Patriot Sarah Fulton is an active freedom fighter. During the Boston Tea Party, when Boston patriots dress up as Mohawk Indians to protest the imposition of a tax on tea, Fulton is there to help with the costumes and makeup removal. After the Battle of Bunker Hill, Fulton helps nurse the wounded soldiers. She delivers a dispatch from General Washington to the Revolutionary troops by walking to the Charles River and then rowing across. She is later honored by visits from both General Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette. After her death, Fulton Street in Medford, Massachusetts, is named in her memory.
One-third of the slaves brought into the United States are women. Emancipated slave and poet Phillis Wheatley writes of their suffering in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral and is the first African American woman to publish a book.
Poet, dramatist, and historian Mercy Otis Warren advocates for national independence from royal tyranny in her satirical play The Adulateur, published in a Boston newspaper. She subsequently corresponds with Abigail Adams (later First Lady), expressing her opinion that women do not participate in all matters of life not because of their lack of ability but primarily because of the lack of suitable education and opportunity for them to pursue their talents.
British troops landing in Boston lead to battles in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts—the first shots of the American Revolution.
Appointed postmaster of Baltimore, Maryland, and probably the first woman in the colonies to hold such a position, printer and newspaper publisher Mary Katherine Goddard remains in this position until 1789. At that time, she is replaced against her will, and against the wishes of the populace, with a man who could do the traveling the position required, which by the mores of the time women “could not manage.” In 1777 she issues the first printed copy of the Declaration of Independence to include the names of all of the signers. Later she issues an almanac in her own name and also operates a bookstore.
Abigail Adams encourages her husband, John Adams, who in 1797 becomes president, to “Remember the Ladies” by considering the rights of women during the deliberations of the Continental Congress. Adams writes to her husband: “In the new Code of Laws which I suppose will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”
Betsy Ross sews the first American flag.
After coming to New York State in 1774 from England, Mother Ann Lee founds the religious movement known as the Shakers, so called because of participants’ singing, dancing, shouting, shaking, and speaking in tongues. Lee advocates for equal rights and responsibilities for women and men, an equalitarian order, and the dignity of labor.
New Jersey legalizes a woman’s right to vote. Women in all other states lose this right through the enactment of the U.S. Constitution (signed in 1787, ratified in 1789). In reaction to large numbers of women voting in the 1800 presidential election, New Jersey rescinds a woman’s right to vote in 1807 by inserting the words white and male into the requirements for voters.