"A Revolution of One’s Own" Topic

"In asking students to think broadly about the American Revolution—assessing its revolutionary character, for example—I often assign readings that offer contrasting views to prepare them to answer central historiographical questions. In the case of analyzing whether the conflict was revolutionary for women, my students read a chapter from Elaine Forman Crane's Ebb Tide ("Patriarchy Preserved") and a chapter from Rosemarie Zagarri's Revolutionary Backlash ("Female Politicians").[1] I asked students whose argument they found more convincing. About two-thirds chose Zagarri, while the remainder chose Crane, though the latter group expressed far more confidence in their choice. They broke out into small groups and assessed the merits and limitations of both chapters to prepare for an in-class debate. While walking around the room, I approached the smaller group of students who had chosen to defend the argument in "Patriarchy Preserved," asking them what they found so convincing about Crane's analysis. "The patriarchy was preserved!" they argued. In listening to their interpretations, I realized that they were deeply cynical about the movement and its consequences, particularly for marginalized groups.

It's understandable, of course. They were born in the early- to mid-aughts; they have no real memory of the messages of "Hope" and "Change" of Barack Obama's first election; they are coming of age in an era of deep distrust of government and politicians, the media, and American democracy more broadly; and they are witness to the systematic dismantling of rights on an astronomical scale. When considering the rights of women especially, the post-Dobbs United States does not provide them with much confidence. They are not especially optimistic that revolutionary change—especially the kind they crave—is possible. On the one hand, this means that it is not difficult to break apart notions of teleological progress in American history among this student population. On the other, it is difficult to convince them that marginalized groups and individuals beyond the elite, white, male landowning and enslaving class experienced any change or real benefit from the American revolutionary era.

I challenged this group to adjust their expectations for the period. I conceded, of course, that Anglo-America in the late eighteenth-century was a deeply hierarchical society that reinforced white, patriarchal power structures in service of the maintenance of the status quo. But I also encouraged them to allow for more nuance in assessing whether American women had a revolution. First, an abundance of scholarship (to which they had already been exposed) demonstrates that women were present at and participated in nearly every aspect of the American Revolution; likewise, it could not have succeeded without them. This included boycotts, out-of-doors protests, extralegal violence, reading and writing revolutionary rhetoric, defending the home front, and even military engagement…"

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Armand