Republican Motherhood Essay

235 Words1 Pages

Many women fought during the war in many different ways. Deborah Sampson disguised herself as a man to battle in the Continental army but was still honorably discharged and was rewarded with a soldiers pension. Other patriot women held goods off the market until their prices rose,contributed homespun goods to the army, and passed along information about the British army movements( Foner 232). Ester Reed and Sara Franklin Bache organized a Ladies Association to raise funds to assist American soldiers. The Ladies Association illustrated how the Revolution was propelling women into new forms of public activism. Women also participated in political decisions unleashed by independence. Abigail Adams promoted revolutionary cause in poems and drams and later published a history of struggle for independence(Foner 232). The winning of independence didn't change the family law inherited from Britain. Although the republican motherhood’s intentions were to make women and men equal they still had their limits. Women still felt the need to apologize for their forthrightness, because the men considered women to be submissive and irrational and therefor unfit for citizenship. …show more content…

According to the ideology of “republican motherhood” that emerged as a result of independence, women played an indispensable role by training future citizens.The idea of republican motherhood reinforced the trend, already evident in the eighteenth century, toward the idea of “companionate” marriage, a voluntary union held together by affection and mutual dependency rather than male authority(Foner