"An important book. . . . A model of concise and elegant research
and writing."--"Journal of the Early Republic" "Branson argues
convincingly that, contrary to the claims of recent historians,
women in the revolutionary era had an identity as women, that many
of them were feminists in these years. This book contributes a
great deal to the current debate about the meaning of the American
Revolution for women."--Sheila Skemp, University of Mississippi On
July 4, 1796, a group of women gathered in York, Pennsylvania, to
celebrate the twentieth anniversary of American independence. They
drank tea and toasted the Revolution, the Constitution, and,
finally, the rights of women. This event would have been unheard of
thirty years before, but a popular political culture developed
after the war in which women were actively involved, despite the
fact that they could not vote or hold political office. This
newfound atmosphere not only provided women with opportunities to
celebrate national occasions outside the home but also enabled them
to conceive of possessing specific rights in the young republic and
to demand those rights in very public ways. Susan Branson examines
the avenues through which women's presence became central to the
competition for control of the nation's political life and, despite
attempts to quell the emerging power of women--typified by William
Cobbett's derogatory label of politically active women as "these
fiery Frenchified dames"--demonstrates that the social, political,
and intellectual ideas regarding women in the post-Revolutionary
era contributed to a more significant change in women's public
lives than most historians have recognized. As an early capital of
the United States, the leading publishing center, and the largest
and most cosmopolitan city in America during the eighteenth
century, Philadelphia exerted a considerable influence on national
politics, society, and culture. It was in Philadelphia that the
Federalists and Democratic Republicans first struggled for
America's political future, with women's involvement critical to
the outcome of their heated partisan debates. Middle and
upper-class women of Philadelphia were able to achieve a greater
share in the culture and politics of the new nation through several
key developments, including theaters and salons that were
revitalized following the war, allowing women to intermingle and
participate in political discussions, and the wider availability of
national and international writings, particularly those that
described women's involvement in the French Revolution--perhaps the
most important and controversial historical event in the early
development of American women's political consciousness. Given
these circumstances, Branson argues, American women were able to
create new more active social and political roles for themselves
that brought them out of the home and into the public sphere.
Although excluded from the formal political arenas of voting and
lawmaking, American women in the Age of Revolution nevertheless
thought and acted politically and were able to make their presence
and opinions known to the benefit of a young nation. "Branson's
work removes women from the remote confines of the domestic sphere,
where they have resided for so long, and propels them to the center
of politics and life."--"Historian" Susan Branson teaches history
at the University of Texas at Dallas.
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