national women's history month | Author Suzanne Adair

While His Majesty’s army was in North America trying to subdue the insurrection, one of Lord Cornwallis’s officers acknowledged the courage and resourcefulness of those American women who weren’t the King’s Friends when he said to His Lordship: “We may destroy all the men in America, and we shall still have all we can do to defeat the women.” Possibly the officer was thinking of those women who had put suppliers out of business by exercising their choice not to buy cloth and tea. He may even have been thinking of women-organized tea parties, such as the one in Edenton, North Carolina. Women in Britain didn’t have the latitude to organize such protests.

Toward the end of the American Revolution, Cornwallis spent a lot of time in the southern colonies. There his impression of patriot women couldn’t help but receive constant reinforcement that his officer’s statement had been on the mark. Here are a few of the women who may have influenced his opinion.

At her home in the backcountry of Georgia, Nancy Morgan Hart was menaced by six loyalists, who ordered her to cook for them. They helped themselves to her food and liquor, and while they were inattentive, she stole their muskets. Caught in the act, she shot at least two of the men who tried to recover their weapons. She then took the rest captive. When her husband and several neighbors arrived, she insisted that the loyalists be hanged. It’s difficult to distinguish fact from folklore in her story. But in 1912, workers building a railroad near the cabin found six men’s skeletons buried neatly, side by side. The necks of several had been broken, as in a hanging.

Kate Moore Barry served as a scout for the patriots in the South Carolina backcountry. Her activities helped General Daniel Morgan defeat Crown forces commanded by Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of the Cowpens. One day she heard gunfire from loyalist forces at a neighboring homestead. She tied her infant to a bedpost and rode her horse to warn patriots. Her home, Walnut Grove Plantation, has been restored and is open to visitors. In October, visitors are treated to an annual battle reenactment there.

Loyalist David Fanning trapped patriot militia leader Philip Alston and his men—as well as Alston’s wife, Temperance, and their children—in their house in backcountry North Carolina. The two forces then opened fire on each other. When musket balls penetrated the house, Temperance Smith Alston supposedly shoved her kids up a brick chimney to shield them. Fanning threatened to set fire to the house. Temperance emerged in the hail of musket balls waving a flag of truce. She negotiated so well that her husband and his men were paroled instead of imprisoned. “The House in the Horseshoe” is open to visitors, and there’s an annual battle reenactment in August.

Did Lord Cornwallis, like his officer, recognize a formidable foe in patriot women? There is no record of Cornwallis having disagreed with the officer. What do you think?

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The main characters in my Mysteries of the American Revolution trilogy are bourgeoise women. These women of middle and lower class also figure prominently in my Michael Stoddard American Revolution thrillers series. Fiction writers don’t often choose this point of view. Let’s face it. Being middle class isn’t glamorous during war. There are no banquets, balls, glittering gowns, or elaborate wigs. So why do I give readers a look at the lives of women who weren’t in the upper tier of society?

Different lives
Here’s the kicker. Almost never do we hear the voices of women in regard to this war. Mostly we hear the voices of men: soldiers, merchants, lawyers, etc. And if we do hear from women, it’s upper-class women such as Abigail Adams and Martha Washington.

But the gentry led lives that were different in many ways from the lives of their bourgeoise sisters. One place we really see that distinction was in army camps. During the time that an army wasn’t on the move, the female relatives of senior officers came to camp and organized dances and soirees. If these women opted to travel with the army, many could afford to spend the night sheltered in local homes, especially if they were pregnant.

The women we don’t hear about
In contrast, when bourgeois men joined an army, their women shouldered the burden of maintaining the family farm or business. To keep from starving, they might work in excess of twelve hours a day—which helps explain why we have comparatively few letters and journals from them. If these women followed their menfolk into the army—whether the men were soldiers or civilian contractors—the women risked privation. When food was scarce, they might be forced to serve in the hospital, or cook, or launder or mend soldiers’ clothing for miniscule wages. They birthed their babies in tents. They slept in the cold with their men.

For Americans, the Revolution is shrouded in myths. Many of those myths paint a picture that downplays the horrors of war. But give voice to women from middle- and lower-class Revolutionary America, and you’ll hear them talk about the war in a way that’s very different from the stories told by men or upper-class women. What they say dispels myths and burrows down to the truths of humanity and the lessons of history.

Sure, the exciting lives of the Rockefellers and Kardashians of American history make for fun reading. But considering that most Americans today aren’t from the upper tier of society, it’s the stories of middle-class women during the Revolution that address us directly.

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Author Suzanne Adair

Tag Archives: national women’s history month

What Lord Cornwallis Really Thought of Patriot Women

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Women’s History Month 2014: Bourgeoise Women in Revolutionary America

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National Women’s History Month 2009

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