patriotic poems is that she completely identified with the american cause. she saw herself as an american. she supported the resistance movement against great britain. she objected to british tyranny. and she supported the establishment of an american nation whose future she saw as great and impressive. in 1775 she wrote a poem to george washington, to his excellency george washington, in which she praised washington's prowess as commander in chief and celebrated the american struggle against britain. not only that, she actually sent her poem to george washington. so here she is. she's still an enslaved woman, and she sends her poem to the commander in chief of the american continental army.

washington, to his credit, responded to wheatley's poem generously and graciously, and the two actually met one another in 1776. it shows you then that even a slave owner like george washington was willing to recognize merit when he saw it. not so another american political leader, thomas jefferson, who dismissed phillis wheatley's poetry as inferior and not worth the label of literary. nevertheless, i think what this whole episode shows us is that for phillis wheatley and for the americans who witnessed the flourishing of her career it was possible to see that black people were capable of much more than anyone had given them credit for.

surely most of the leaders of philadelphia in 1776 would not have anticipated this as part of the revolutionary legacy. but as exceptional as wheatley's abilities were she was not the only enslaved person to believe that the rhetoric of the american revolution applied to them. in many states north and south enslaved people took the ideas of liberty, equality, rights, freedom, and started applying them to themselves. in some states enslaved people petitioned their legislators for their liberty. sometimes they appropriated the very words of the declaration of independence in asking for their freedom. in many places enslaved people did not bother with formalities. it's believed that anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 enslaved people took advantage of the dislocations of war and freed

themselves by running away during the american revolution. in fact, both washington and jefferson lost slaves during the revolution, much to their chagrin. surely this was an unintended and to many an outrageous consequence of the american revolution. finally, the coming of the american revolution brought home to many white americans the contradiction, not to say hypocrisy, of american colonists who objected to infringements on their freedom but who at the same time systematically deprived black people of their moef bassic rights and liberties. while recognition of this contradiction did not lead to an immediate end to slavery, it did lead certain people, among them george washington, to voluntary ly free their slaves. and there were a large number of slave owners who did free their

slaves. northern state legislators put slavery on the road to abolition, either immediately or gradually. the federal government prohibited slavery in the northwest territory in 1787. and the u.s. constitution, though admittedly in many ways a pro-slavery document that protected slavery in many regards, did not once use the word "slave" or "slavery" in the text. for many white americans slavery had become an embarrassment, a moral blight that should be put on the road to extinction. of course, for a substantial minority slavery remained an issue of property rights, not human rights, and for them the next 60 years was a pitched battle in which they tried to justify slavery within a political system that was dedicated to equality and natural rights. surely, this too was another unintended consequence of the

american revolution. finally, ietd like to turn your attention to another even more obscure woman, a woman named elizabeth alexander stevens. and elizabeth alexander stevens is noteworthy mostly because of where she lived. she lived in essex county, new jersey. she was married to a wealthy man who died, and after he died she moved into essex county where she owned a substantial amount of property on which she paid taxes. why is this significant? well, in new jersey, alone among all the 13 states, women were allowed to vote to cast ballots for candidates to local, state, and federal office from the period 1776 to 1807.

this is over 100 years before the passage of the 19th amendment. so how was this possible? it was possible because in the 18th century both in britain and in america suffrage was not considered a natural right. it was considered a privilege of property, a property right. only those owning a certain amount of property were allowed to vote or hold public office. by custom this meant men, although theoretically it could have included women. but it didn't. by custom only men voted. now, traditionally, men owned most of the land. but also by custom married women could not own property, but single and widowed women, unmarried women could own

property. so someplace in the colonies unmarried and widowed women were paying taxes on property they owned. why is this important? well, for some women who listened carefully to the rhetoric of the american revolution, to the slogan "no taxation without representation, this was a very personal issue. they looked at their own condition, and they saw they were paying taxes. and yet they could not vote and did not have a voice in government. one of these women was hannah lee corbin of virginia. the sister of richard henry lee. she was a wealthy widow who paid taxes on her land. in 1778 she wrote a scathing letter to her brother asking why revolutionary principles did not apply to her.

why, she asked, should she be deprived of her voice and representation when she had as much stake in society as many men? her brother, richard henry lee, was flabbergasted. he simply did not anticipate this line of inquiry, and he had no adequate rejoinder for her question. he simply pointed to custom and tradition as the grounds of exclusion. but what this meant in fact was that hannah lee corbin and all the widows paying taxes like her were being deprived of representation simply on the basis of their sex. simply because they were women. surely no woman in philadelphia of 1776 anticipated this. maybe john adams. because abigail had primed him.

now, what happened in new jersey is that the legislature -- legislators in the state of new jersey took this principle of no taxation without representation seriously and took it to its furthest extremes. in 1776 the continental congress asked each state to write its own constitution. and when the state of new jersey was writing its first constitution, when it devised the provision regarding suffrage, it simply talked about suffrage in gender-neutral terms. it said that all inhabitants who are worth 50 pounds proclamation money are entitled to vote. now, this gender-neutral language is not in and of itself significant. if you look at the early state constitutions, more than half of them do not limit voting to men.

what was different in new jersey was that in 1790 and 1797 state legislators clarified the meaning of this provision and they passed election statutes in which they referred to voters using the pronounce he and she. so new jersey actually extended the franchise to all adult members of society who met the property qualification for voting. and that meant free blacks as well as white women who were unmarried and owned property. and so that's how it became possible for a woman like elizabeth alexander stevens to vote in new jersey. both political parties began to court the women's votes. at the same time as you might imagine this experiment in female suffrage was very controversial. many men as well as many women

found the idea of women voting strange, foreign, and unacceptable. it violated their notion of what men's and women's proper roles were. while men were certainly perfectly prepared to involve women in informal political activities such as boycotts, they did not anticipate enlisting them in direct political action such as voting. so throughout the 1790s and into the early 19th century there were frequent diatribes against female suffrage in pamphlets, newspapers, and in the new jersey legislature itself. many of the attacks were outrageous, hysterical, and self-contradictory. some said women lacked the knowledge and judgment to participate in politics. but others feared that women were getting too knowledgeable about politics. some men feared that women were

acting too much like men by participating. they abhorred the undue influence of women on politics, accusing them of forming a pettycoat faction or becoming manly women, as they put it. and they feared if women could vote they would inevitably start to run for public office. that was truly horrible. as one poem in new jersey put it, to congress low sxwichz widows shall go, like me metamorphosed witches, in the dignities of state and coats and britches. so women running for office would stop wearing their petticoats and start wearing their coats and breaches.

anyway. if you know of abigail and john's correspondence on this issue of women that occurred in 1776, you know that john was aware of this, of abigail's upset about the status of women. and his reply was that women have more influence unofficially, indirectly, and he talked about the sway of the petticoat. but while men were willing to acknowledge that informal means of influence and objected to this formal kind of enfranchisement that was evident in women actually casting ballots. so there were serious efforts made in the legislature to disenfranchise women in 1799 and 18 1802. finally, after a particularly contentious election in 1807 the

legislature was able to pass a law that disenfranchised both women and free blacks. they did it because there were accusations of fraud. but it's interesting. when there are accusations of fraud, what the legislature did was disenfranchise the most underrepresented and marginalized groups, the women and free blacks. and thus ended in 1807 this brief experiment in women voting. now you might say, did the women rise up in protest? and somewhat surprisingly, they did not. and to understand why not, we have to go back to understanding what voting meant at this time. remember, voting at this time was understood as a privilege of property, not a natural right. it would be the jeffersonians who in the early 19th century would launch a state by state

campaign to eliminate property qualifications for voting for white men. and their argument would be that voting is a natural right. now, even jeffersonians acknowledged that women had natural rights. but when it came to voting, jeffersonians were not prepared to be logically consistent. when it came to voting, they simply said that it was extraordinary, absurd, and unnatural to enfranchise women. but the experiment in new jersey stood as an indelible reminder that it wasn't necessarily so. so in what sense then can we consider women like elizabeth stevens, phillis wheatley, and ester de berdt reed founders and

the woechl like them? how can they be considered founders of our nation? well, as i said at the beginning, without their participation male revolutionaries would not have been able to be successful in their fight against britain. with all due respect to the brilliance and the creativity and imagination and bravery of the male political leaders, they needed followers, and without followers their efforts would have failed. and women's efforts, particularly in the boycott, were very important, and then during the revolutionary war itself they were necessary on the homefront for the men to be able to conduct the direct business of war and governing. so what this meant was that the revolution enlisted women's support, made them politically conscious, encouraged men to think of women as political agents. it gave women political identities and forced men to

acknowledge that women did indeed play a significant part in the political process. indirect though that role may be. even as wives and mothers women could be patriots and revolutionaries. and this was significant in the post-revolutionary era because women were understood as political beings they came to be understood as citizens who have certain rights. they could play a role in a certain way in inculcating civic virtue and patriotism in their children and husbands. and this in turn had consequences because if women were to be the first teachers of patriotism women needed to be educated. so educational opportunities for women expanded. you had the founding of a large number of seminaries for women, of institutions that would educate women. you have a skyrocketing in the

rate of female literacy. and that in turn led to women's continuing participation in informal political activities, in informal civic life. women participated in charitable societies and benevolent organizations. in patriotic festivities, public celebrations, and even in party political gatherings in the first days of the new republic. even more important, i would say, is that women came to be understood as the bearers of rights, as possessing natural rights. and we know that natural rights, unlike other kinds of rights, are inherent and unalienable and cannot be contravened by any government. especially after 1792, when mary wollstonecraft published her seminal work, "a vindication of the rights of woman." many authors in the united states began debating,

discussing, negotiating the question of women's rights. and the issue was not that women had rights. that was now a given. but what rights did women have? did they extend to political rights? many authors talked about women having equal rights with men. what did that mean? and who should enforce and support those rights? in general at this time equality or equal rights for women tended to be interpreted not in a political sense but in terms of women's equal ability to have virtue, patriotism, and intellect. to have these same capacities along with men. and while to some of us today that doesn't seem as significant as the possession of voting rights i would argue that it was an incredibly significant change. women were no longer politically

invisible. they were now acknowledged to have natural rights. it was just a question of what kinds of rights those should be and whether the state should have have a role in guaranteeing those rights. and these principles, revolutionary principles of equality in natural rights would provide a basis for women and later generations in the 1840s the first women's movement would emerge by women who seized on declaration's principles of equality of natural rights. at seneca falls convention of 1848 they would begin their declaration of sentiments of, by invoking the declaration of independence, say that all [ inaudible ] finally what women's participation in the revolution remind us of larger social

changes affected by the american revolution. as important as male political leaders were to the revolutionary movement they needed the support uh followers including women. by calling on ordinary americans to support the revolutionary cause, these leaders empowered ordinary men and women and transformed the basis of political participation. no longer would ordinary white citizens accept without question the dictates of their leaders. no longer would a wise, virtuous elite be able to assume the deferential acquiescence of the masses to their actions. once that genie was out of the bottle it was almost impossible to put it back in again. separate and distinct ways american men and women would join to gooitsgether to create government and expeerment liberty. one of the hallmarks of that experiment would be an ongoing

struggle by those who are excluded from power to invoke the principles of equal tee and natural rights as a way to demand and justify their inclusion. unique among world revolutions, up to that point, the american revolution gave those who were marginalized or in pressed, the principles through which they and their advocates could combat their own exclusion. the challenge of the american revolution for tuesday is to interpret the principles of equality and natural rights for our own time. thank you. [ applause ] still ahead on c-span 3, american history tv. a discussion on george washington's leadership as head of the continental army, the first u.s. president.

then yale university professor on andrew jackson and the constitution. later a panel of historians on teaching constitutional history. american history tv continues on c-span 3. each night the rest of the week. wednesday at 8:00 p.m. historians consider who time magazine might have picked to be person of the year in 162. when the country was in the midst of the civil war. among the names discussed, abolitionist leader frederick douglas, robert e. lee and george b. mcclellan. and a failed 1862 campaign to take the confederate capital of richmond. c-span's 2012 local content vehicle cities tour takes book tv and american history tv programming on the road the first weekend of each month.

he collected photographs and was interested in the 19th century. the civil war in particularch these are two friends, union and confederate who knew each other prior to the civil war. who fought against each other at the battle of pea ridge, 1862. survived the war. came out alive. remained friends after the war. here they are at am in 100 on the porch talking about the old days. >> american history tv looked at life in a world war ii japanese internment camp. she talks a lot about how the arts and crafts were how they kept their sanity. it gave them something to do. and how depression was so bad. that a lot of the camps, and the people, there was the high

incidence of suicide. and so people would make these little things of beauty to give to each other just as a way to say -- you know, we support you and we care about you. next, author, david hacket fisher discusses tactics and

strategies, george washington used to complete challenges. he spoke on the founding of america. this is 50 minutes. >> good morning. how are the acoustics? loud and clear? i have two mikes on me. i think that might be one too many. is that working? i hear an echo. well, i am here to tell you a story that you have heard before. my instructions were to talk about george washington. and it will be the frame that everybody has been bringing to the occasion, the troubles of our time. i wanted to talk about washington and some of the troubles of his time. and how he dealt with it. i want to do it -- mostly by story telling. the great attraction for me to history are these wonderful stories. i think of a great german

pianist who sat done to play beethoven sonatas, he would stop and turn to the audience and said this music is better than it can ever be played. that's the way it is with these stories. they're better than they can ever be told. i want to do that. also with regard to a, a picture that you have seen before. this is washington crossing the delaware. and next time you're in new york city, go to the metropolitan museum of art. they just opened a new american wing. gigantic. it's 60 galleries of american painting. just opened a couple weeks ago. and, the center of it is this painting. and when i visit, we always, my wife and i go there when we are in new york. and in the olden -- setting -- always seats unfront of the painting. and the seats were always full.

one day i was there. the seats were filled with japanese tourists. and they were getting i lecture in japanese. they were absolutely riveted on this. this image, even as it said our constitution is not traveling as well as the it used to be doing. some of these stories are traveling very well. we have sold the translation rights to washington's crossing in serbia-croatia. i was invited to lecture in china and discovered a handsome twole twole -- two volume edition of my book in mandarin chinese that my publishers didn't know about. new meaning to freedom spreading through the world. what i want to do is invite you to look closely at this painting. and to think about what is going on there. this was the work of a german immigrant to america, went become to study painting, in

germany. and then after the failure of the revolution of 1848, he did this painting to inspire liberals in europe primarily with the revolution that succeeded against long odds. and then he -- he came to america. and the painting begin to travel here. as well. and -- the, americans, love to celebrate this painting. they also -- love to debunk it. americans invented that word, debunking in 1922. this inspires some really world class debunking. people have gone through this painting and they observed all the obvious problems and others that are not so. you will see washington not only standing in the boat on which there is much discussion, but standing precariously on one leg. you will see, i just got a letter from a, reader who was an