US History Essay
The American Revolution promoted a language of freedom and independence – and yet this rhetoric was quite restricted in that it only applied to a small percentage of the population. For this essay, you must read “Abigail and John Adams on Women and the American Revolution (1776)” and Judith Sargent Murray’s “On the Equality of the Sexes (1790) and consider the ways the American Revolution had an impact on the status of white women in the new United States. What do these two documents reveal about the struggles white women faced in a “democratic” government? What limitations remained on white women as a whole? And, based on these two documents, how did some women utilize the ideologies and events of the American Revolution to try and improve their status within society?
Important: In Voices of Freedom (the collection of primary sources that these two documents come from), each primary source is preceded by a short introductory paragraph of secondary information explaining the basic context for the source itself. Do not cite this secondary material. To properly complete this assignment, you must cite material from the primary source itself.
