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Chapter Two. American Women and the French Revolution
- University of Pennsylvania Press
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CHAPTER TWO American Women and the French Revolution A R M ED WITH the sentiments expressed in magazines and other forms of print culture, women were prepared to assume an expanded role in public events of the early republic. The popular American political culture that developed in response to the French Revolution provided them with ample opportunities to do so. Indeed, as early as 1789, as Americans were inundated with information, entertainments, and refugees from the conflicts in Europe and the West Indies, the French Revolution became a defining event in American political culture as well as a catalyst for the expansion of women's public roles. American women used public celebrations of the French cause as an avenue to the political sphere, adopting new clothing and forms of address and engaging in a wider array of public activities. By the end of the 1790s, deteriorating relations with France provoked American military preparations that included public ceremonies at which women in the capital presented militia banners and participated in protests against the French. In this deeply contested public political sphere, dominated first by the Democratic Republicans and then by the Federalists, partisanship encouraged women to assert their allegiances and expand their participation in public political culture. Americans rejoiced as word reached the United States in 1789 that the French had risen in revolt to secure a republican government.The fall of the Bastille and the creation of the National Assembly filled them with satisfaction that yet another country had taken up "the 56 Chapter 2 flame of liberty, kindled at the taper of the American Revolution."l The United States became alive with activities related to the French Revolution, and the publication of Thomas Paine's Rights o f Man in 1791fueled the fervor. Some observers believed that men and women had "put away their wits and gone mad with republicanism. Their dress, their speech, their daily conduct were all regulated on strict Republican principles."2 As early as 1791,July Fourth celebrations frequently included toasts and tributes to the French.3That same year in Philadelphia, President Washington left the capital to attend aJuly Fourth dinner in Lancaster , Pennsylvania, where glasses were raised to the "King and National Assembly," and wishes were expressed that "the oppressed of all nations [might] find an asylum in America."4 While perceivedJacobin excesses, American foreign policy problems, and the commercial upheavals attendant on political disharmony precipitated a sharp change in public opinion about the Revolution in the latter 1790s, Americans' initial response was strongly supportive. And the more information Americans received from overseas, the more they celebrated the French cause. Philadelphia's women learned of Revolutionary events in a variety of ways. Newspapers reported on events abroad. Refugees told their anguished tales of hardship and horror. Mariners and ship captains brought firsthand reports into the city's coffeehouses and taverns. Indeed, information about the Revolution was so abundant that Philadelphian Mary Meredith complained to her brother in France that she had precious little domestic news to give him. "Our city affords none but french news and that you I suppose hear enough of?"' Those men engaged in commerce with Britain and France were especially knowledgeable about current events, ~articularl~ the dangers of capture on the Atlantic, while the coffeehouses that catered to these merchants regularly supplied Philadelphians with as many foreign and domestic publications as they desired.6 Even without personal connections to France or access to the foreign press, women in the capital city had daily encounters with the myriad refugees from France and the French Caribbean who made Philadelphia their temporary home during the Revolution. As American Women and the French Reuolz~tiol~ 57 Philadelphia women went about their daily business, they would have passed refugees on the street and walked by boardinghouses and private homes where French men and women resided. Poor's Young Ladies Academy of Philadelphia was located at 9 Cherry Street, half a block off North Third Street. Many of Poor's one hundred and fifty girls would have known about John Vallee's "French boardinghouse half a block away, on the corner of Cherry and Fourth Streets. Across the street from the Academy lived "two French Blacks," as they were listed in Hogan's city directory. And one block north, on Race between Third and Fourth Streets, John Anthony and John Baptist Massieua ran a French bathing house. Elizabeth and Henry Drinker's substantial house on Front Street between Arch and Race Streets, in the Mulberry ward...