The American Revolution was not fought by soldiers alone.
While armies marched and Congress debated, thousands of women across the colonies carried out the labor that made resistance possible. During the non-importation movements of the 1760s and 1770s, women organized “spinning bees,” producing homespun cloth when British goods were boycotted. Wearing domestic fabric became both economic necessity and political statement.
As war intensified, women managed farms, shops, and plantations while men served in militia units or the Continental Army. British naval blockades disrupted trade, and severe inflation in the late 1770s—driven in part by over-issued Continental currency—strained household economies. Women adapted by preserving food, bartering goods, and sustaining local production networks that kept communities functioning.
Many also served with the army itself. Camp followers—often wives or relatives of soldiers—worked as laundresses, cooks, nurses, and seamstresses. Figures such as Martha Washington spent winters in camp, helping maintain morale. The Ladies Association of Philadelphia, led by Esther DeBerdt Reed in 1780, raised funds to supply Continental soldiers with shirts and material aid. Some women, including Deborah Sampson of Massachusetts, even disguised themselves to serve in combat roles.
Women also participated in political discourse. In 1776, Abigail Adams urged her husband to “remember the ladies” when forming new laws, linking sacrifice to representation. Though independence did not immediately transform women’s legal status, wartime necessity expanded expectations of female education and civic responsibility—an idea later described as “Republican Motherhood.”
The Revolution reshaped public life, but much of its endurance depended on labor performed in homes, fields, workshops, and military camps. The struggle for independence was sustained not only by strategy and arms, but by resilience, skill, and organized domestic effort.
…
