The American Revolution was a home-front war that brought scarcity, bloodshed and danger into the life of every American, women included. While men left to fight, women shouldered greater responsibility as they maintained their farms alone and tried to prevent confiscation of property. Patriot women maintained boycotts of imported goods, joined the army disguised as men, acted as spies and followed the Continental Army. Loyalist women were often stripped of their property and persecuted as punishment for their husband’s politics. In the 2013 George Rogers Clark Lecture, Carol Berkin describes the challenges loyalist and patriot women overcame in the Revolutionary era.
About the Speaker
Carol Berkin is a professor of history at Baruch College. She is the author of Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist (1974), First Generations: Women of Colonial America (1996), A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution (2001), Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence(2004) and Civil War Wives: The Life and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant (2009).