COLONIAL WOMAN AND THE INITIATIVE
I. Religious Initiative
Throughout our entire study of colonial
woman we have seen many bits of record that hint or
even plainly prove that the feminine nature was no
more willing in the old days constantly to play second
fiddle than in our own day. Anne Hutchinson and
her kind had brains, knew it, and were disposed to
use their intellect. Perceiving injustice in the
prevailing order of affairs, such women protested
against it, and, when forced to do so, undertook those
tasks and battles which are popularly supposed to
be outside woman’s sphere. Of Anne Hutchinson
it has been truthfully said: “The Massachusetts
records say that Mrs. Anne Hutchinson was banished
on account of her revelations and excommunicated for
a lie. They do not say that she was too brilliant,
too ambitious, and too progressive for the ministers
and magistrates of the colony, ... And while
it is only fair to the rulers of the colony to admit
that any element of disturbance or sedition, at that
time, was a menace to the welfare of the colony, and
that ... her voluble tongue was a dangerous one, it
is certain that the ministers were jealous of her power
and feared her leadership."
One of the earliest examples in colonial
times of woman’s ignoring traditions and taking
the initiative in dangerous work may be found in the
daring invasion of Massachusetts by Quaker women to
preach their belief. Sewall makes mention of
seeing such strange missionaries in the land of the
saints: “July 8, 1677. New Meeting
House (the third, or South) Mane: In Sermon
time there came in a female Quaker, in a Canvas Frock,
her hair disshevelled and loose like a Periwigg, her
face as black as ink, led by two other Quakers, and
two others followed. It occasioned the greatest
and most amazing uproar that I ever saw." No
doubt some of these female exhorters acted outlandishly
and caused genuine fear among the good Puritan elders
for the safety of the colonies and the morals of the
inhabitants.
Those were troubled times. Indeed,
between Anne Hutchinson and the Quakers, the Puritans
of the day were harassed to distraction. Mary
Dyer, for example, one of the followers of Anne Hutchinson,
repeatedly driven from the Massachusetts Bay Colony,
returned just as often, even after being warned that
if she came back she would be executed. Once she
was sentenced to death and was saved only by the intercession
of her husband; but, having returned, she was again
sentenced, and this time put to death. The Quakers
were whipped, disfigured by having their ears and
nose cut off, banished, or even put to death; but fresh
recruits, especially women, adorned in “sack
cloth and ashes” and doing “unseemly”
things, constantly took the place of those who were
maimed or killed. Why they should so persistently
have invaded the Puritan territory has been a source
of considerable questioning; but probably Fiske is
correct when he says: “The reasons for
the persistent idea of the Quakers that they must
live in Massachusetts was largely because, though tolerant
of differences in doctrine, yet Quakerism had freed
itself from Judaism as far as possible, while Puritanism
was steeped in Judaism. The former attempted
to separate church and state, while under the latter
belief the two were synonymous. Therefore, the
Quaker considered it his mission to overthrow the
Puritan theocracy, and thus we find them insisting
on returning, though it meant death. It was a
sacred duty, and it is to the glory of religious liberty
that they succeeded."
II. Commercial Initiative
More might be said of the initiative
spirit in religion, of at least a percentage of the
colonial women, but the statements above should be
sufficient to prove that religious affairs were not
wholly left to the guidance of men. And what
of women’s originality and daring in other fields
of activity? The indications are that they even
ventured, and that successfully, to dabble in the
affairs of state. Sewall mentions that the women
were even urged by the men to expostulate with the
governor about his plans for attending a certain meeting
house at certain hours, and that after the good sisters
had thus paved the way a delegation of men went to
his Excellency, and obtained a change in his plan.
Thus, the women did the work, and the men usurped the
praise. Again, Lady Phips, wife of the governor,
had the bravery to assume the responsibility of signing
a warrant liberating a prisoner accused of witchcraft,
and, though the jailer lost his position for obeying,
the prisoner’s life was thus saved by the initiative
of a woman.
That colonial women frequently attempted
to make a livelihood by methods other than keeping
a dame school, is shown in numerous diaries and records.
Sewall records the failure of one of these attempts:
“April 4, 1690.... This day Mrs. Avery’s
Shop ... shut by reason of Goods in them attached."
Women kept ordinaries and taverns, especially in New
England, and after 1760 a large number of the retail
dry goods stores of Baltimore were owned and managed
by women. We have noticed elsewhere Franklin’s
complimentary statement about the Philadelphia woman
who conducted her husband’s printing business
after his death; and again in a letter to his wife,
May 27, 1757, just before a trip to Europe, he writes:
“Mr. Golden could not spare his Daughter, as
she helps him in the Postoffice, he having no Clerk."
Mrs. Franklin, herself, was a woman of considerable
business ability, and successfully ran her husband’s
printing and trading affairs during his prolonged absences.
He sometimes mentions in his letters her transactions
amounting at various times to as much as L500.
The pay given to teachers of dame
schools was so miserably low that it is a marvel that
the widows and elderly spinsters who maintained these
institutions could keep body and soul together on such
fees. We know that Boston women sometimes taught
for less than a shilling per day, while even those
ladies who took children from the South and the West
Indies into their homes and both boarded and trained
them dared not charge much above the actual living
expenses. Had not public sentiment been against
it, doubtless many of these teachers would have engaged
in the more lucrative work of keeping shops or inns.
In the South it seems to have been
no uncommon thing for women to manage large plantations
and direct the labor of scores of negroes and white
workers. We have seen how Eliza Pinckney found
a real interest in such work, and cared most successfully
for her father’s thousands of acres. A
woman of remarkable personality, executive ability,
and mental capacity, she not only produced and traded
according to the usual methods of planters, but experimented
in intensive farming, grafting, and improvement of
stock and seed with such success that her plantations
were models for the neighboring planters to admire
and imitate.
When she was left in charge of the
estate while her father went about his army duties,
she was but sixteen years old, and yet her letters
to him show not only her interest, but a remarkable
grasp of both the theoretical and the practical phases
of agriculture.
“I wrote my father a very long
letter ... on the pains I had taken to bring the Indigo,
Ginger, Cotton, Lucern, and Cassada to perfection,
and had greater hopes from the Indigo....”
To her father: “The Cotton,
Guiney corn and most of the Ginger planted here was
cutt off by a frost.”
“I wrote you in former letters
we had a fine crop of Indigo Seed upon the ground
and since informed you the frost took it before it
was dry. I picked out the best of it and had
it planted but there is not more than a hundred bushes
of it come up, which proves the more unlucky as you
have sent a man to make it.”
In a letter to a friend she indicates how busy she
is:
“In genl I rise at five o’clock
in the morning, read till seven then take
a walk in the garden or fields, see that the Servants
are at their respective business, then to breakfast.
The first hour after breakfast is spent in musick,
the next is constantly employed in recolecting something
I have learned, ... such as french and shorthand.
After that I devote the rest of the time till I dress
for dinner, to our little Polly, and two black girls,
who I teach to read.... The first hour after
dinner, as ... after breakfast, at musick, the rest
of the afternoon in needlework till candle light,
and from that time to bed time read or write; ...
Thursday, the whole day except what the necessary affairs
of the family take up, is spent in writing, either
on the business of the plantations or on letters to
my friends...."
And yet this mere girl found time
to devote to the general conventional activities of
women. After her marriage she seems to have gained
her greatest pleasure from her devotion to her household;
but, left a widow at thirty-six, she once more was
forced to undertake the management of a great plantation.
The same executive genius again appeared, and an initiative
certainly surpassing that of her neighbors. She
introduced into South Carolina the cultivation of
Indigo, and through her foresight and efforts “it
continued the chief highland staple of the country
for more than thirty years.... Just before the
Revolution the annual export amounted to the enormous
quantity of one million, one hundred and seven thousand,
six hundred and sixty pounds. When will ‘New
Woman’ do more for her country?"
Martha Washington was another of the
colonial women who showed not only tact but considerable
talent in conducting personally the affairs of her
large estate between the death of her first husband
and her marriage to Washington, and when the General
went on his prolonged absences to direct the American
army, she, with some aid from Lund Washington, attended
with no small success to the Mount Vernon property.
III. Woman’s Legal Powers
Just how much legal power colonial
women had is rather difficult to discover from the
writings of the day; for each section had its own
peculiar rules, and courts and decisions in the various
colonies, and sometimes in one colony, contradicted
one another. Until the adoption of the Constitution
the old English law prevailed, and while unmarried
women could make deeds, wills, and other business transactions,
the wife’s identity was largely merged into
that of her husband. The colonial husband seems
to have had considerable confidence in his help-meet’s
business ability, and not infrequently left all his
property at his death to her care and management.
Thus, in 1793 John Todd left to his widow, the future
Dolly Madison, his entire estate:
“I give and devise all my estate,
real and personal, to the Dear Wife of my Bosom, and
first and only Woman upon whom my all and only affections
were placed, Dolly Payne Todd, her heirs and assigns
forever.... Having a great opinion of the integrity
and honorouble conduct of Edward Burd and Edward Tilghman,
Esquires, my dying request is that they will give
such advice and assistance to my dear Wife as they
shall think prudent with respect to the management
and disposal of my very small Estate.... I appoint
my dear Wife excutrix of this my will...."
Samuel Peters, writing in his General
History of Connecticut, 1781, mentions this incident:
“In 1740, Mrs. Cursette, an English lady, travelling
from New York to Boston, was obliged to stay some days
at Hebron; where, seeing the church not finished,
and the people suffering great persécutions,
she told them to persevere in their good work, and
she would send them a present when she got to Boston.
Soon after her arrival there, Mrs. Cursette fell sick
and died. In her will she gave a legacy of L300
old tenor ... to the church of England in Hebron; and
appointed John Hancock, Esq., and Nathaniel Glover,
her executors. Glover was also her residuary
legatee. The will was obliged to be recorded
in Windham county, because some of Mrs. Cursette’s
lands lay there. Glover sent the will by Deacon
S.H. of Canterbury, ordering
him to get it recorded and keep it private, lest the
legacy should build up the church. The Deacon
and Register were faithful to their trust, and kept
Glover’s secret twenty-five years. At length
the Deacon was taken ill, and his life was supposed
in great danger.... The secret was disclosed.”
It is evident that the colonial woman,
either as spinster or as widow, was not without considerable
legal power in matters of property, and it is evident
too that she now and then managed or disposed of such
property in a manner displeasing to the other sex.
As shown in the above incident of the church money,
trickery was now and then tried in an effort to set
aside the wishes of a woman concerning her possessions;
but, in the main, her decisions and bequests seem to
have received as much respect from courts as those
of the men.
A further instance of this feminine
right to hold and manage property perhaps
a little too radical to be typical is to
be found in the career of the famous Margaret Brent
of Maryland, the first woman in the world to demand
a seat in the parliamentary body of a commonwealth.
A woman of unusual intellect, decisiveness, and leadership,
she came from England to Maryland in 1638, and quickly
became known as the equal, if not the superior, of
any man in the colony for comprehension of the intricacies
of English law dealing with property and decedents.
Her brothers, owners of great estates, recognized
her superiority and commonly allowed her to buy and
sell for them and to sign herself “attorney
for my brother.” Lord Calvert, the Governor,
became her ardent admirer, perhaps her lover, and
when he lay dying he called her to his bedside, and
in the presence of witnesses, made perhaps the briefest
will in the history of law: “I make you
my sole executrix; take all and pay all.”
From that hour her career as a business woman was astonishing.
She collected all of Calvert’s rentals and other
incomes; she paid all his debts; she planted and harvested
on his estates; she even took charge of numerous state
affairs of Maryland, collected and dispersed some
portions of the colony’s money, and was in many
ways the colonial executive.
Then came on January 21, 1648, her
astounding demand for a vote in the Maryland Assembly.
Leonard Calvert, as Lord Baltimore’s attorney,
had possessed a vote in the body; since Calvert had
told her to take all and pay all, he had granted her
all powers he had ever possessed; she therefore had
succeeded him as Lord Baltimore’s attorney and
was possessed of the attorneyship until Baltimore
saw fit to appoint another; hence, as the attorney,
she was entitled to a seat and a voice in the Assembly.
Such was her reasoning, and when she walked into the
Assembly on that January day it was evident from the
expression on her face that she intended to be seated
and to be heard. She made a speech, moved many
of the planters so greatly that they were ready to
grant her the right; she cowed the very acting governor
himself, as he sat on the speaker’s bench.
But that governor’s very fear of her rivalry
made him, for once, active and determined; he had
heard whispers throughout the colony that she would
make a better executive than he; he suddenly thundered
a decisive “No”; a brief recess was declared
amidst the ensuing confusion; and Margaret Brent went
forth for the first time in her life a defeated woman.
Her power, however, was scarcely lessened, and her
influence grew to such an extent that on several occasions
the governor who had refused her a vote was obliged
to humiliate himself and beg her aid in quieting or
convincing the citizens. The story of her life
leads one to believe that many women, if opportunity
had offered, would have proved themselves just as
capable in business affairs as any woman executive
of our own times.
Many another example of feminine initiative
might be cited. There was that serious, yet ridiculous
scene of long ago when the women of Boston pinned
up their dresses, took off their shoes, and waded about
in the mud and slush fortifying Boston Neck.
Benjamin Tompson, a local poet, found the incident
a source of merriment in his New England Crisis,
1675; but in a way it was a stern rebuke to the men
who looked on and laughed at the women’s frantic
effort to wield mud plaster.
“A grand attempt some
Amazonian Dames
Contrive whereby to glorify
their names.
A ruff for Boston Neck of
mud and turfe,
Reaching from side to side,
from surf to surf,
Their nimble hands spin up
like Christmas pyes,
Their pastry by degrees on
high doth rise ...
The wheel at home counts in
an holiday,
Since while the mistress worketh
it may play.
A tribe of female hands, but
manly hearts,
Forsake at home their pastry
crust and tarts,
To kneed the dirt, the samplers
down they hurl,
Their undulating silks they
closely furl.
The pick-axe one as a commandress
holds,
While t’other at her
awk’ness gently scolds.
One puffs and sweats, the
other mutters why
Can’t you promove your
work so fast as I?
Some dig, some delve, and
others’ hands do feel
The little wagon’s weight
with single wheel.
And lest some fainting-fits
the weak surprize,
They want no sack nor cakes,
they are more wise...”
That simple-hearted, kindly French-American,
St. John de Crevecoeur, has left us a description
of the women of Nantucket in his Letters from an
American Farmer, 1782, and if his account is trustworthy
these women displayed business capacity that might
put to shame many a modern wife. Hear some extracts
from his statement:
“As the sea excursions are often
very long, their wives in their absence are necessarily
obliged to transact business, to settle accounts,
and, in short, to rule and provide for their families.
These circumstances, being often repeated, give
women the abilities as well as a taste for that
kind of superintendency to which, by their prudence
and good management, they seem to be in general
very equal. This employment ripens their judgment,
and justly entitles them to a rank superior to
that of other wives; ... The men at their
return, weary with the fatigues of the sea, ...
cheerfully give their consent to every transaction
that has happened during their absence, and all
is joy and peace. ’Wife, thee hast
done well,’ is the general approbation they receive,
for their application and industry....”
“...But you must not imagine
from this account that the Nantucket wives are
turbulent, of high temper, and difficult to be ruled;
on the contrary, the wives of Sherburn, in so
doing, comply only with the prevailing custom
of the island: the husbands, equally submissive
to the ancient and respectable manners of their country,
submit, without ever suspecting that there can be any
impropriety.... The richest person now in
the island owes all his present prosperity and
success to the ingenuity of his wife: ... for
while he was performing his first cruises, she traded
with pins and needles, and kept a school.
Afterward she purchased more considerable articles,
which she sold with so much judgment, that she
laid the foundation of a system of business, that she
has ever since prosecuted with equal dexterity
and success....”
IV. Patriotic Initiative and Courage
It was in the dark days of the Revolution
that these stronger qualities of the feminine soul
shone forth, and served most happily the struggling
nation. Long years of Indian warfare and battling
against a stubborn wilderness had strengthened the
spirit of the American woman, and when the men marched
away to defend the land their undaunted wives and
daughters bravely took up the masculine labors, tilling
and reaping, directing the slaves, maintaining ship
and factory, and supplying the armies with the necessities
of life. The letters written by the women in
that period reveal an intelligent grasp of affairs
and a strength of spirit altogether admirable.
Here was indeed a charming mingling of feminine grace,
tenderness, sympathy, self-reliance, and common sense.
It required genuine courage to remain
at home, often with no masculine protection whatever,
with the ever-present danger of Indian raids, and
there, with the little ones, wait and wait, hearing
news only at long intervals, fearing even to receive
it then lest it announce the death of the loved ones.
No telegraph, no railroad, no postal service, no newspaper
might offer relief, only the letter brought by some
friend, or the bit of news told by some passing traveller.
It was a time of agonizing anxiety. There were
months when the wife heard nothing; we have seen from
the letters of Mrs. Adams that three months sometimes
intervened between the letters from her husband.
In 1774, when John Adams was at Philadelphia, such
a short distance from Boston, according to the modern
conception, she wrote: “Five weeks have
passed and not one line have I received. I would
rather give a dollar for a letter by the post, though
the consequences should be that I ate but one meal
a day these three weeks to come."
Again, these women faced actual dangers;
for they were often near the firing line. John
Quincy Adams says of his mother: “For the
space of twelve months my mother with her infant children
dwelt, liable every hour of the day and the night
to be butchered in cold blood, or taken and carried
into Boston as hostages. My mother lived in unintermitted
danger of being consumed with them all in a conflagration
kindled by a torch in the same hands which on the
17th of June lighted the fires of Charlestown.
I saw with my own eyes those fires, and heard Britannia’s
thunders in the Battle of Bunker Hill, and witnessed
the tears of my mother and mingled them with my own.”
In 1777, so anxious was the mother
for news of her husband, that John Quincy became post-rider
for her between Braintree and Boston, eleven miles, not
a light or easy task for the nine-year-old boy, with
the unsettled roads and unsettled times. Even
the President’s wife was for weeks at a time
in imminent peril; for the British could have desired
nothing better than to capture and hold as a hostage
the wife of the chief rebel. Washington himself
was exceedingly anxious about her, and made frequent
inquiry as to her welfare. She, however, went
about her daily duties with the utmost calmness and
in the hours of gravest danger showed almost a stubborn
disregard of the perils about her. Washington’s
friend, Mason, wrote to him: “I sent my
family many miles back in the country, and advised
Mrs. Washington to do likewise, as a prudential movement.
At first she said ‘No; I will not desert my post’;
but she finally did so with reluctance, rode only a
few miles, and, plucky little woman as she is, stayed
away only one night."
During the first years of the war
nervous dread may have composed the greater part of
the suffering of American women, but during the later
years genuine hardships, lack of food and clothing,
physical catastrophes befell these brave but silent
helpers of the patriots. Especially was this
true in the South, where the British overran the country,
destroyed homes, seized food, cattle, and horses, and
left devastation to mark the trail. In 1779 Mrs.
Pinckney’s son wrote her that Provost, the British
leader, had destroyed the plantation home where the
family treasure had been stored, and that everything
had been burned or stolen; but her reply had no wail
of despair in it: “My Dear Tomm: I
have just received your letter with the account of
my losses, and your almost ruined fortunes by the
enemy. A severe blow! but I feel not for myself,
but for you.... Your Brother’s timely generous
offer, to divide what little remains to him among
us, is worthy of him...."
The financial distress of Mrs. Pinckney
might be cited as typical of the fate of many aristocratic
and wealthy families of Virginia and South Carolina.
Owner of many thousands of acres and a multitude of
slaves, she was reduced to such straits that she could
not meet ordinary debts. Shortly after the Revolution
she wrote in reply to a request for payment of such
a bill: “I am sorry I am under a necessity
to send this unaccompanied with the amount of my account
due to you. It may seem strange that a single
woman, accused of no crime, who had a fortune to live
genteely in any part of the world, that fortune too
in different kinds of property, and in four or five
different parts of the country, should be in so short
a time so entirely deprived of it as not to be able
to pay a debt under 60 pound sterling, but such is
my singular case. After the many losses I have
met with for the last three or four desolating years
from fire and plunder, both in country and town, I
still had some thing to subsist upon, but alas the
hand of power has deprived me of the greatest part
of that, and accident of the rest."
It was indeed a day that called for
the strongest type of courage, and nobly did the women
face the crisis. In the South the wives and daughters
of patriots were forced to appear at balls given by
the invading forces, to entertain British officers,
to act as hostesses to unbidden guests, and to act
the part pleasantly, lest the unscrupulous enemy wreak
vengeance upon them and their possessions. The
constant search on the part of the British for refugees
brought these women moments when fear or even a second’s
hesitation would have proved disastrous. One
evening Marion, the famous “Swamp-Fox,”
came worn out to the home of Mrs. Horry, daughter
of Eliza Pinckney, and so completely exhausted was
he that he fell asleep in his chair while she was
preparing him a meal. Suddenly she heard the approaching
British. She awakened him, told him to follow
the path from her kitchen door to the river, swim
to an island, and leave her to deceive the soldiers.
She then met at the front door the British officer
Tarleton, who leisurely searched the house, ate the
supper prepared for Marion, and went away with several
of the family treasures and heirlooms. On another
occasion when Mrs. Pinckney and her grand-daughter
were sleeping in their plantation home, distant from
any neighbor, they were awakened by a beautiful girl
who rushed into the bedroom, crying, “Oh, Mrs.
Pinckney, save me! The British are coming after
me.” With the utmost calmness the old lady
arose from her bed, placed the girl in her place, and
commanded, “Lie there, and no man will dare to
trouble you.” She then met the pursuers
with such quiet scorn that they shrank away into the
darkness.
What brave stories could be told of
other women Molly Stark, Temperance Wicke,
and a host of others. What man, soldier or statesman,
could have written more courageous words than these
by Abigail Adams? “All domestic pleasures
and enjoyments are absorbed in the great and important
duty you owe your country, for our country is, as
it were, a secondary god, and the first and greatest
parent. It is to be preferred to parents, wives,
children, friends and all things, the gods only excepted,
for if our country perishes, it is as impossible to
save the individual, as to preserve one of the fingers
of a mortified hand." Mrs. Adams herself was
literally in the midst of the warfare, and there were
days when she could scarcely have faced more danger
if she had been a soldier in the battle. Hear
this bit of description from her own pen: “I
went to bed about twelve, and rose again a little
after one. I could no more sleep than if I had
been in the engagement; the rattling of the windows,
the jar of the house, the continual roar of twenty-four
pounders; and the bursting of shells give us such
ideas, and realize a scene to us of which we could
form scarcely any conception."
Who can estimate the quiet aid such
women gave the patriots in those years of sore trial?
Such words as Martha Washington’s: “I
hope you will all stand firm; I know George will,”
or the ringing language of Abigail Adams: “Though
I have been called to sacrifice to my country, I can
glory in my sacrifice and derive pleasure from my intimate
connexion with one who is esteemed worthy of the important
trust devolved upon him” such words
could but urge the fighting colonists to greater deeds
of heroism. And many of the patriot husbands thoroughly
appreciated the silent courage of their wives.
John Adams, thinking upon the years of hardships his
wife had so cheerfully undergone, how she had done
a man’s work on the farm, had fed and clothed
the children, had kept the home intact, while he struggled
for the new nation, wrote her: “You are
really brave, my dear. You are a heroine and you
have reason to be, for the worst than can happen can
do you no harm. A soul as pure, as benevolent,
as virtuous, and pious as yours has nothing to fear,
but everything to hope from the last of human evils.”
Mercy Warren, too, though she might
ridicule the weakness of her sex in Woman’s
Trifling Need, cheerfully remained alone and unprotected
while her husband went forth to battle; she was even
thoughtful enough in those years of loneliness to
keep a record of the stirring times a record
which was afterwards embodied into her History of the
Revolution. Catherine Schuyler was another of
those brave spirits that faced unflinchingly the horrors
of warfare. When a bride of but one week, she
saw her husband march away to the Indian war, and from
girlhood to old age she was familiar with the meaning
of carnage. Shortly after the Battle of Saratoga
the entire country was aroused by the murder of Jane
McCrea; women and children fled to the towns:
refugees told of the coming of a host of British,
Tories, and Indians. The Schuyler home lay in
the path of the enemy, and in the mansion were family
treasures and heirlooms dear to her heart. She
determined to save these, and back she hastened from
town to country. As she pushed on, multitudes
of refugees begged her to turn back; but no appeal,
no warning moved her. It was mid-summer, and
the fields were heavy with ripe grain. Realizing
that this meant food for the invaders, she resolved
to burn all. When she reached her home she commanded
a negro to light torches and descended with him to
the flats where the great fields of golden grain waved.
The slave went a little distance, but his courage
deserted him. “Very well,” she exclaimed,
“if you will not do it, I must do it myself.”
And with that she ran into the midst of the waving
stalks, tossed the flaming torches here and there,
and for a moment watched the flames sweep through
the year’s harvest. Then, hurrying to the
house, she gathered up her most valuable possessions,
hastened away over the dangerous road, and reached
Albany in safety.
Within a few hours Burgoyne and his
officers were making merry in the great house, drinking
the Schuyler wine, and on the following day the mansion
was burned to the ground. But fate played the
British leader a curious trick; for within a few days
Burgoyne found himself defeated and a guest in the
Schuyler home at Albany. “I expressed my
regret,” he has testified, “at the event
which had happened and the reasons which had occasioned
it. He [Schuyler] desired me to think no more
about it; said the occasion justified it, according
to the rules and principles of war, and he should
have done the same."
As Chastellux declared: “Burgoyne
was extremely well received by Mrs. Schuyler and her
little family. He was lodged in the best apartment
in the house. An excellent supper was served
him in the evening, the honors of which were done
with so much grace that he was affected even to tears,
and could not help saying with a deep sigh, ’Indeed,
this is doing too much for a man who has ravished
their lands and burnt their home." Indeed, all
through his stay in this house he and his staff of
twenty were treated with the utmost courtesy by Catherine
Schuyler.
But was not this characteristic of
so many of those better class colonial women?
The inherent delicacy, refinement, and tact of those
dames of long ago can be equalled only by their
courage, perseverance, and loyalty in the hour of
disaster. Whether in war or in peace they could
remain calm and self-possesed, and when given opportunity
showed initiative power fully equalling that of their
more famous husbands. They could be valiant without
losing refinement; they could bid defiance to the
enemy and yet retain all womanliness.
Is it not evident that woman was charmingly
feminine, even in colonial days? Did she not
possess essentially the same strengths and weaknesses
as she does to-day? In general, accepting creeds
more devoutly than did the men, as is still the case,
often devouring greedily those writings which she
thought might add to her education, yet more closely
attached to her home than most modern women, the colonial
dame frequently represented a strange mingling of
superstition, culture, and delicate sensibility.
Possessing doubtless a more whole-hearted reverence
for man’s ideas and opinions than does her modern
sister, she seems to have kept her aspirations for
a broader sphere of activity under rather severe restraint,
and felt it her duty first of all to make the home
a refuge and a consolation for the husband and father
who returned in weariness from his battle with the
world.
She loved finery and adornment even
as she does to-day; but under the influence of a burning
patriotism she could and did crush all such longings
for the beautiful things of this world. She had
oftentimes genuine capacity for initiative and leadership;
but public sentiment of the day induced her to stand
modestly in the back-ground and allow the father,
husband, or son to do the more spectacular work of
the world. Yet in the hour of peril she could
bear unflinchingly toil, hardships, and danger, and
asked in return only the love and appreciation of
husband and child. That she obtained such love
and appreciation cannot be doubted. From the
yellow manuscripts and the faded satins and brocades
of those early days comes the faint flavor of romances
as pathetic or happy as any of our own times, quaint,
old romances that tell of love and jealousy, happy
unions or broken hearts, triumph or defeat in the
activities of a day that is gone. Surely, the
soul especially that of a woman changes
but little in the passing of the centuries.