The Philadelphia Ladies' Association and Women's Collective Political Participation in the American Revolution

Abstract

Women of the late colonial period in America regularly engaged in what might be termed "prepolitical" activities, and the Revolutionary War presented occasions for extending those. The relatively autonomous status of women within religious groups such as the Quakers and some Baptist sects, and the use of petition as a means of legal redress had previously marked the boundaries of the political world for women. As the war neared, women employed other, more public modes of expression imbued with political meaning and implications, expressions by which they demonstrated subscription to the ideology of the Revolution, even while denied access to its political privileges.¹