Women’s visibility, power, and political involvement only grew as the Revolutionary war took off. In the absence of their husbands, women took over business management, ran plantations, and took over the work the men had left behind. Women also began to run their own businesses in greater numbers and used their economic activity to enhance their political involvement.

Women in urban areas in particular became more involved in economic activity. They ran boarding houses and shops and played pivotal roles in the avoidance of British-made goods. Women running shops refused to sell British goods, signing “a nonimportation agreement” and “their signatures as independent merchants with an economic stake in the cause signaled an expansion of women’s political roles” (Conger 2018, 331).

Women took on other roles that signaled their political involvement, as well. Women in Philadelphia organized to form the Ladies Association of Philadelphia, led by Esther De Berdt Reed and Sarah Franklin Bache, and kicked off by De Berdt Reed’s Sentiments of an American Woman (LINK). This group “sought and achieved symbolic goals that went far beyond the collection of money” as they organized to help the American revolutionaries (Norton 1980, 181). Associations like this, along with other “activities helped politicize the female population” (Conger 2018, 341-342). Women’s political organizations signaled “the populace’s unanimous support of the war” as even women, who were traditionally not meant to be politically engaged, organized in favor of American independence (Norton 1980, 181).

Along with their increase in political activity, women’s political commentary also increased, displaying an increased interest in politics complementing their increasingly public activities. Women began to “read about and [comment] on political affairs” while simultaneously organizing in support of the revolution (Hicks 2005, 266). Women had moved from not only supporting the Revolution, but actively participated in politics, educating themselves by “reading widely in political literature” and expressing their views by “publishing their own sentiments, engaging in heated debates over public policy, and avidly supporting the war effort in a variety of ways” (Norton 1980, 156).

Women did still have to justify their political involvement, and did so through history and apologies framing their commentary. They used historical analogies to prove their right to participate in politics and “that women were ‘as patriotic’ as men, ‘as influential’, and ‘as capable of supporting, with honour, the toils of government'” but still made efforts to bookend their commentary with further justification (Hicks 2005, 272). To do this, they utilized “formulaic, ritualized apologies” that “were their way of acknowledging” their lack of adherence to traditional feminine roles (Kerber 1980, 80). Despite their use of qualifiers, “the barrier between the male political world and the women’s domestic domain eroded” affording women more recognition for their work and an increased right to act politically.

All of their political and economic importance to the war effort also served to increase women’s confidence and made many realize that they were not actually as soft and weak as traditional roles defined. The same history that justified women’s political action also “imparted the confidence, self-understanding, and inspiration that helped some women to imagine themselves as political beings” (Hicks 2005, 267). Simultaneously, the importance of women was being reinforced by the idea “that their activities could be more important to America’s future than the efforts” of men (Norton 1980, 159). This sparked “a generation of women . . . who described themselves as ‘great politician[s]'” which turned into a “proud sense of involvement in public affairs” (Norton 1980, 182, 188). All of this translated into women’s pride in their political participation and in their work at home that translated into the Early Republic post-war.