Women's Role In The American Revolution

Women participated in the American Revolution in many different ways both to help with the war effort and to undermine the war effort. They sewed for the army, boycotted goods from England, made weapons and ammo, were camp followers, fought disguised as men in battles, were spies for either side, and ran the farms while their husbands were away. The war allowed women to fulfill new roles and explore their own political beliefs and to act upon those beliefs. A majority of the women involved in the war efforts did so from the comfort of their own homes. They made items for the war effort like standards, uniforms, and guns and ammo. They melted down all of the metal they could find and shaped them into bullets for the war effort. Women also were involved in boycotting English good even before
They were not ariad to resort to violence to get their point across. Women “joined in tarring and feathering local merchants who continued to import British goods,” and even threatened other women who made their loyalties to the Crown clear, such as the woman who named her son after the British commander Thomas Gage, the mother and the baby barley escaped from being tarred and feathered as well. Women also boycotted tea and imported cloth specifically. While boycotting these items does not seem like it would be too difficult, to the women involved in these boycotts this was a “political act.” It was unpleasant to drink the herbal substitute for tea, especially without sugar, which is shown in a scene from the film “Mary Silliman’s War” the Silliman’s niece and servant Amelia asks at the dinner table whether or not it would be okay to buy some sugar put into their drinks and was met with