Women in the American Revolution

Abstract

W AR was very real to the women of the Revolutionary period. Along the extended frontier there hung a perpetual threat of Indian incursions with their attendant acts of savagery. On the coast and by navigable rivers the British fleet and army kept the inhabitants in an intermittent state of alarm. In the interior sporadic fighting and foraging raids left their victims shaken and impoverished. Yet with the exception of those whom the exigencies of war forced to become refugees, women generally remained at home ministering to the needs of their households, assuming their absent husbands' responsibilities, meeting as best they could the inevitable wartime scarcities, taking over jobs compatible with their physical limitations and conventions, and longing always for the return of their men and for peace. As if loneliness and sorrow were not enough, war brought privation and destitution to many wives and widows of men in the military service. Even before the continental currency started on its disastrous toboggan slide, soldiers' pay had not been uniform, prompt, or sufficient, despite various bounties offered to encourage enlistments. As there was no general provision for allotments to dependents of fighting men, the latter were often forced to see their loved ones become objects of local charity. Neither were widows and orphans of fighting men adequately or uniformly pensioned, with the result that many of them had to petition the government for relief.' When the full month's pay of an officer was required to meet his traveling expenses for one day, how could bereaved dependents exist on the half pay allotted them by a law which had no general application until 1780, five years after the outbreak of hostilities? 2