The Origins of a Free Press in Prerevolutionary ... - Web Publishing

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brewing and serving tea, and women who had to do the physical labor to replace
manufactured cloth with homespun. 65 The implications of this inclusion can be
better understood by reading what women wrote in the Virginia Gazettes. Verses
composed by women of Bedford, Massachusetts to support the non-consumption
of tea were among the many colonial actions by women republished in the
Williamsburg newspaper:
The coarsest Food we choose to eat,
Before we’ll lose our Liberty.
Don’t cast Reflections on our Sex,
Because the weaker Sort we be ;
We’ll work our Fingers to the Bone,
Before we’ll lose our Liberty. 66
But the ladies of the South were not to be outdone by their counterparts to the
north, sending a letter “To the Ladies of Pennsylvania” from “… your affectionate
countrywomen, of Virginia,” urging the northern women to stop using and
importing English goods and to ban India tea from their tables. 67 Another letter,
addressed to wives of the members of Britain’s Parliament, suggested they should
convince their husbands to be just to the American colonists: “Now, ladies, how
noble, how glorious would it be to the female character, if you would redeem your
husbands from guilt, and your country from ruin!” 68 An “Essay on Women”
published in 1773 demonstrates that at least for some Virginians, women were
more than just “pretty figures,” but rather an important balancing factor on the
predominant influence of men, even in the public arena. While not suggesting
65 T. H. Breen, “ ‘Baubles of Britain’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the
Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 119 (May 1988): 93, and Breen, Marketplace of Revolution,
329.
66 Virginia Gazette (Purdie, March 17, 1774), 2.
67 Ibid., (Rind, Sept. 15, 1774), 1.
68 Ibid., (Pinkney, Sept. 14, 1775), 1-2.