Women In the Revolution Mary Beth Norton

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Women In the RevolutionMary Beth Norton

• By Ashley Willey,
• Robby Palmer, Casey Price, Sara Betts

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Thesis

• many white women gained a new appreciation of
  their capacity and capability of their sex in
  general as they learned to handle un familiar
  tasks. For black women too the war brought
  changes.

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White womens experiences with wartime
disruptions varied according to where they
lived.
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Similarities

• Northern and southern women responded similarly
  to things such as the looming threat of invasion
  by enemy troops, the incidence of disease, or the
  opportunity to accompany their husbands to the
  army.

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Differences

• New England Colonies
• Had to cope with turmoil first.
• After the British evacuated Boston in 1776 the
  northern section of the country was relatively
  free of armed conflict.

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Differences Cont.

• Middle Colonies
• Many families had no respite from the dangers of
  warfare for several years.
• Continuing presence of the British Army in NYC
  from July 1776 November 1783
• Redcoats in Philadelphia from 1777-1778

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Differences Cont.

• Southern Colonies
• Little touched by war before 1778

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Hardships All Women had to face
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The choice of leaving their homes

• Some women chose to leave with their children.
• roads around Boston filled with frightened
  women and children, some in carts with their
  tattered furniture, others on foot fleeing to the
  woods.
• Others decided to stay
• Elizabeth Farmar also decided to stay in her
  house despite the fact that it lay between the
  lines during the occupation of the city in 1777-
  1778.

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Epidemic Disease

• The unhealthy conditions of the besieged city
  had helped to incubate both smallpox and
  dysentery, and an epidemic of the latter had
  already swept the Massachusetts countryside.  
• Women had to make the choice of having or not
  having herself and her children inoculated.

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Rape

• In addition to carrying small pox, the armies
  brought a specific terror to American women the
  fear of rape. 
• Diver soldiers repeatedly raped 13-year-old
  Abigail for three days. Later she and her
  friends, 15 year old sister, Elizabeth was
  forced to go to the camp. They were repeatedly
  assaulted until rescued by a soldier.
• Eliza Wilkinson recounted that the whole
  world appeared to me as a theatre, where nothing
  was acted but cruelty, bloodshed, and oppression
  where neither age nor sex escaped the horrors of
  injustice and violence where lives and property
  of the innocent and inoffensive were in continual
  danger, and the lawless power ranged at large.

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For slaves this time was a period of
unprecedented opportunity.

• The British soldiers held out to black men and
  women alike the prospect of winning their freedom
  from bondage.
• No sex or age restriction limited the offer to
  adult men alone, and so women fled to red coat
  encampments, often taking their children with
  them.
• Out of 2,863 people whose sex is specified on the
  embarkation lists, 42.3 were women and 57.7
  percent were men.

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Conclusion
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The war dissolved some of the distinctions
between masculine and feminine traits.

• The realization that the had been equally
  affected by the war led some women to expect
  equal treatment thereafter, and, on occasion, to
  apply their own circumstances the general
  principles promulgated by the revolutionaries.
• Rachel Wells
• Mary Willing Byrd
• Abigail Adams

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The End