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3 Rebuilding and Resisting After the war, women of all colors, conditions, and economic status had to rebuild their lives and ascertain their places in the new state. While engaged in this process,their interests often clashed.Yet at other times their needs and goals converged and complemented one another. One reality was constant. As they reconstructed their worlds, they did so in a city that was still chaotic and often dangerous, at the heart of a slave society that simultaneously entwined yet separated women. Even before the Paris peace treaty had been signed, men of the master class set about renovating slavery and patriarchy. These efforts impinged daily on the lives of all women, who worked to recreate their worlds and also resist measures that encroached on their reconstruction efforts. Women of color, in particular, resisted and adapted to an increasingly tight web of constraints as men and women of the ruling class closed ranks and reasserted their dominance. Although peace would not be declared until September 3, 1783, the British evacuation nine months earlier marked Charleston’s liberation and the beginning of its physical and social reconstruction. Women of the master class held a great stake in this urban slave society and were eager to reassert their prescribed authority. Members of the master class reconstructed their city in two primary ways: by reasserting supremacy through pageantry and cultural forms and by restoring sanctions fundamental to slavery. Women were essential to both of these reconstruction strategies. As the British contingent departed by sea in December 1782, and 5,000 Continental soldiers triumphantly entered Charleston by land, it was signi¤cant that the wives of Governor John Mathews and Generals Nathanael Greene and William Moultrie rode down Broad Street in the stately victory parade. Wealthy white women, “many of whom had been cooped up in one room of their own elegant houses for upwards of two years,” emerged ready to take back Charleston from their inferiors (particularly women of color) who had had the temerity to mimic and supplant them.1 Women of the master class derived from the American Revolution a stronger sense of themselves as full participants in the body politic and an awareness that they were excluded from realizing their new roles. Men “won’t even allow us the liberty of thought,” complained widowed slave owner Eliza Wilkinson. “I would not wish that we should meddle in what is unbecoming [to] female delicacy,” she pronounced, “but surely we may have sense enough to give our opinions . . . without being reminded of our spinning and household affairs . . . I won’t allow it, positively won’t.”2 Women of the master class were barred from full citizenship, but they in- fused into their traditional role as arbiters of Charleston’s social scene a quickened patriotism, fashioning a new political role for themselves as civic hosts. These wealthy, white women repositioned themselves in Charleston society by expanding their traditional female mandate as quintessential hostess into the world of politics. Accustomed to being on display, whether at the annual round of winter balls, at St. Cecilia concerts, or riding through city streets in elaborate equipages on Sunday afternoons, patriot ladies had shunned the public eye during the British occupation. Indeed, their refusal to attend loyalist dinners and other social events was a form of political protest. Conversely, in the closing years of the eighteenth century (and continuing for a half-century after the Revolution), ladies ¤gured prominently in civic pageants. Particularly during this time of reconstruction, public pageantry was crucial, not only de-¤ning what it was to be an American but also redrawing social and political boundaries. En route to Charleston at the end of April 1791, President George Washington stopped ¤rst in neighboring Georgetown, where several of Charleston’s wealthiest families owned plantations. The press reported that amid the great joy of the occasion and the multiple functions,including a public dinner,“nothing was more conspicuous than the patriotism of the ladies . . . [who] vied with each other in shewing [sic] him marks of the highest respect.” Master-class women hosted their own state function—a tea party for the president—donning sashes imprinted with the seal of the United States. These civic hosts also “wore head dresses ornamented with bandeau, upon which were written, in letters of gold, either ‘Long life to the president,’ or ‘Welcome the hero.’” Observers reported that Washington was “introduced to all the ladies present [and he] . . . entertained several of them in succession.”3 During his...

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