Homespun: The Economic Impact of Women on the American Revolution
by Jessica Bryant
Education & Public Programs Associate Jessica Bryant explores the important role patriotic women played in winning the Revolutionary War.
When the events leading up to the American Revolution are relayed the focus is on Parliamentary Acts, pledges to boycott, and perhaps a Tea Party or two, but what is rarely mentioned are the patriotic women who fulfilled the promises to boycott and proved to Americans—and the rest of the world—that America could indeed survive without Britain. These intelligent, organized women made the boycotting of British goods possible by becoming domestic producers of the same materials. They committed themselves to this cause whole-heartedly, even making it fashionable to do work that had once been considered onerous and uncouth. Above all, these women showed a commitment to the cause of the American Revolution that they carried on throughout the war, providing the economic foundations for victory.
Unknown Artist, Women spinning and weaving cloth in a colonial home. Courtesy of the Westford Historical Society.
To understand the protests before the American Revolution, and the way women became involved in them, it is important to understand the economic system of mercantilism. This was the economic policy of the British Empire, whereby the British strictly controlled what could be made in the colonies and where the colonies could buy other products. This system was described by Encyclopedia Britannica as “the economic counterpart to political absolutism.”[1] In this system, a nation maintained a strong economy through a favorable balance of trade, meaning that Britain would export more goods than it imported; Britain maintained that balance through governmental control and monopolies. Take for example the Wool Act of 1699, which prohibited the American colonies from exporting wool, wool yarn, and wool cloth due to a fear that the American production of wool competed with British exports.[2] Mercantilism is an important contextualizing element to the beginning of the American Revolution, because British mercantilist policies prevented the Thirteen Colonies from developing their own production capabilities in any substantial way. The colonies were purposefully made economically dependent on Britain, making independence even more difficult to obtain.
Revenue 1765 Newspaper and Pamphlet One Penny. A proof sheet of 26, showing the registration certificate. Courtesy of the British Library.
Women were not part of the decision-making process when American men chose boycotting British goods as their preferred method of protest, but they comprised a large section of the people who participated. By the mid-eighteenth century, women were a major force in the American economy. Between women who controlled household purchases and those who ran their own shops in urban areas, women developed economic power through consumption, which Patriot women chose to exert for political gains.[3] As Carol Berkin said, “Parliament could ignore assemblies’ petitions. It could turn a deaf ear to soaring oratory and flights of rhetoric. But Parliament could not withstand the pressures placed on it by English merchants and manufacturers who saw theirs sales plummet and their warehouses overflow because of the boycott.”[4] By boycotting British goods, women starved English merchants of so much business that the merchants then forced Parliament to end the Stamp Act in March of 1766.
While this political maneuvering was impressive, saying no to British goods was only half the battle of creating a truly effective boycott. Refusing to use British goods did not make the goods themselves any less necessary, and a single victory against Parliament was not going to stop the British from demanding more money in taxes. In 1767, Parliament passed a series of acts known as the Townshend Acts, which included taxes on British goods like lead, glass, paper, paint, and tea.[5] The passing of the Townshend Acts sparked renewed boycotts throughout the colonies. Women replaced the items being boycotted by producing their own fabric, finding alternative forms of tea to drink, and, in the case of wealthy women, refusing luxury goods that could only be found in Europe. Through the production of homespun, domestic fabrics, women made great contributions to the boycotts, gaining publicity and praise through newspaper articles describing “spinning bees.” Held in communal spaces, these “spinning bees” were large public events in which women gathered to spin yarn for hours on end.
One of the news articles that mentions a large “spinning bee” that took place before the Townshend Acts were passed. On April 7, 1766, the Boston Gazette reported:
“On the 4th instant, eighteen daughters of liberty, young ladies of good reputation, assembled at the house of doctor Ephraim Brown, in this town, in consequence of an invitation of that gentlemen, who had discovered a laudable zeal for the introducing Home Manufacturers. There they exhibited a fine example of industry, by spinning from sunrise until dark, and displayed a spirit for saving their sinking country, rarely to be found among persons of more age and experience.”[6]
Women such as these were praised by the Patriotic press for devoting time and energy to serving their country. Participating in “spinning bees,” wearing homespun fabric, and publicly vowing to participate in the boycotts were visible, publicized manifestations of women’s desire to fight for their country.
This article was also the first documentation of an organization called the Daughters of Liberty. This was a Patriotic organization of women involved in the Homespun Movement and who were devoted to the cause of American freedom. The Daughters of Liberty was in many ways the sister society to the Sons of Liberty. These women were steadfast in their support of the Patriot cause and deliberate in their political beliefs and actions. Some of these women took their support of the cause so far that they began to criticize men whose devotion, they believed, was not as strong as their own. The poet Hannah Griffitts anonymously published the lines:
Since the men, from a party or fear of a frown
Are kept by a sugar-plum quietly down
Supinely asleep – and depriv’d of their sight
Are stripp’d of their freedom, and robb’d of their right;
If sons, so degenerate! The blessings despise
Let the Daughters of Liberty nobly arise.[7]
Whereas much of women’s participation in the American Revolution has been discussed in terms of individual anecdotes about extraordinary women, the Homespun Movement was a collective campaign that encompassed a broad range of social spheres, political positions, and personal motivations. There were women who were politically minded within this demographic, and many knew the rhetoric of the Patriots and they wanted to support the cause. Many women who were aware of the political implications of their actions but were more concerned with the practical, charitable effects of producing cloth for the people most negatively impacted by the economic strain of a boycott. Other women were completely unconcerned about the politics behind the boycott and simply wanted to ensure that their families were fed and dressed. Curiously, most journalists of the emphasized the actions of the most political of these three groups. Charity, rather than politics, would seem to be a more traditionally feminine motivator during the Homespun Movement of the eighteenth century; however, the form of civic engagement being displayed by the Daughters of Liberty, with their self-sacrifice and diligent labor, was far more socially permissible than the public demonstrations, violence, and drinking of the Sons of Liberty.[8]
Regardless of their motivations, women’s economic support of the Patriot cause did not stop when war broke out. If boycotts made supplies harder to find, war made it nearly impossible. Particularly at the beginning of the war the Continental Army struggled to supply its soldiers with everything they needed, from ammunition to clothing to wages. For women, producing cloth went from a form of political protest to an important show of support for the army. There was even a broadside distributed in Philadelphia in 1775 calling on women to return to cloth production.[9] In Hartford, Connecticut, the burden placed on women to produce clothing for the army was so great that the women were given quotas: 1,000 coats and vests and 1.600 shirts for 1776 alone.
Charles Peale, Esther de Berdt Reed, 1785. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.
John Hoppner, Mrs. Richard Bache, 1793. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
As the war went on and the Continental Army gained experience and the support of France, the army’s immediate need for aid diminished. The upper classes of society took this as a sign that strict frugality was no longer necessary and became so confident in victory that they began spending and socializing with extravagance.[10] This did not sit well with the women of Philadelphia’s high society. Esther de Berdt Reed, wife of Pennsylvania’s governor, and Sarah Franklin Bache, daughter of Benjamin Franklin, were horrified to see their friends and neighbors seemingly forget that they were still in wartime. These two women joined together to create the Ladies Association of Philadelphia and organized the biggest domestic fundraising operation of the war.[11]
On June 12, 1780, Reed and Bache published a broadside titled “Sentiments of an American Woman.” [12] In this text, they affirmed their commitment to serving their country to the best of their ability and outlined their motivation:
“To display the same sentiments which animated us at the beginning of the Revolution, when we renounced the use of teas, however agreeable to our taste, rather than receive them from our persecutors; when we made it appear to them that we placed former necessaries in the rank of superfluities, when our liberty was interested; when our republican and laborious hands spun the flax, prepared the linen intended for the use of our soldiers; when exiles and fugitives we supported with courage all the evils which are the concomitants of war.”[13]
On the back of the broadside, they went on to detail the way they would raise money. They took care to emphasize that this endeavor was open to any women who wished to help, regardless of circumstance, noting that "The shilling offered by the Widow or the young girl, will be received as well as the most considerable sums presented by the Women who have the happiness to join to their patriotism, greater means to be useful.”[14] The collection of this money was almost entirely handled by women. Each woman, or group of women who saved together, sent their money to a designated Treasuress, who then sent that money to the State Treasuress, most often the wife of the governor, who would send the money to Martha Washington.[15] Through the efforts of the women who responded to their call, Bache and Reed raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in paper money—$300,000 alone came from 1,600 different donors in Philadelphia.[16]
Sarah Franklin Bache and Esther de Berdt Reed, Sentiments of an American Women, June 12, 1780, Courtesy of the New York Historical Society.
In the lists of rules for the collection of money, Bache and Reed made sure to note that the money would be distributed in whatever manner General George Washington thought was best. This emphasis was prophetic given that Washington wrote to Reed on August 10, 1780, asking that the collected money be used to finance the production of clothing rather than directly distributing it among the soldiers; Washington was fearful that some of the men might squander any donations given in cash.[17] The Ladies Association took this advice a step further and chose to make the requested clothing themselves. Sarah Franklin Bache even wrote to her father that she was “busily imploy’d in cutting out and making shirts, and giving them out to make to the good women of my acquaintance, for our Brave Soldiers.”
From the “spinning bees” of the 1770s to the Ladies Association of 1780, women used their domestic skills and economic power throughout the American Revolution to aid the Patriot cause and exert their own political beliefs. While there were neutralist and loyalist women who disagreed with these actions, the Homespun Movement gave a unique look at the amount of power women could wield through collectivism. Sarah Franklin Bache and Esther de Berdt Reed may have been extraordinary individuals, but the level of fundraising they achieved was only possible through the efforts of thousands of women working together. Moreover, the Homespun Movement showed the diversity of women who existed in Colonial America and the ways in which each woman’s experience of the American Revolution was both unique and part of the larger experience of an entire population.
Footnotes
[1] The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, Mercantilism.
[2] Historic Hudson Valley, “Spinning Patriotic Sentiment in Colonial America,” https://hudsonvalley.org/article/spinning-patriotic-sentiment-in-colonial-america/.
[3] Carol Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence, 14.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Townshend Acts,” https://www.britannica.com/event/Townshend-Acts.
[6] Rebecca Beatrice Brooks, “The Daughters of Liberty: Who Were They and What Did They Do?” https://historyofmassachusetts.org/who-were-the-daughters-of-liberty/.
[7] Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers, 16.
[8] Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth, 183.
[9] Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers,42.
[10] Ibid, 44.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Sarah Franklin Bache and Esther de Berdt Reed, Sentiments of an American Women, pub. John Dunlap, Accessed on ”Women and the American Story,” New York Historical Society, https://wams.nyhistory.org/settler-colonialism-and-revolution/the-american-revolution/sentiments-of-an-american-woman/#resource.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers, 47.
[17] Ibid, 48.
