photo credit: 21centurywaves.com
In honor of the upcoming Independence Holiday, I am reading
Founding Mothers by Cokie Roberts. While the speeches and sacrifices of many men have been celebrated throughout history, and rightly so, I have been deeply touched by the quiet, overlooked, and deeply personal sacrifices of many women.
Here are a few examples from
Founding Mothers:
The boycotts of English goods is well documented, what is not always understood is the day to day trials such boycotts caused, most of which fell to the ladies as they were responsible for the shopping and running of the household. One example is the boycott of British cloth. "American women were forced to manufacture their own, another chore added to the already onerous domestic duties of the day...In the
Essex Gazette of Salem, Massachusetts, a letter of May 23, 1769 told of the Daughters of Liberty of Newport, Rhode Island, 'serving their country' by spinning from six o'clock in the morning until six o'clock in the evening (39)."
Perhaps it is because I can not imagine adding spinning to my already too long list of chores, but their sacrifice of time and energy truly spoke to me. As did this:
"...the morning after the Battle of Lexington, about a hundred American soldiers halted in front of the house of Colonel Pond. Though only Mrs. Pond and a couple of servants were there, they proceeded to feed all those soldiers, with the help of some neighbors who volunteered their cows for milking (43)."
What an overwhelming job that may have seemed, and yet she did it, singularly and without complaint while depleting her own pantry. Those kinds of personal sacrifices, done alone, nobly performed in the quiet recesses of one's heart and received without pomp and pageantry--the true equivalent to the widow's mite--are sacrifices that speak of greatness.
And what of Mrs. Draper who responded to Washington's call for lead or pewter? "Mrs. Draper was rich in a large stock of pewter, which she valued as the ornament of her house....Her husband before joining the army had purchased a mould for casting bullets, to supply himself and son with the article of warfare. Mrs. Draper was not satisfied with merely giving the material required, when she could possibly do more; and her platters, pans and dishes were soon in process of transformation into balls (44)."
This desire to do more and give all was the power behind the revolution. The cause of liberty was played out on the world's stage, but it began and was supported by the burning in individual hearts.
When it came time to publish the Declaration of Independence, members of Congress were hiding out in Baltimore, each with a price on his head. There they "turned to a woman for the perilous job of printing the document, with their names attached, for the first time. The publisher of the
Maryland Journal, Mary Katherine Goddard, bravely printed her own name at the bottom of the Declaration, becoming herself a signer of sorts, firmly associating herself with the dangerous cause of the new nation (45)."
Mary Katherine Goddard, Mrs. Draper, Mrs. Pond--names relatively unknown, and yet names symbolically signed through their sacrifices for a cause in which they believed. They make me want to be better. They make me ask, what can I do for this country I love? How will I respond when called upon to stretch and give for something larger than myself?
How will I sign my name?
