Why Did Women Sacrifice?

Women from the colonial period and into the American Revolutionary War, made great sacrifices and notable risks that often proved to be fatal or of little profit to themselves. Why would women go through great trials and suffering if they were not guaranteed some type of reward or personal benefit? Here are some women from these time periods that exemplify this self-sacrificing type.

Well to start off, the pilgrim women who came on the Mayflower in 1620 left their homelands to make a voyage with no sure prospects of success. There were nineteen women who boarded the Mayflower. When they arrived, they were suffering from starvation and one woman, Dorothy May was even reported to have fallen off the ship when anchored and drowned. All of the women died over the next years except for four.[1] The courage it took for those women to step onto the boat and make the voyage was momentous in American history, yet deeply destructive for the majority.

Years later in colonial Maryland an independent business woman named Margaret Brent chose to risk her livelihood to save her homeland from mercenary soldiers in return she had to leave her self-established property and life in Maryland to escape Lord Baltimore’s “bitter incentives” rather than being thanked for her actions.[2] Anne Hutchinson, mother of fifteen children, from the Massachusetts Bay Colony shared her belief in the ability for a person to have a direct relationship with God. Many came to hear her sermons at her home. The male church leaders threatened her and brought her to trial, but she would not consent to their restraints and was banished from the colony. She and many of her children were killed by an attack from Indians. She lost all she had due to her actions: home, friends, family and eventually life.[3] Why did Margaret and Anne make these decisions, particularly when there was great personal loss and very little gain.

Into the American Revolution women had developed a lifestyle that was very different from the Colonial Era. Instead of aiming for the industrious laboring housewife, they took on the image of “pretty women” who lived their lives in (so called) leisure.[4] When the revolution began to run its course, women were expected to step up and support the cause for freedom. “The Edenton Ladies’ Tea Party,” a British cartoon from the time, depicted woman banning together to sign a revolutionary document and support the cause. These women were depicted as distracted, frivolous, neglecting their motherly roles and over all, incapable of being revolutionaries themselves.[5]

Again, however, the women from the Revolutionary Period did stand up and fight and take on the heavy burden of running and defending their homesteads while their husbands were gone.  Abigail Adams described the conquering spirit she possessed to fight off the enemy with her own hands if she had to. She took on the many duties of caring for the local sick and injured, caring for her own family and household duties, running the farm as well as managed the finances.[6]Deborah Sampson Gannett put on clothes to emulate a man and went out on the battle field and fought for the Revolutionary cause. “Molly Pitcher” was chose to take her slain husband’s position on the battle field and fight and was wounded in return.[7] The women from this era also sacrificed a great deal and for what? Was it the possibility of equality with men or the right to vote?

Abigail Adams urged her husband to “remember the Ladies” and Eliza Wilkinson, in a letter to a friend, declared that she wanted her basic “liberty of thought” if not more than that. [8] In the aftermath there were no equal rights granted to the American women who fought and supported the war so valiantly, except for in New Jersey where voting rights for women were granted for just a short period.[9] Why did these women sacrifice so much then, when they experienced some of the greatest loss and smallest profit? Might it be in the woman’s nature to give more than she gets? Was it due to false hopes and unrealized dreams? Was it to protect and preserve her children and family? It cannot entirely be determined why the women took these risks, but it is well worth the study, since this pattern is seen time and again through out history.


Here is a YouTube video highlighting the sacrifices and fighting spirit of Anna Maria Lane during the Revolutionary War:

1.  
 1. Gail Collins, American Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, (Harper Perennial, New York, 2003), 23-25.

2.    2.  Collins, American Women, 12-14.

3.     3. Collins, American Women, 28-30.

4.    4.  Collins, American Women, 71-72.

5.    5.  “The Edenton Ladies’ Tea Party,” in Texts on the Origins of Liberty Rhetoric, (Library of Congress) found at http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/graphics/teaparty.jpg , (Retrieved March 7, 2012).

6.     6. Collins, American Women, 80.

7.     7. Collins, American Women, 81.

8.    8.  Letters of Abigail Adams and Eliza Wilkinson, in Texts on the Origins of Liberty Rhetoric found at http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/origtext.html#adams (Retrieved March 7, 2012).

9.    9.  Collins, American Women, 83.