Research proposal Due Friday Oct 24 th 2 page out-line of you project detail the structure that your paper will take

1. Research proposal • Due Friday Oct 24th • 2 page out-line of you project • detail the structure that your paper will take • an indication of your purpose in choosing the subject • i.e. the impact they had on America.

2. Research paper: • Students will select a topic, in consultation with the professor, and prepare a research paper of 7-8 pages, type-written and double spaced. • Paper be due on November 19th • Internet sources • No more than two internet sources can be used • All internet sources must be authorized by the Professor – any internet sources not authorized result in a loss of points • NO use of Wikipedia at all  • All quotations must have equivalent amount of explanatory text

3. An American Revolution (for women?)

4. For European women in the colonies there was an ideal that they were supposed to fit into (the private submissive good-wife) • Role didn’t always fit – many women challenged it • Without much success • American Revolution provided a turning point in women’s history • The revolution did not destroy women’s separate realm of life but, • threw it into convulsions

5. War years, pushed women into the turmoil and conflict of public events • Men away fighting • Women called on to provide public services as well as domestic responsibilities • Women began to express themselves politically • Individually and in groups

6. Wives and housekeepers suddenly became • boycotters • camp followers • petitioners • fund raisers • For both loyalists and patriots • The decades around the Revolution were rife with passionate ideas about political liberty • Political pamphlets, newspapers, and sermons explored the history and meaning of political rights and freedoms

7. Expressions of patriotism were novel and varied • For example: • Deborah Sampson Gannett • Enlisted in the fourth MA regiment • received a pension for her service • After her death, pension was passed on to her husband

8. Women played traditional role as camp followers • Washington saw their presence as a liability • “The multitudes of women,” • he contended in 1777, • “especially those who are pregnant or have children, are a clog upon every movement.” • Yet army had no support staff and women were an essentially auxiliary

9. Camp followers • marched with the army • Provided tasks like cooking and laundry. • Washington did appreciate a modern role women adopted during the war • Raising money for the cause • Congratulating the Ladies Association of Philadelphia • elite group led by Esther De Berdt Reed • on their fund gathering, he awarded its members “an equal place with any who have proceeded them in the walk of female patriotism.”

10. PA ladies “established” the American female character • Washington asserted • By “proving that the love of the country is blended with those softer domestic virtues, which have always been allowed to be more peculiarly your own.” • War threw a spotlight on “domestic virtue” • Also imbued household work with a political content

11. For over a decade, gatherings of rebel women received publicity in patriot press • Sometimes, women in groups created mobs scenes • 500 women, Abigail Adams reported, harassed a MA merchant for hounding coffee • Women’s associations also • passed resolutions to patronize merchants who supported the rebel cause • and took oaths renounce marriage with men who did not support the patriot cause

12. Sewing circles • Groups as large as 60 or 70 women convened to • spin, weave, and sew – a political act • Most famous to sew • Betsy Ross • Who may have sewed the first American flag

13. The war also disrupted families. • had mixed effects. • In absence of men, women were sometimes able to assume new authority and larger roles • taking over and managing farms and businesses • Many were unprepared for such a responsibility but responsibility provided opportunity • Women’s competent management • made some men pay more attention to their wives’ roles • household work was customarily regarded as trivial and inconsequential

14. When women looked back to the years of the Revolution what did they remember? • Several themes repeated with great frequency • War had been a nightmare • frightened people and disrupted lives. • A time when women had chosen • political identities • prided themselves on their loyalism or on their patriotism • performed services for the government of their choice • But were these only temporary gains?

15. Women who had survived • strong and courageous • Republic offered only grudging response to their sacrifices • Americans did not choose to explore the socially radical implications of their republican ideology.

16. Revolution and the Republic that followed were considered men’s work • “To be an adept in the art of Government,” Abigail Adams observed to her husband, “is a prerogative to which your Sex lay almost an exclusive claim.” • Women were left to invent their own political character.

17. Active citizenship in the republic • the explicit province of men • Women had to invent a new ideology of citizenship • Merge domestic with new public ideology of individual responsibility and civic virtue

18. consensus developed around the idea that a mother • committed to the service of her family and to the state • Might serve a political purpose • Those who opposed new role had to meet the proposal • That women should play a political role • Raising of a patriotic child

19. A Mother was to encourage in her sons civic interest and participation. • She was to educate her children and guide them in the paths of morality and virtue. • But not to tell her male relatives for whom to vote. • She was a citizen but not really a constituent.

20. Women's historian, Linda Kerber, coined this experience "Republican Motherhood."

21. Abigail Adams, wife and mother of United States Presidents • Example of a woman in the role of Republican Mother. • In a letter to her son, John Quincy Adams • while he was at Holland College in 1780 • gave advice to the foundations of virtue and obligations she is hopeful he will achieve.

22. “Justice, humanity, and benevolence are the duties you owe to society in general. • To your country the same duties are incumbent upon you, with the additional obligation of sacrificing ease, pleasure, wealth, and life itself for its defense and security. • To your parents you owe love, reverence, and obedience to all just and equitable commands. • To yourself- here, indeed, is a wide field to expatiate you. To become what you ought to be, and what a fond mother wishes to see you…”

23. Republican Motherhood was a very important, even revolutionary, invention. • Altered the female domain in which most women had always lived out their lives • Justified women's absorption and participation in the civic culture. • The role of Republican Motherhood paved the way for the emergence of the public woman.

24. Influence on sons • through teaching of civic duties and virtue • Changed American politics. • Republican Motherhood • A very important step for women towards the public sphere. • 1780s Republican Motherhood stimulated debate on women’s education • Provoking the founding of female academies

25. Writer Judith Sargent Murray argued that women’s only disability lay in their lack of education • In an article “On the Equality of the Sexes” published in 1790, Murray pondered whether men were, in fact, mentally superior to women

26. Murray, finding signs of • reason, • imagination, • memory, • and judgment among women • Proposed that women’s deficiencies were due to their limited knowledge • “We can only reason from what we know, and if opportunity of acquiring knowledge hath been denied us, the inferiority of our sex cannot fairly be deduced from thence.”

27. According to Murray: • If girls were educated like boys, the difference in intellectual capacities would disappear. • Women needed education to • Develop their intellect and encouragement to use their intellect and knowledge

28. Advocates of women’s education • like Murray • argued strenuously that the purpose was not to make women like men • but rather to enable them to properly fulfill their role in the new republic • Republican motherhood