"The Dark and Dense Cloud Perpetually Lowering over Us": Gender and the Decline of the Gentry in Postrevolutionary Virginia

Abstract

When traveling in Virginia, you must be prepared to hear the name of Randolph frequently mentioned, observed the marquis de Chastellux in 1782. This was one of the first families of the country, since a Randolph was among the first settlers, but it is also one of the most numerous and wealthiest. The marquis, who enjoyed the hospitality of the Randolphs and several of Virginia's other leading planter families, seemed unaware that both their incomes and their influence had declined in recent years, the victims of falling tobacco prices, the disruptions of war, and the antiauthoritarian politics of the American Revolution. Beginning in the 1760s, the great planters of Virginia sank ever deeper into debt; taxes, soil exhaustion, and continuing troubles in the tobacco market compounded their financial difficulties in the postrevolutionary decades. At the same time, political revolution and evangelical religion gradually undermined the legitimacy of the social hierarchy that the old planter elite had dominated. As a result, many great planters either withdrew from politics or competed for office less successfully than had their colonial ancestors.1 The public decline of Virginia's leading men, in turn, profoundly affected the social, economic, and emotional worlds of their wives and daughters. Focusing on the seven daughters of Thomas Mann Randolph, Sr., and Anne Cary Randolph, this essay argues that Virginia gentlewomen responded creatively to the challenges their families confronted in the postrevolutionary decades. Elite women constructed new occasions for sociability, establishing a rudimentary feminine subculture that had not existed in the colonial era, and through their private and public pursuits they helped shape an evolving culture of refinement both within and beyond their households.2 Moreover, unlike earlier generations of elite Virginia wives, who typically left financial matters to their husbands, many also contributed self consciously and significantly to their family economies. That at least five of seven Randolph sisters at some time engaged in paid employment belies the stereotype of the passive and dependent southern lady. That one of these became an enthusiastic proponent of domestic patriarchy, however, suggests that such women did not always view their diminished dependence as a source of satisfaction or power. Thomas Mann Randolph, Sr. (1741-1793), and Anne Cary (1745-1789) were in many ways representative Virginia gentlefolk of the last prerevolutionary generation. Although their union may have been affectionate-no letters between them have survived-their marriage in 1761 united two Virginia planter families of the first rank. Like most prominent gentleman, Thomas was an Anglican vestryman, a justice of the peace, and a member of the colonial legislature.3 He and Anne participated in a genteel culture of public balls, polite manners, and conspicuous consumption that complemented and reinforced the authority of their class before the Revolution. A visiting European nobleman described the Randolphs' home, Tuckahoe, as worthy of a Prince's Palace. Another visitor, noting the spaciousness of the H-shaped mansion, believed that it had been built solely to answer the purposes of hospitality.4 Gentility at home and on public occasions masked the extent to which the economic and political fortunes of many of Virginia's leading planters were declining by the revolutionary era. Extravagant living, coupled with soil exhaustion, Virginia's exclusion after 1776 from the British navigation system, and a 1796 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the outstanding claims of British creditors, devastated many planter families, and both the Randolphs and the Carys figured prominently among the ranks of the indebted.5 Meanwhile, the Revolution had undermined the patriarchal politics and class relations of the colonial era. Although Virginia's postrevolutionary legislative leaders continued to come primarily from wealthy and well-connected families, such men increasingly shared power with others of humbler origins. …