| While the "fathers" were off
founding the country, what were the women doing?
Running their husband’s businesses, raising their
children plus providing political information and
advice. At least that’s what Abigail Adams did for
John, starting when he went off to the Continental
Congress, which eventually declared the
independence of the American colonies from the
British. While the men were writing the rebellious
words, the women were living the revolution, with
the Redcoats on their doorsteps. John’s advice to
Abigail as the soldiers approached Braintree: if
necessary "fly to the woods with our children."
That was it, she was on her own, as she was for
most of the next ten years while Adams represented
the newly independent nation abroad.
Abigail Adams is the best known of the women
who influenced the founders, but there are many
more, starting with Martha Washington, who once
referred to herself as a “prisoner of state” for
the constraints placed on her as the first First
Lady. She was the one charged with balancing the
demands of a Republic of the "common man" on the
one hand, while insisting on some modicum of
courtliness and protocol so that the former
colonies would be taken seriously by Europe. She
also took political heat in the press from the
president’s political opponents when he was too
popular to criticize.
And there are women like Esther Reed, married
to the president of Pennsylvania, who, with
Benjamin Franklin’s daughter Sarah Bache,
organized a drive to raise money for Washington’s
troops at Valley Forge. In 1780 the women raised
more than three hundred thousand dollars. Reed
wrote a famous patriotic broadside titled The
Sentiments of an American Woman, calling on
women to wear simpler clothing and hairstyles in
order to save money to contribute to the cause. It
worked! The women who ran the boarding houses of
Philadelphia where the men stayed while writing
the now sacred documents of America had their
quite considerable say about the affairs of state
as well.
This will be the story of some of those women,
as learned through their seldom seen letters and
diaries, and the letters from the men to them. It
will be a story of the beginnings of the nation as
viewed from the distaff side.
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