English common law placed on wives,forcing John Adams to admit that the principles of repre-sentative government would logically require the enfranchis,e-menk of, females. There were even a few interesting feministstirrings in New York in the years immediately f011owing theRevolution. Educdtional reformers, arguing for more advancededucation for women, were active i9 New 'York. CharlesBrockden Brown, whose book Alcuin: A Dialogue was'a plea forthe equality of the sexes, did his most important Work while aresident of New York. The ideas of the radical English feministMary Wollstonecraft, whose Vindication of the Rights of Women

was published in 1790, had a degree of exposure and dis-cussion in New York'magazines.

But these trend4 did not prevail in the post-Revolutionaryyears. The egalitarian implications of the Revolution wereoverwhelmed by the confining ideas of ladylike. behavioradopted from England. Increasing wealth and the passage oftime enabled the simple pioneer _society of AmeriCa to becomemore like its English antecedent. English attitudes towardwomenwhat would later be called the "Victorian" conceptionof women as helpless, useless, dependent appendages of malesocietywere eagerly assimilated by status - conscious Ameri-Cans. As the English influence continued to erode Dutchcustoms in New York, Dutch women lost their special legalstatus and grew dependent and "ladylike" too. Women whowanted to be ladies, Americans learned, did not want economicor political rights. As the New York Weekly Museuin put it:

Small is the proyince of a wifeAnd narrow is her sphere of life;Within that sphere to move arightShould be her principal delight, .

To make her husband bless the dayHe gave his liberty away.

,"'

Throughout America, the status of women deteriorate*.While New Jersey admitted unmarried women of property tothe franchise for a few years after the Revolution, New Yorkbecame the first state 'explicitly to disfranchise all females.

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Logic aside, John Adams sated that it was "impossible" in 0

practice to extend the principle of political consent .to women.Except for the eccentric and shortlived experiment in NewJersey,all states dis ouraged women from yoting even whenthey did not ,thin it necessary legally to forbid it. The onlycomment on New Jersey's experiment found in the New Yorkpress is a terse paragraph in the New York Spectator for October21, 1797. Noting that women had voted in "the late Election atElizabeth Town," the printer observed: "Though it is a generalopinion that females ougkt ' not to intermeddle in politicalaffairs, yet the emperor of Java never employs any but womenin his, embass'ies." If the Spectator's comment could be con-stalled as a lukewarm espousal of women's political rights, thenotion had no impact on male readers. For all intents and pur-poses, the- Revolutionary generation had shelved the issue ofwomen's rights.

Fortunately the story does not ends there. The principles ofthe 'American Revolution soon infected the FrenCh Where thestrain of egalitarian idealism in American. Revolutionaryprinciples grew more virulent as the French Revolution pro-gressed. Even the modern abolition movement and the wom-en's rights movement were born in the Revolutionary ferment

, of the late eighteenth century, although both grew slowly. InJuly of 1848, the implications of the Revolutionary ideals forAmerican women were revived in New York State with avengeance. A convention at Seneca Falls adopted "the mostfamous document in the history of feminism." It would have

,--.sounded oddly familiar to the New York women of the Revolu-tionary generation: "When in the 'course of human events, itbecomes necessary for one portion of the family of man toassume among the people of the earth a position different fromthat\which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which thelaws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respectto the opinions of mankind requires that they declare thecauses that impel them to such a course...."

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SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

i

'Mary S. Benso'n, Women in Eighteenth Century America (NewYork, 1966) 1

,K nnikat reprint of 1935 study. Scholarly examination ofei hteenth centimy views o women's role and status.

W er Hart Blumenthal, Women ampi*ollowers of the American<.

Re lution (Philadelphia, 1952) , -=r

Only 500 copies of this book were printed. It is the onlypublished study of this important aspect of women's in-volvement in the Revolution. ..,

Marvin L. Brown, Jr., ed., Baroness Von Riedesel and the AmericanRevolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1965)

New translation of the baroness's journal and correspond-ence 4776-1783. Charming eyewitness account of the war P

'from the perspective of an upper ' dass Hessian camp-follower. , -a

Linda Grant De Pauw, Forgotten Spirit of '76: Women in theRevolutionary Era (New York, July, 1974)

Brief historical summaries and selected bibliography, ontopics relating to 'women in America 1760-1800 to bepublished in Ms magazine, July, 1974. Will be available asa booklet from Ms.

Alice Morse Earle, Colonial Days in Old New York (New York,1896)

Old fashioned social history without bibliography orfootnotes. Deals primarily with Dutch New York. Interest-ing reading.

Mary G. Humphreys; Catherine Schfiyler (New York, 1897)One of six in Scribner's "Women of Colonial and Revolu-tionary' Times" series. Tolerably well written, but thecentral character, is pale.

Alke P. Kenney, The Gansevoorts of Albany (Syracuse, 1969)Examines Dutch patricians in the upper Hudson valley byfocusing on a single family. Scholarly and good reading.

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Eugenie Andiss Leonard, The pear-Bought Heritage (Phila-delphia, 1965)

The best general survey of women .in colonial Amekcaalthough based almost entirely on secondary sburcbqContains an excellent bibliography.

Eugenie Andruss Leonard, Sophie Hutchinson, and MiriamYoung Holden, The American Woman in Colonial and Revolu-tionary Times, 1565-1800 (Philadelphia, 1962)

A bibliographic referenci work.James E. Seaver, A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison(New York, 1961)

Corinth paperback reprint of 1824 original. Biography of awhite Woman adopted by the Senecas.

May King Van Rensselaer, The Goede Vrouw of Mana-ha-ta(New York, 1972)

Arno reprint of 1898 original. Old fashioned social historydealing with Dutch New York 1609-1760. Intelligent andwell written but without scholarly apparatus.

James Grant Wilson, ed., Anne Grant, Memoirs of an AmericanLady (New York, 1909)

First ',Unshed in 1808. A delightful description of Albanylife before the Revolution as seen by a child.

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A'NEW YORE STATE0

AMERICAN REVOLUTION BICENTENNIAL COMMISSION

Printed by The University of The State of New York Press

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