Abstract
Was the American War for Independence a revolutionary war? In addressing this question, historians have examined the conflict from many angles, including that of women’s positions in the Revolution. Some say that the War for Independence does not qualify as revolutionary simply because women participated in it, for women have always been a part of warfare, if not as soldiers then as military retainers, home-front supporters, resisters or victims. Others argue, however, that their participation had revolutionary effects, given the crucial influence women’s actions during the rebellion and the later representations of their varied wartime services had on American perceptions of women and their place in society.
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Notes
Recent works on this people’s war include: Wayne E. Lee, ‘The American Revolution’, in Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime Early America: From the Colonial Era to the Civil War, ed. David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler (Westport, CT, 2007), 31–67, 34–40;
Gregory T. Knouff, The Soldiers’ Revolution: Pennsylvanians in Arms and the Forging of Early American Identity (University Park, PA, 2004);
Wayne Bodle, The Valley Forge Winter: Civilians and Soldiers in War (University Park, PA, 2002);
John Resch, ‘The Revolution as a People’s War’, in War and Society in the American Revolution: Mobilization and Home Fronts, ed. John Resch and Walter Sargent (DeKalb, 2007), 70–102.
Karen Hagemann, ‘“Heroic Virgins” and “Bellicose Amazons”: Armed Women, the Gender Order and the German Public during and after the Anti-Napoleonic Wars’, European History Quarterly 37/4 (2007): 507–527, 508. See also Chapter 9 by Thomas Cardoza in this volume.
Joan R. Gundersen, To Be Useful to the World: Women in Revolutionary America, 1740–1790 (New York, 1996), 149–154. For discussions about limits on defining civilians as noncombatants, see Armstrong Starkey, ‘Wartime Colonial America’, in Heidler and Heidler, Daily Lives of Civilians, 1–30, 1–2;
John Grenier, The First Way of War: American War-Making on the Frontier (New York, 2005), 146–169.
Brian Steele, ‘Thomas Jefferson’s Gender Frontier’, The Journal of American History 95 (2008): 17–42, 18, 26, 28, 40.
Elizabeth F. Ellet, The Women of the American Revolution, 2 vols (1848–49; repr. Williamstown, MA, 1980).
Also see Nina Baym’s American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790–1860 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1995), 217–236.
Ruth H. Bloch, ‘The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America’, and Joan R. Gundersen, ‘Independence, Citizenship, and the American Revolution’, Signs 13 (1987): 37–58 and 59–77, respectively.
Bonnie G. Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice (Cambridge, UK, 1998), 150.
Besides the works of Baym and Smith, see Julie Des Jardins, Women and the Historical Enterprise in America: Gender, Race, and the Politics of Memory, 1880–1945 (Chapel Hill, 2003), 1–2, 4, 15–17, 19.
Martha Jennings Small, ‘Ode to the Daughters of the American Revolution’, The American Monthly Magazine 7 (July 1895): 19.
Among the many records and studies of Revolutionary women that were either reissued or first published during the mid-1970s, see Ellet, The Women; Walter Hart Blumenthal, Women Camp Followers of the American Revolution (New York, 1974);
Elizabeth Evans, Weathering the Storm: Women of the American Revolution (New York, 1975);
Sally Booth Smith, Women of ‘76 (New York, 1973);
Debra L. Newman, ‘Black Women in the Era of the American Revolution in Pennsylvania’, Journal of Negro History 61 (1976): 276–289;
Mary Beth Norton, ‘Eighteenth-Century American Women in Peace and War: The Case of the Loyalists’, William and Mary Quarterly 33 (1976): 386–409;
Joan Hoff Wilson, ‘The Illusion of Change: Women and the American Revolution’, in The American Revolution, ed. Alfred E. Young (DeKalb, 1976), 383–431.
Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (Boston, 1980);
Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, 1980). Other works, besides those noted elsewhere,
include Barbara E. Lacey, ‘Women in the Era of the American Revolution: The Case of Norwich, Connecticut’, The New England Quarterly 53 (1980): 527–543;
Betsy Erkkila, ‘Revolutionary Women’, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 6 (1987): 189–223.
On the military, see Paul E. Kopperman, ‘Medical Services in the British Army, 1742–1783’, Journal of the History of Medicine 34 (1979): 428–455; idem, ‘The British High Command and Soldiers’ Wives in America, 1755–1783’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 60 (1982): 14–34;
Linda Grant De Pauw, ‘Women in Combat: The Revolutionary War Experience’, Armed Forces and Society 7 (1981): 209–226; idem, Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present (Norman, 1998);
Janice E. McKenney, ‘“Women in Combat”: Comment’, Armed Forces and Society 8 (1982): 686–692.
See Gundersen, To Be Useful; idem, ‘“We Bear the Yoke with a Reluctant Impatience”: The War for Independence and Virginia’s Displaced Women’, in Resch and Sargent, War and Society, 263–288; Carol Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence (New York, 2005);
Alfred F. Young, Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier (New York, 2004);
Holly A. Mayer, Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community during the American Revolution (Columbia, SC, 1996); idem, ‘Wives, Concubines, and Community: Following the Army’, in Resch and Sargent, War and Society, 235–262.
On the spheres trope in American history, see Linda K. Kerber, ‘Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History’, Journal of American History 75 (1998): 9–39; idem et al., ‘Beyond Roles, Beyond Spheres: Thinking About Gender in the Early Republic’, The William and Mary Quarterly 46 (1989): 565–585;
Cathy N. Davidson, ‘Preface: No More Separate Spheres!’, American Literature 70 (1998): 443–463.
Paul Lewis, ‘Attaining Masculinity: Charles Brockden Brown and Woman Warriors of the 1790s’, Early American Literature 40 (2005): 37–55, 37–39.
Dianne Dugaw, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650–1850 (Cambridge, UK, 1989), 4, 157;
David Hopkin, ‘The World Turned Upside Down: Female Soldiers in the French Armies of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars’, in Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790–1820, ed. Alan Forrest et al. (Basingstoke, 2008).
William Barton to unknown addressee, 17 November 1778, Sol Feinstone Manuscripts #82, David Library of the American Revolution (hereafter DLAR), Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania; Robert Fridlington, ‘A “Diversion” in Newark: A Letter from the New Jersey Continental Line, 1778’, New Jersey History 105 (1987): 75–78; De Pauw, Battle Cries, 124; The Pennsylvania Packet, 25 June 1782.
Sandra Gioia Treadway, ‘Anna Maria Lane: An Uncommon Common Soldier of the American Revolution’, Virginia Cavalcade 37 (1988): 134–143.
Fairfax Downey, ‘The Girls behind the Guns’, American Heritage Magazine 8 (1956): 46–48.
Ibid. 10; William Davison Perrine, Molly Pitcher of Monmouth County, New Jersey, and Captain Molly of Fort Washington, New York, 1778–1937 (Princeton [n.p.], 1937), pamphlet. For more information on Margaret Corbin, see the file of letters in the Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land-Warrant Application Files (hereafter RWPF) in the Records of the Veterans Administration at the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States, Washington, DC, Record Group 15, Microfilm 27, Reel 653.
John B. Landis, ‘Investigation into the American Tradition of a Woman Known as “Molly Pitcher”’, Journal of American History 5/1 (1911): 83–95, 86; J. A. Murray, ‘Molly McCauley’, repr. from American Volunteer, Carlisle, PA, 12 September 1883;
Elizabeth Cometti, ‘McCauley, Mary Ludwig Hays’, in Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Edward T. James, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1971), vol. 2, 448–449; ‘DAR Lineage on “Molly Pitcher”’, signed by Lois W. Davidson, Cumberland County Chapter of the DAR, 1 June 1985;
Constance M. McDonald, ‘About Molly Pitcher’, Field Artillery Magazine, August 1990, <http://www.usfaa.com/usfaa_awards/about_molly.html> (23 April 2007); Emily J. Teipe ‘Will the Real Molly Pitcher Please Stand Up?’ Prologue 31 (1999): 119–126.
Joseph Plumb Martin, Ordinary Courage: The Revolutionary War Adventures of Joseph Plumb Martin, ed. James Kirby Martin (1830; St James, NY, 1993), 117; unidentified author, Diary for 21 April-25 September 1780, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia, entry dated 20 September 1780.
John Rees, ‘“The Multitude of Women”: An Examination of the Numbers of Female Camp Followers with the Continental Army’, Parts 1 and 3, The Brigade Dispatch 23 (Autumn 1992): 5–17, 5; and 24 (Spring 1993): 2–6, 3. See also Mayer, ‘Wives, Concubines, and Community’, 241.
Jennie J. B. Goodwin, ‘The Women of the Revolution’, The American Monthly Magazine 11 (1897): 350–356. I am indebted to Rebecca Baird, Archivist, Office of the Historian General, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, for information on the DAR’s motto, which in 1972 was changed to ‘God, Home, and Country’.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Images and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750 (New York, 1983), 35–50.
Joy Day Buel and Richard Buel Jr., The Way of Duty: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America (New York, 1984), 98, 145–147;
Martin Schultz, ‘Occupational Pursuits of Free Women in Early America: An Examination of Eighteenth-Century Newspapers’, Sociological Forum 3 (1988): 97–102; Mayer, Belonging, 218, 221, 233n.
Buel and Buel, Way of Duty, 125; David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (New York, 2004), 174–179; Great Britain, War Office, Judge Advocate General Office, Court Martial Proceedings and Board of General Officers’ Minutes, Microfilm 675, WO 71/82, Reel 2, 405–425: New Town, Long Island, Tuesday, 3 September 1776;
Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (Chapel Hill, 2006), 126.
Ann M. Becker, ‘Smallpox in Washington’s Army: Strategic Implications of the Disease during the American Revolutionary War’, Journal of Military History 68 (2004): 399–400, 408, 423–424; Mayer, Belonging, 64–65.
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© 2010 Holly A. Mayer
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Mayer, H.A. (2010). Bearing Arms, Bearing Burdens: Women Warriors, Camp Followers and Home-Front Heroines of the American Revolution. In: Hagemann, K., Mettele, G., Rendall, J. (eds) Gender, War and Politics. War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230283046_9
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