Revolutionary mothers

We don’t hear much about the women who risked their lives and homes fighting for America’s independence. There is no iconic tale like Paul Revere’s ride that channels their heroism, no Broadway musical or definitive biography. Even though their actions were crucial to the nation’s birth and early development, they often took place offstage and were later forgotten. But we know more about them today thanks to scholars like Carol Berkin, who helped to pioneer the study of early U.S. history through the lens of the women who experienced it.

Born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, Berkin moved to New York City in 1960 to study at Barnard, a private women’s college. There, she was taught that women could do anything, if they had “the fortitude, the know-how and the skill” to make it happen. Later, she took that confidence across Broadway to Columbia University, earning a Ph.D. in American history. Women were scant in the books she read there. Aside from Betsy Ross and Martha Washington, they seemed to be absent from the events that shaped our country. Berkin knew that couldn’t be true.

Over the next five decades, she wrote more than a dozen books. Her dissertation, published as “Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist,” was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Her texts on the Constitutional Convention and the Bill of Rights are definitive standards for understanding the tensions and compromises behind the American project. But she has also explored the lives and circumstances of women in colonial America, in her book “Revolutionary Mothers,” during the struggle for independence, and the wives of key figures in the Civil War era, often through their own letters and memoirs.

Now 81, Berkin is Presidential Professor of History, Emerita, of Baruch College and the Graduate Center at City University of New York, where she has taught for 40 years. “I think that put me in the rare group of people who found their calling and got to do what they wanted to do,” she says. Deseret asked her about women in America’s early history and what difficulties the framers faced as they crafted the Constitution.

Deseret Magazine : What do Americans get wrong about the founding?

Carol Berkin : There are many myths. You know: Everybody fought for the Revolution and all were willing to make sacrifices. It is not true. And the real story is more interesting. Many think they won the war, then created the Constitution, and everybody was happy. But some didn’t want a central government. Maryland and Virginia had gunboats aimed at one another across the Potomac. Connecticut and New Jersey were plotting whether they could invade New York City in response to astronomical prices charged on imported goods. One of the most remarkable things about the revolution is that states cooperated to win.

DM : The framers has a lot to worry about. How did they pull it off?

CB : This was do or die. That’s one reason the men at the convention compromised. There was an economic depression. There was danger from foreign enemies like France, Spain and Britain, and the army consisted of 500 men. They owed a fortune to allies, their own soldiers and the American public. Oh, and there were also pirates. They tried sending wheat to the Mediterranean to build the economy, but had no navy to protect their ships. They were either gonna implode or be invaded. So every time a problem arose that might tear the convention asunder, they knew that there would be no United States if they didn’t have a real central government with real powers.

DM : We know our Founding Fathers. Were there Founding Mothers?

CB : The culture was highly patriarchal. When women got married, they disappeared legally. You couldn’t sue or be sued, you couldn’t own property unless your husband or your father granted it to you. The clothes on your back belonged to your husband. More significantly, your body belonged to your husband. When a slave ran away in the 18th century, they wrote “runaway” on the poster. When a woman ran away from her husband, they wrote, “She has abducted herself from me.” This was the culture women found themselves in, not only legally, but economically.

DM : Was independence a chance to improve their station?

CB : The idea that there were women who ran around saying “equal rights” is not true. What is true is that the Revolution politicized women for the first time. Men needed their support, especially since the boycott of goods was the most powerful weapon Americans had in forcing Britain to repeal oppressive laws. Who drank tea and bought cloth? Women. Suddenly, they started talking politics and began to think that their activities had political significance. That is one of the most radical things that happened in the Revolution: Women became politically conscious.

DM : Did that translate into action?

CB : Yes. Women served as spies. They wrote propaganda for recruiting. Unmarried women in New York signed a manifesto that they would not get engaged to any man who didn’t join the army. They carried messages between American generals and militiamen, and rode off through enemy lines when no man was willing to do it. The stories cracked me up because they were mostly young girls, and it was always a dark and stormy night. No one ever rode off in good weather. Some were captured. Deborah Champion was taken in Massachusetts and absolutely played the young British soldiers. Like something from “Little Red Riding Hood,” she said “My uncle’s sick and I’m taking a basket of goodies to him.” In fact, she was carrying an important message between Washington and another general.

Women also kept arms and ammunition in their homes. And many burned down their homes to prevent the British from getting those stockpiles. One came out brandishing a ceremonial sword that her husband kept over the fireplace as loyalists and British came up toward her house. “If you come near me, I’ll kill you,” she said. They were so shocked that they turned around and left. Women did genuinely heroic things that they never knew they were capable of. They rose to the occasion and in doing so discovered their own ingenuity, their own bravery and their own patriotism.

DM : So what happened to that spirit after the war?

CB : When their sons and husbands came back, all the women wanted to do was go back to what life was like before the war. You don’t see a lot of demands for rights among ordinary women. What they wanted was to restore what had been, and they had a lot of work to do. Some wealthy women who had the time wrote essays arguing that women were intellectually and spiritually equal to men and should be educated. That happened, briefly. All 13 original states opened academies for women. But it would take longer for these ideas to reach fruition.

DM : How did the framers prepare for an evolving society?

CB : Ben Franklin said if the Constitution lasts 10 years, we will have done our duty. They weren’t writing about the future. They were writing a document designed to cure the problems the country was facing at that moment. Most of the men who wrote it took a look around them and said, “This country is in danger of disappearing; what can we do to shore it up?” They knew things would change. They did not have the kind of hubris that most of our politicians sadly have today. The amendment process tells you everything you need to know about their state of mind: If things change, make this document change with the times.

DM : Was the Constitution built to last?

CB : The Constitution embodies the principle that you can have power as long as it is distinct. That is, what we call today checks and balances, a mutual respect among the branches of government. To casually say, “Well, the Constitution is old news, we should throw it out,” denies the structure of the government the Constitution created. These days, I don’t know if it will, but it ought to last and be honored as long as we have a country.

That is one of the most radical things that happened in the Revolution: Women became politically conscious.