tv [untitled] March 19, 2012 12:00am-12:30am EDT
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amen. >> ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our ceremony. thank you for coming. [ applause ] throughout the weekend here on american history tv on c-span3, watch personal interviews about historic events on oral histories. our history bookshelf features some of the best known history writers. revisit key figures, battles and events during the 150th anniversary of the civil war. visit college classrooms across the country during lectures in history. go behind the scenes at museums and historic sites on american artifacts. and the presidency looks at the policies and legacies of past american presidents. view our complete schedule at c-span.org/history and sign up to have it e-mailed to you by pressing the c-span alert button.
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while the founding fathers often get all of the credit for the creation of america, without the encouragement and work of many women, things may have ended up differently. up next, george mason university history professor rosemarie zagarri examines the important role that women played in generating support for the revolutionary war and how their involvement helped pave the way for a greater political identity for women within the new nation. this is an hour. >> good afternoon. i am, indeed, robert griswold, hudson family chair of history and chair of the history department here at the university of oklahoma. before i introduce this afternoon's speaker and on behalf of the entire history department, i want to thank event possible. he has a deep love for the study of history. he, in fact, majored in history in college.
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and that affection is reflected in today's event. i would also like to recognize and thank professor kyle harper for his great work in establishing the institute for the american constitutional heritage. thank you for joining us for founding women, how women shaped the founding with rosemarie zagarri, professor of history at george mason university in fairfax, virginia. professor zagarri earned her doctorate from yale university where she studied with edmund morgan and before joining the faculty at george mason, she taught at west virginia university and catholic university of america. her scholarly articles have appeared in leading journals including "the journal of american history," "the american quarterly," "the journal of the early republic," "william & mary quarterly," along with numerous
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essays in edited collections. she has been the recipient of such honors as the outstanding article prize awarded by the southeastern 18th century studies association, fellowships from the national endowment for the humanities, the american antiquarian society and the american philosophical society, she's also had an appointment by the fullbright commission to the thomas jefferson chair and american studies at the university of amsterdam in the netherlands. professor zagarri has appeared as an on-camera historian on c-span, on pbs and on the fairfax television network. in 2009, she was elected president of the society for historians of the early american republic. and in 2011 was appointed a distinguished lecturer by the organization of american historians.
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her latest book is titled "revolutionary backlash: women in politics in the early american republic." she has also published another book on women in the early republic titled "a woman's dilemma, mercy otis warren and the american revolution." the william & mary quarterly described her book "revolutionary backlash" as both path-breaking and field-changing. "the journal of the early republic" likewise described the book as powerful, rich and finely textured. as reviewer after reviewer has noted, the book compels us to rethink the meaning of politics, individual rights, male backlash and women's history in the early republic. please join me in welcoming professor rosemarie zagarri.
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[ applause ] >> thank you, rob, and thanks to president boren and to the university of oklahoma and to all of you for coming. this is just a special occasion. i'm really honored to be among such a distinguished panel of scholars. and i'm just delighted that so many people care enough about the founding to come out and to listen to us talk about it. we think about it a lot, but we wish other people would think about it more, too. when the delegates to the continental congress gathered in philadelphia in the summer of 1776 to vote on the question of american independence, it's virtually certain that no one in that room with the possible exception of john adams was thinking about the consequences of their pronouncements for the status of women. in the revolutionary era,
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matters of politics and government were thought to be exclusively the province of men. men were the primary landowners. ownership of land was thought to give men the virtue, independence and stake in society that qualified them to vote. women, on the other hand, were political ciphers, legal prescriptions prevented married women from owning property. most women had not had the benefit of a formal education and were believed to lack the knowledge to make informed decisions about issues involving politics and government. but perhaps most important, war, diplomacy and state making were considered to be beyond women's understanding and interest. women were supposed to care more about hearth and home than about tyrannical kings and the right to self-government.
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yet even as the delegates gathered in philadelphia, they had already set in motion a chain of events that would significantly alter women's participation in the nation's political life. and change the assessment of women's political potential and role in significant ways. of all the men who gathered in philadelphia in 1776 did not fully understand what was happening, the revolution they initiated was already beginning to spin out of their control. the story of the american revolution for women then is the study of unintended consequences. a story of revolutions once begun that often take on shapes and directions that their leaders did not intend or anticipate. and sometimes greeted with less than full enthusiasm. in order to understand the experience of women in the
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american revolution, i'd like to focus on the lives of a few particular women and explore through their lives the meaning of the revolution for larger groups of women that they represent. unlike george washington and thomas jefferson, theirs are not household names. nevertheless, their lives provide a window on the larger collective experience of women during the revolution and will help show us how and in what ways women can legitimately considered along with men as the founders of our nation. the first woman i'd like to talk about is a woman named esther debert reed. reed was born in london in 1747, the daughter of a wealthy merchant who traded with --
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whose -- a daughter of a wealthy merchant who had extensive training relationships with the american colonies. in 1763, joseph reed of new jersey, also the child of a merchant, went to london to study the law at the ends of court, a very common thing for american gentry to do in the prerevolutionary period. there through a common circle of social friends, he met esther debert. and esther and joseph were immediately enamored of one another. unfortunately, family circumstances forced joseph reed to return to america in 1765 just as britain and the colonies were beginning their own pitched battle over the stamp act. esther and joseph corresponded for five years. and like another more famous couple, john and abigail adams, their letters were filled with writings about political events going on at the time. both of them were obsessed with politics.
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both of them couldn't wait to learn more about what would happen. and, of course, they had both a personal and a political interest in what was going on since the fate of their relationship to some extent depended on the fate of the colonies. finally, in 1770, joseph reed, having become a successful lawyer in philadelphia, returned to england, married his love, and took her back along with her widowed mother to settle in what was still part of the american colonies. the couple subsequently had four children. now, the political situation into which reed entered as a young wife was one in which the controversy with britain was already in full swing. and in this controversy, male political leaders had already discovered that they had a weapon, a secret weapon, that
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could be mobilized in their battles with great britain, and that weapon was women. beginning with the stamp act in 1765, then with the townsend acts in 1768 and later in the coercive acts in 1774, the continental congress had struggled to find a way to make their grievances known to britain. as i'm sure you know, they elected no representatives to parliament. that's why taxation was such a powerful issue. no representation in parliament and yet they were paying taxes. so they had no representatives to express their grievances directly. so what could they do? the colonial legislatures sent protests and resolutions to parliament. this informal body that we know as the continental congress met together with representatives from most of the colonies. and they, too, hammered out
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resolutions. they, too, sent protests. but the members of parliament did not have to listen. they had no reason to listen. they were not responding to the grievances of their own constituents to the people who represented them. so what could the continental congress do to apply further pressure on britain to try and get hated acts of parliament repealed? well, they came up with an ingenious solution, a series of nonimportation, nonexportation agreements in which colonists decided to not import goods from great britain or not export certain goods to great britain. in other words, they would use the weapon of an economic boycott and hopefully by putting political pressure and economic pressure on great britain,
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people in britain would then put pressure on parliament and get these hated acts repealed. now, one thing i think in our usual telling of the american revolution that gets overlooked is the status of the continental congress. we think, oh, a congress. oh, you know, of course, people would do what they asked. but remember the continental congress was an extra legal body. in fact, from england's point of view, it was an illegal body. they had no official authority to make laws or to pass boycotts that would be imposed on the colonists. their authority came directly from the people. and to the extent that they were successful was the extent to which people voluntarily cooperated with their dictates. and i think this is something that is worth remembering
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because this was -- this was kind of an alternative government, a kind of shadow government that emerged. and it really -- its success really depended on the support of the people in a very direct way. and even more pointedly, the success of these boycotts depended on the support of the people. if the people violated the boycotts, if they continued to glibly import goods from great britain because it made their lives more comfortable or more fashionable, then the continental congress really had little recourse as an official body. and as they thought about it, the continental -- leaders of the continental congress realized that if they were really interested in making these boycotts effective, they needed the support of the primary consumers in the colonies, the women. and so throughout the colonies in the wake of the passing of these boycott -- calls for
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boycotts, leaders in each of the colonies began to reach out to women to try and mobilize their support to try and get women to understand why it was so important to stop importing their favorite cloth, their favorite ribbons or hats or buttons or china or tea from britain. they had to stop doing that if the colonial protests were to have teeth, if the colonists were to be successful in protesting against these grievances that they had with britain. and what's fascinating here is that these male political leaders were reaching out to women who were politically disenfranchised. they did not have the vote. they could not hold public office, and yet women held enormous power of a certain kind. this economic power and also the
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social power that they had over their husbands and families. and men knew that. and so what you see in the 1760s and 1770s before the coming of independence are a plethora of articles in newspapers explaining to women why they need to boycott british goods. begging women, pleading with women, cajoling women and asking them to support these political actions. you see, poems and essays, some written by women, reaching out to women and asking them to support this cause of resistance and what this tells you, i think, is that men understood women had this power. and they understood that in this unconventional kind of conflict, this unconventional kind of battle they were waging with great britain, they needed to reach out to different
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constituencies. this was true for men as well. the continental congress knew that they needed the support of lower-class white men if the boycotts were to be successful. so what these boycotts did was broaden the base of the resistance movement. and encourage other groups to come in and join in this political movement that increasingly was expressing antagonism toward great britain because britain was not responding to the complaints, protests and objections of the colonists to british rule. now, what we know, too, is that women responded to these calls. some women began to make homespun cloth rather than buy imported fabric from britain. they formed themselves into groups that they called daughters of liberty as female
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counterparts to the sons of liberty that were emerging in many cities and towns throughout the colonies. they held patriotic spinning bees where women would join with one another in making this cloth. they would wear garments made of homespun cloth. and this homespun cloth would be much more rough textured. it would be much less fine than the kinds of goods that they could import from great britain. but by wearing this homespun cloth, women were visibly and vividly and physically displaying their political sentiments to the public. they were showing other women and other people that they supported the american cause of resistance. some women took other kinds of political actions. they identified merchants who were violating the boycott. and they would gather and march en masse to protest these merchants' policies.
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there's even a case in boston where the women gathered around the merchant and seized the and marched away. in boston in 1767 and in edenton, north carolina, in 1774, women wrote and signed their own nonimportation agreements. it wasn't sufficient for them to just obey the dictates of the continental congress. they wanted to conceptualize their own views, put their own views down on paper, and let people know that they were really key participants in this movement. so when elizabeth -- esther debert reed emigrated in 1870, she saw that male political leaders had begun to reach out and enlist women in the patriot
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movement. and this, of course, would be something that she would immediately have been thrilled to see and wanting herself to participate in. with the coming of the war, with the war for independence that it began in 1775 and then was formalized in 1776 with the declaration of independence, reed observed that women were called upon to make new and different kinds of sacrifices for the revolutionary cause. for ordinary women, the coming of war meant new kinds of sacrifices in terms of what they might expect in their day-to-day lives. they faced food shortages and shortages of other goods. in many places, there was rampant inflation. sometimes there were smallpox epidemics because of the movement of troops and people. there was upheaval, dislocation, and the constant threat of
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violence. what this taught esther debert reed and other women is that in a conflict like the american revolution, there was no separating the personal and the political. whatever side you were on, whatever you wished to happen in the conflict with great britain, you could be drawn into the conflict whether you wanted to or not. but what the presence and immediacy of this conflict meant was that women were often forced to make political choices in their own lives. and by the way they acted in their lives, they could show their support for the american cause or resistance. that is, support the loyalist cause. now, of course, they would often follow their husbands in these sentiments but not always. and whether they liked it or not, women were subject to the deprivations of war and the
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conflict. many women also faced other kinds of sacrifices and privations as a result of the coming of war. in order for this war, in order for this new united states government to be successful, many men had to be away from their families for long periods of time. they were called away to serve in the newly constituted state legislatures. they were called away to serve in the continental congress. they were called away to serve in the continental army or in the local militias. at this time, what their husbands' absences meant is that the burden of taking care of the farms and the families and the businesses fell then on the women.
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women then had to take over in their husband's absences and make sure that the family and the farm were tended to. sometimes they had to take care of and manage slaves or servants. a lot of women were not prepared for this. a lot of women suffered as a result of this. many people, especially the leaders, lost fortunes in the revolution because their farms and businesses suffered during the revolution. now, probably a lot of us have heard about what abigail adams experienced during the american revolution, how much she missed john adams, her husband, how much she wished they could be together. but adams' experience was not singular. many other women including esther debert reed experienced these feelings, experienced these periods of aloneness. esther debert reed's husband served in the pennsylvania assembly, became a military aide
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to george washington, and then was governor of pennsylvania. so she had to stay at home and take care of her four children without his help and support for many years. so what this meant is that women had to basically learn how to take care of business at home and yet support their husbands in their political activities while they were away. and as i say, this was a great sacrifice for many women. and men recognized that this was a sacrifice on the part of women. they began to publish essays, and they began to produce orations in which they noted that women were as patriotic as men, in which they celebrated women's contributions to the revolutionary cause, in which
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they honored women for stepping up to the plate, for doing what was necessary and for making the men's participation possible. as one male orator put it, female patriotism, although it was different from men's, was of a kind entirely suited to their sex. so in their own way, women were making a contribution to this revolutionary cause. and men understood without women's support, without women's cooperation, their own efforts might not occur. but elizabeth debert reed was different from a lot of other women in that she wanted women to make an even more direct contribution to the revolution. because of her husband's position as an aide to george washington, she was acutely aware of the condition of the american troops. she knew how poorly provisioned they were, how they often lacked
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basic supplies. they often lacked shoes. they often lacked guns. they often were poorly compensated. and they lived under dire conditions in which their lives were constantly in danger. all for the sake of their country. so as i say, reed wanted to do more. and she wanted to have other women support her in making a gesture that would show the troops how much women cared. so in 1780, esther debert reed published an essay first as a broadside and then in various philadelphia newspapers called "the sentiments of an american woman." and it was a rousing call to other american women to support the troops. and in this essay, she recalled
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the deeds of women of the past who had also sacrificed. women of biblical times, famous queens, famous military leaders of the past like the amazons. and she called on american women to do the same for their troops. and she said like men, women were born for liberty and disdained to bear the irons of a tyrannic government. women, she insisted, had as much stake in the outcome of this battle as men. women were as invested in politics as men. and so in 1780, she took her campaign almost literally to the streets. she enlisted a number of her friends, and they actually spearheaded a drive to raise money for the support of the continental army. they called on their neighbors
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and family members and friends to donate funds for the troops. at a certain point, she and her friends actually went door to door to collect money. and this would be a shocking -- a shocking episode at this time to see women going around respectable middle-class white women asking for money. but such was the intensity of their feelings, such was their fervor for the revolutionary cause that they believed that they should do this. esther debert reed and her supporters collected over $7,000 for the support of the american troops. when it came time to disburse the money, reed actually wanted to give gold coins to the troops in washington's army. but when she consulted with general washington, he was not keen on this idea. he was afraid that once the men got the money, they might use it
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for unsavory purposes like buying rum or other liquor and getting drunk, which he didn't see as productive. so over washington's objections, then, reed had to change course. and she and her female supporters made shirts and socks for the troops. but in each object that they made, they put their name so that the troops would know this was a personal donation as reed called it, an offering of the ladies in support of the troops. and she hoped that this would not only give them physical comfort but also moral support to know that the women of the newly constituted united states were behind them. and reed's efforts engendered similar efforts in some of the other states. in other parts of pennsylvania, women collected money, in mand
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