When you picture the American Revolution, you probably see powdered wigs, crowded battlefields and bold declarations of freedom. But what’s often missing from that mental image? The women.
From tending to wounded soldiers and hosting political salons to disguising themselves as men to join the fight, women were there—shaping the independence movement in ways history has long overlooked.
Ahead of Independence Day, The Daily spoke with Renee Sentilles, the Henry Eldridge Bourne Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University, to explore the critical—yet often forgotten—roles women played in the founding of the United States.
“Women were there—on the battlefield as well as the homefront,” Sentilles said. “They were fully participating citizens, whether loyalist or revolutionary.”
Read on to glean her insights, and discover more about the noisy history of Independence Day.
1. When we think of the American Revolution, names like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson come to mind—but who are some of the women whose stories we overlook?
Sybil Ludington was a 16-year-old who did a sort of Paul Revere ride; Mercy Otis Warren was poet, political satirist playwright, and later historian of the war; Judith Sargent Murray was an essayist, intellectual, advocate of equal education for women; Abigail Adams was the wife of John Adams and an outspoken advocate for women; Deborah Sampson cross-dressed to fight in the war; Phillis Wheatley was a poet and intellectual; Nancy Morgan Hart was a fighter in Georgia; and Molly Pitcher was one of many of the women who tended to soldiers on the field.
But asking us to pull out “great women” ignores the fact that most women were involved collaboratively. They bonded together to raise money, gather needed materials, and fight back in small as well as large ways. Historically, women tend to act together, not as individuals because individualism was in, in many ways, a male construct.
2. In what ways did women contribute to the independence movement?
Women participated on the battlefield, feeding, clothing and housing troops. They participated in the intellectual salons (think Murray and Warren). They participated as rebels and loyalists alike, as soldiers were quartered in their houses. Officers’ wives accompanied their husbands to battle in an effort to keep up morale of the troops.
3. Were there any specific women you would consider ‘founding mothers’?
Sargent Murray famously wrote that women must have an education equal to men if we were going to raise citizens capable of sustaining a democracy. Her argument went a long way toward expanding education for girls. Warren and Adams were both politically influential.
4. How did ideas about gender and citizenship during the Revolution shape women’s involvement—and their exclusion—in the founding of the United States?
That’s a more complicated question. During the Revolution women fought alongside men, but after the revolution…it took another 10 years or more for states to write and adopt constitutions. They considered giving women equal citizenship, and New Jersey did initially give voting rights, but the men in charge considered women dependents of men, much like children and slaves.
5. Can you speak to how enslaved or Indigenous women experienced or influenced the Revolution differently from white women?
It’s a complex question because the truth is that (outside of indigenous women) none of the women were free—all lacked the ability to claim their children, their bodies or their wages. And for the most part, no woman got to decide if she was a loyalist or revolutionary—that was decided by her husband/father/master. But enslaved women lacked the most rights. Most enslaved women had little scope for influencing the war in a big way: they, like most of the women, were trying to ensure the survival of themselves and their children. The one exception: Phillis Wheatley was freed by the time of the Revolution, but through her poetry influenced understanding of what was meant by “freedom” and “slavery.”
Indigenous women experienced the war entirely differently because they had a different set of expectations within their own nations. Indigenous nations were forced to take a side, and—as far as I know—women within those nations fought on that side. I have not seen any record of Native women influencing the war or its aftermath.
6. How might learning about these lesser-known contributions change the way students and the public understand Independence Day today?
It looks like a much cleaner war if you ignore the presence of women and children, enslaved and free servants. It looks like the paintings and re-enactments, which is to say it looks nothing like what it was. It is important to recognize that everybody was involved—then, as now.