Football Fan Apparel

	NFL Women's New England Patriots Heather Vintage Short Sleeve Crew (Rustic, Medium) List Price: $27.00 Sale Price: $26.14
	Junk Food Classic Heather Vintage Short Sleeve Crew Featuring a Throwback NFL Logo

I have a very interesting book called America's Women, 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines by Gail Collins, which is very good. It is about the whole history of America, not just the Revolutionary period, but it does have an interesting chapter on the subject - Towards the Revolutionary War. In this chpater she writes:

'In the years leading up to the Declaration of Independence, resistance to the British was expressed mainly in boycotts of imported products. For the boycotts to work, women would have to step into the breach and provide the cloth and foodstuffs that could no longer be brought in frm overseas. The housewives were also the family shoppers, and they were asked to shun all the 'taxables' - tmes that the British imposed levies on. Getting the cooperation of the women was the critical challenge - "without which tis impossible to succeed" said the South Carolina patriot Christopher Gadsden in 1769.

In 1774, fifty-one women in Edenton, North Carolina, issued a public statement endorsing the boycott, much to the amusement of British journalists and cartoonists, who portrayed them as bad mothers, harlots, and heavy drinkers. But they were praised as patriots back home. southern ladies wore dresses made of homespun cloth to their fancy balls, and they joined their husbands and fathers in making political toasts and singing patriotic songs. The northern women organised spinning bees and were honored for their production of homemade material, which they proudly presented to local officials.

If the men were going to have to fight, women were going to have to take over their farms and businesses, and in some parts of the country, endure life under an army of occupation. Eliza Pinckney, who was not generally given to complaint, described her situation in south Carolina to a friend "my property pulled to pieces, burnt and destroyed, my money of no valu,my Children sick and prisoners."

"We are in no way dispirted here" wrote Abigal Adams, who was holding down the fort at the family farm in Massachussetts, "We possess a spirit that will not be conquered. If our Men are all drawn off and we should be attacked you would find a Race of Amazons in America." Abigal was sheltering soldiers and refugees from the conflict, and as the war appraoched Boston, she made contingency plans for grabbing her children and fleeing into the woods. when dysentery struck the area, her home became a hospital. "And suc his the distress of the neighbourhood that I can scarcely find a well person to assist me in looking after the sick" she wrote. She raised their five children, managed their finances, ran their farm and kept the house throughout the war.'

There is a book called 'Founding Mothers' by Cokie Roberts, which has good reviews on amazon, but I can't vouch for it personally as I have not read it. it looks like it could be very good though.

(more...)