Jefferson’s declaration in philadelphia, thirty three- year

1. JEFFERSON’S DECLARATION In Philadelphia, thirty-
three- year- old Thomas Jefferson, a brilliant, freckle- faced
Virginia planter and attorney serving in the Continental
Congress, had drafted a statement of independence that John
Adams and Benjamin Franklin then edited.The Declaration of
Independence was crucially important not simply because it
marked the creation of a new nation but because of the ideals it
expressed and the grievances it listed. Over the previous ten
years, colonists had deplored various acts of Parliament
impinging on their freedoms. Now, Jefferson directed colonial
resentment at King George III himself, arguing that the monarch
should have reined in Parliament’s efforts to “tyrannize” the
colonies. In addition to highlighting the efforts of the British
Jefferson also noted the king’s 1773 decree that sought to
restrict population growth in the colonies by “obstructing the
laws for the naturalization of foreigners.” British authori-ties
had grown worried that the mass migration to America
threatened to “ de- populate” the home country. So, beginning
in 1767, the government began banning “bounties” offered to
immigrants by many colonies and ended the practice of
providing large land grants in America to encourage settlement.
After listing the various objections to British actions, Jefferson
asserted that certain truths were self- evident: that “all men are
created equal and inde-pendent” and have the right to create
governments of their own choosing. Governments, he explained,
derive “their just powers from the consent of the people,” who
are entitled to “alter or abolish” those governments when denied
their “unalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursui t of
happi-ness.” Because King George III was trying to impose “an
absolute tyranny over these states,” the “Representatives of the
United States of America” declared the thirteen “United
Colonies” of British America to be “Free and Independent
States.”

2. THE CONTRADICTIONS OF FREEDOM Once the Continen-
tal Congress chose independence, its members revised
Jefferson’s draft dec-laration before sending it to London.
Southern representatives insisted on deleting Jefferson’s
section criticizing George III for pe -can
slave trade. In doing so, they revealed the major contradiction
at work in the movement for independence. The rhetoric of
freedom that animated the Revolution did not apply to the
widespread system of slavery that fueled the southern economy.
Slavery was the absence of liberty, yet few Americans
confronted the inconsistency of their protests in defense of
freedom— for whites.
In 1764, a group of slaves in Charleston watching a
demonstration against British tyranny by white Sons of Liberty
got caught up in the moment and began chanting “Freedom,
freedom, freedom.” But that was not what southern planters
wanted for African Americans. In 1774, when a group of slaves
killed four whites in a desperate attempt to gain their freedom,
Georgia planters cap-tured the rebels and burned them
alive.James Otis, a Harvard- educated lawyer, was one of the
few Whigs who demanded freedom for blacks and women. In
1764, he had argued that “the colonists, black and white, born
here, are free British subjects, and entitled to all the essential
civil rights of such.” He went so far as to suggest that slavery
were “by the law of nature freeborn.”
Otis also asked, “Are not women born as free as men? Would it
not be infamous to assert that the ladies are all slaves by
nature?” His sister, Mercy Otis Warren, became a tireless
advocate of American resistance to British “tyranny” through
her poems, pamphlets, and plays. In a letter to a friend, she
noted that British officials needed to realize that America’s
“daughters are politicians and patriots and will aid the good
work [of resistance] with their female efforts.”Slaves insisted
on independence too. In 1773, a group of enslaved Afri -can
Americans in Boston appealed to the royal governor of

3. Massachusetts to free them just as white Americans were
defending their freedoms against British tyranny. In many
respects, the slaves argued, they had a more com-pelling case
for liberty: “We have no property, We have no wives! No chil-
dren! No city! No country!”
A few months later, a group of four Boston slaves addressed a
pub-lic letter to the town government in which they referred to
the hypoc-risy of slaveholders who protested against British
regulations and taxes. “We expect great things from men who
have made such a noble stand against the designs of their
fellow- men to enslave them,” they noted. But freedom in 1776
was a celebration to which slaves were not invited. George
Washington himself acknowledged the con-tradictory aspects of
the Revolutionary movement when he warned that the
alternative to declaring independence was to become “tame and
abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary
sway [absolute power].” Washington and other slaveholders at
the head of the Revolutionary move-ment, such as Thomas
Jefferson, were in part so resistant to “British tyranny” because
they witnessed every day what actual slavery was like— for
the blacks under their control.Jefferson admitted the hypocri sy
of slave- owning Revolutionaries. “South-erners,” he wrote to
a French friend, are “jealous of their own liberties but trampling
on those of others.” Phillis Wheatley, the first African
American writer to publish her poetry in America, highlighted
the “absurdity” of white colonists claiming their freedom while
continuing to exercise “oppressive power” over enslaved
Africans.
“WE ALWAYS HAD GOVERNED OURSELVES” Historians
still debate the causes of the American Revolution. Americans
in 1775–1776 were not desperately poor: overall, they probably
enjoyed a higher standard of living than most other societies
and lived under the freest institutions in the world. Their diet
was better than that of Europeans, as was their average life
span. In addition, the percentage of free property owners in the
thirteen colonies was higher than in Britain or Europe. At the

4. same time, the new taxes forced on Americans after 1763 were
not as great as those imposed on the British people. And many
American colonists, perhaps as many as half, were indifferent,
hes-itant, or actively opposed to rebellion.So why did the
Americans revolt? Historians have highlighted many fac-tors:
the clumsy British efforts to tighten their regulation of colonial
trade, the restrictions on colonists eager to acquire western
lands, the growing tax burden, the mounting debts to British
merchants, the lack of American rep-resentation in Parliament,
and the role of radicals such as Samuel Adams and Patrick
Henry in stirring up anti- British feelings.Yet other reasons
were not so selfless or noble. Many wealthy New Englanders
such as Boston merchant John Hancock, were smugglers; paying
more British taxes would have cost them a fortune. Likewise,
South Carolina’s Henry Laurens and Virginia’s Landon Carter,
both prosperous planters, worried that the British might abolish
slavery.
Overall, however, what Americans most feared and resented
were the Brit-ish efforts to constrict colonists’ civil liberties,
thereby denying their rights as British citizens. As Hugh
Williamson, a Pennsylvania physician, explained, the
Revolution resulted not from “trifling or imaginary” injustices
but from “gross and palpable” violations of American rights that
had thrown “the miserable colonists” into the “pit of
despotism.”Yet how did the diverse colonies develop such a
unified resistance? Although most Patriots were of English
heritage, many other peoples were represented: Scots, Irish,
Scots- Irish, Welsh, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Finns, Swiss,
French, and Jews, as well as growing numbers of Africans and
diminishing numbers of Native Americans. In 1774, Thomas
Hutchin-son, the royal governor of Massachusetts, assured
British officials that “a union of the Colonies was utterly
impracticable” because the colonists “were greatly divided
among themselves in every colony.” He predicted that
Americans would ultimately “submit, and that they must, and

5. moreover would, soon.”Hutchinson was wrong, of course. What
most Americans— regardless of their backgrounds— had
rights and legal processes guaranteed by the English
constitutional tradition. This outlook, rooted in the defense of
sacred constitutional princi-ples, made the Revolution
conceivable. Armed resistance made it possible, and
independence, ultimately, made it achievable.
The Revolution reflected the shared political notion that all
citizens were equal and independent, and that all governmental
authority had to be based on longstanding constitutional
principles and the consent of the governed. This “republican
ideal” was the crucial force that transformed a prolonged effort
to preserve rights and liberties enjoyed by British citizens into a
movement to create an independent nation. With their
declaration of independence, the Revolutionaries— men and
women, farmers, artisans, mechanics, sailors, mer-chants,
tavern owners, and shopkeepers— had become determined to
develop their own society. Americans wanted to trade freely
with the world and to expand what Jefferson called their
“empire of liberty” westward, across the Appalachian
Mountains. The Revolutionaries knew the significance of what
they were attempt-ing. They were committing themselves,
stressed John Adams, to “a Revolu-tion, the most complete,
unexpected, and remarkable of any in the history of nations,”
and none of them could “foresee the consequences” of a war for
independence.
Perhaps the last word should belong to Levi Preston, a
Minuteman from Danvers, Massachusetts. Asked late in life
about the British efforts to impose new taxes and regulations on
the colonists, Preston responded, “What were they?
Oppressions? I didn’t feel them.” He was then asked, “What,
were you not oppressed by the Stamp Act?” Preston replied that
paid a penny for one of them.” What about the tax on tea? “
Tea- tax! I never drank a drop of the stuff; the boys threw it all

6. overboard.” His interviewer finally asked why he decided to
fight for inde-pendence. “Young man,” Preston explained,
“what we meant in going for those redcoats was this: we always
had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn’t
mean we should.”
WOMEN IN THE COLONIES In contrast to New Spain and
New France, English America had far more women, which
largely explains the difference in population growth rates
among the European empires in the Americas. More women did
not mean more equality, however. As a New England minister
stressed, “The woman is a weak creature not endowed with [the]
true for centuries, were expected to focus on what was called
“housewifery” or the “domestic sphere.” They were to obey and
serve their husbands, nurture their children, and maintain their
households. Governor John Winthrop insisted that a “true wife”
would find contentment only “in subjection to her husband’s
authority.” The wife’s role, said another Puritan, was “to guide
the house etc. and not guide the husband.” A wife should view
her spouse with “a noble but generous Fear, which proceeds
in colonial households at times generated explosive tensions
that festered over the years. One long- suffering wife used the
occasion of her husband’s death to vent her frustrations by
commissioning the following inscription on his tombstone:
“Stranger, call this not a place of fear and gloom To me it is a
pleasant spot— It is my hus-band’s tomb.” Another woman
focused her frustrations on her own tombstone. It read: “She
lived with her husband fifty years And died in confident hope
of a better life.”
Women in most colonies could not vote, hold office, attend
schools or colleges, bring lawsuits, sign contracts, or become
ministers. Divorces were allowed only for desertion or “cruel
and barbarous treatment,” and no matter who was named the

7. “guilty party,” the father received custody of the children. A
Pennsylvania court did see fit to send a man to prison for
throwing a loaf of hard bread at his wife, “which occasioned her
Death in a short Time.”
“WOMENS WORK” Virtually every member of a household
worked, and no one was expected to work harder than women.
As John Cotton, a Boston minister, admitted in 1699, “Women
are creatures without which there is no Comfortable living for a
man.” Women who failed to perform the work expected of them
were punished as if they were servants or slaves. In 1643,
Margaret Page of Salem, Massachusetts, was jailed “for being a
lazy, idle, loitering person.” In Virginia two seamstresses were
whipped for fashioning shirts that were too short, and a female
indentured servant was forced to work in the tobacco fields
even though she was sick. She died in a furrow, with a hoe still
in her hands. Such harsh conditions prompted a song popular
with women and aimed at those back in England considering
coming to Virginia: “The Axe and Hoe have wrought my
overthrow. If you do come here, you will be weary, weary,
weary.”During the eighteenth century, women’s work typically
involved activities in the house, garden, and fields. Many
unmarried women moved into other households to help with
children or to make clothes. Others took in children or spun
thread into yarn to exchange for cloth. Still others hired
themselves out as apprentices to learn a skilled trade or craft or
operated laundries or bakeries. Technically, any money earned
by a married woman was the prop-erty of her husband.Farm
women usually rose and prepared breakfast by sunrise and went
to bed soon after dark. They were responsible for building the
fire and hauling water. They fed and watered the livestock,
tended the garden, prepared lunch (the main meal) and dinner,
milked the cows, got the children ready for bed, and cleaned the
kitchen before retiring. Women also combed, spun, spooled,
wove, and bleached wool for clothing; knitted linen and cotton,
hemmed sheets, and pieced quilts; made candles and soap;
chopped wood, mopped floors, and washed clothes. Female

8. indentured servants in the southern colo-nies commonly worked
as field hands.Meals in colonial America differed according to
ethnic groups. The English focused their diet on boiled or
broiled meats— venison, mutton, beef, and pork. Meals were
often cooked in one large cast iron pot, combining “stew meat”
with potatoes and vegetables, which were then smothered with
butter and seasoned with salt. Puddings made of bread or plums
were the favorite dessert, while beer with just a little alcohol
content was the most common beverage, even for children and
infants. Cooking was usually done over a large open fireplace.
The greatest accidental killer of women was kitchen fires that
ignited long dresses.
One of the most lucrative trades among colonial women was the
oldest: prostitution. Many servants took up prostitution after
their indenture was ful-filled, and port cities had thriving
brothels. They catered to sailors and sol-diers, but men from all
walks of life frequented “bawdy houses,” or, in Puritan Boston,
“disorderly houses.” Virginia’s William Byrd, perhaps the
wealthiest man in the colony, complained in his diary that he
had walked the streets of Williamsburg trying to “pick up a
Whore, but could not find one.”Local authorities frowned on
such activities. In Massachusetts, convicted prostitutes were
stripped to the waist, tied to the back of a cart, and whipped as
it moved through the town. In South Carolina, several elected
public officials were dismissed because they were caught “lying
with wenches.” Some enslaved women whose owners expected
sexual favors turned the tables by demanding compensation.
ELIZABETH LUCAS PINCKEY On occasion, circumstances
forced women to exercise leadership outside the domestic
sphere. Such was the case with South Carolinian Elizabeth
Lucas Pinckney (1722–1793). Born in the West Indies, raised on
the island of Antigua, and educated in England, “Eliza” moved
to Charleston, South Carolina, at age fifteen, when her father,
George Lucas, inherited three plantations. The follow -ing year,
however, Lucas, a British army officer and colonial
administrator, was called back to Antigua, leaving Eliza to care

9. for her ailing mother and younger sister— and to manage three
business of three plantations to transact, which requires much
-ing
early I find I can go through much business.”
Eliza loved the “vegetable world” and experimented with
several crops before focusing on indigo, a West Indian plant
that produced a coveted blue dye for coloring fabric, espe-cially
military uniforms. Indigo made Eliza’s family a fortune, as it
did for many other plantation owners. In 1744, she married
Charles Pinckney, a wealthy wid-ower twice her age, who was
speaker of the South Carolina Assembly. She made him promise
that she could continue to manage her plantations.
As Eliza began raising children, she “resolved to make a good
to my servants [making] their
lives as comfortable as I can.” She also pledged “not to be
luxurious or extravagant in the management of my table [family
budget] and family on the one hand, nor niggardly and covetous,
or too anxiously con-cerned about it on the other.”In 1758,
Charles Pinckney died of malaria. Now a thirty- six- year-
old widow, Eliza refused to succumb to grief and self- pity.
Instead, she redoubled her already extraordinary work ethic.
She added her husband’s large planta-tions to her already
substantial managerial responsibilities, in part because her
demanding duties took her mind off the loss of her “dear
husband.”
Self- confident, self- aware, and fearless, Eliza Pinckney
signaled the possibility of women breaking out of the confining
tradition of housewifery and assum-ing roles of social
prominence and economic leadership.
WOMEN AND RELIGION During the colonial era, no
denomination allowed women to be ordained as ministers. Only
the Quakers let women hold church offices and preach (exhort)
in public. Puritans cited biblical passages claiming that God
required “virtuous” women to submit to male authority and

10. remain “silent” in congregational matters. Governor John
Winthrop demanded that women “not meddle in such things as
are p
ministerial authority were usually prosecuted and punished. Yet
by the eighteenth century, as is true today, women made up the
overwhelming majority of church members. Their
disproportionate attendance at services and revivals worried
many ministers, since a feminized church was presumed to be a
church in decline.In 1692, the influential Boston minister
Cotton Mather observed that there “are far more Godly Women
in the world than there are Godly Men.” In explaining this
phenomenon, Mather argued that the pain associated with
childbirth, which had long been interpreted as the penalty
women paid for Eve’s sinfulness, was in part what drove women
“more frequently, & the more fervently” to commit their lives to
Christ.
In colonial America, the religious roles of black women were
different from those of their white counterparts. In most West
African tribes, women frequently served as priests and cult
leaders. Although some enslaved Africans had been exposed to
Christianity or Islam, most tried to sustain their tradi-tional
African religion once they arrived in the colonies. In America,
black women (and men) were often excluded from church
membership for fear that Christianized slaves might seek to gain
their freedom. The acute shortage of women in the early
settlement years made them more highly valued in the colonies
than they were in Europe; thus over time, wom-en’s status
improved slightly. The Puritan emphasis on a well- ordered
family life led to laws protecting wives from physical abuse and
allowing for divorce. In addition, colonial laws gave wives
greater control over the property that they had brought into a
marriage or that was left after a husband’s death. But the age-
old notion of female subordination and domesticity remained
firmly entrenched in colonial America. As a Massachusetts boy
maintained in 1662, the superior aspect of life was “masculine
and eternal; the feminine inferior and mortal.”

11. The Great Awakening’s most controversial element was the
emergence of women who defied convention by speaking in
religious services. Among them was Sarah Haggar Osborne, a
Rhode Island schoolteacher who organized prayer meetings that
eventually included men and women, black and white. When
concerned ministers told her to stop, she refused to “shut my
mouth and doors and creep into obscurity.”
Similarly, in western Massachusetts, Bathsheba Kingsley spread
the gospel among her rural neighbors because she had received
“immediate revelations from heaven.” When her husband tried
to intervene, she pummeled him with “hard words and blows,”
praying loudly that he “go quick to hell.” Jonathan Edwards
denounced Kingsley as a “brawling woman” who should “keep
chiefly at home.” For all the turbulence created by the revivals,
however, churches, even the more democratic Baptist and
Methodist congregations, remained male bastions of political
authority.