Book Review

Founding Mothers:

The Women Who Raised Our Nation

By Cokie Roberts

Copyright 2004

Review by Steve Fritsch (October 2007)

For most of our nation’s history, the American Revolution has been romanticized through the actions of the Founding Fathers, the men who led the rebellion against the English king, George III, and successfully won independence and created a new and dynamic republic. However, during the past two centuries one aspect has largely been ignored by both historians and average Americans: the influential role women played in the American Revolution. In Cokie Roberts’ 2004 New York Times bestselling Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation, the spirited and courageous women of the Revolutionary period finally get their just, and long deserved due.

Roberts, a political commentator for ABC News, weaves together the critical events of the Revolution with stories of how the most influential women of the time played a part in them. In what may be a surprise to many readers, many of these women played extremely important roles in not only their patriotism towards the cause of independence, but also in creating the Revolution itself.

Among the most famous Founding Mothers include:

***South Carolina’s Eliza Pinckney, the mother of two founders, was so influential that George Washington “insisted on acting as a pallbearer at her funeral." During the pre-Revolutionary period Pinckney was an extremely successful businesswoman. Her successful cultivation of indigo, brought about by her determination “to find something else to bring currency into the [South Carolina] and to make plantations profitable,” also provided a substantial source of income to England.

***Benjamin Franklin’s wife, Deborah Read Franklin, managed the couple’s postal service and real estate ventures in Philadelphia so well that it allowed Ben to retire at forty-two and provided him the capital necessary to travel Europe as celebrity at his own pleasure. Ben was a cold and distant husband and a notorious flirt; yet despite hearing rumors about her husband's infidelity in Europe, she missed him “terribly.” For the last seventeen years of their marriage Benjamin was gone for sixteen of them and only returned to Philadelphia out of business necessity when his wife had died.

***Mercy Otis Warren, brother of James -- a Massachusetts politician and close friend of John Adams -- was one of the great writers and thinkers of the independence movement. Both John and Samuel Adams encouraged her to write plays, poems, and articles (published anonymously) that not only sparked revolutionary sentiment among the colonists, but “played no small part in accomplishing that remarkable end.”

***Abigail Adams, devoted wife to John, who famously wrote her husband to “remember the ladies” while he was attempting to create a new nation and government, was a woman with “emphatic views” who passionately resented that “married women could neither own property nor enter into contracts.” During the war Abigail, like many of the wives of the Founders, was alone often and had only writing letters to her husband to ease her loneliness, yet even this was difficult to do. Many of the letters between John and Abigail never made it to each other and after the British intercepted a love letter written by John to Abigail and published its contents in a newspaper, an embarrassed John rarely ever wrote so affectionately again.

***George Washington’s wife, Martha, was one of the great heroines of the war who consistently provided not only her husband with encouragement and support, but also to the troops as well. She assisted the troops in such a significant way -- through treating their wounds, sewing their clothes, and urging women nationwide to “help with her cause of improving the lot of the common soldier” -- that it kept desertion numbers down drastically.

***Thomas Jefferson’s wife, Martha, gave birth to six children, four of which would die before adulthood. As she grew sicker with each pregnancy, Thomas cut back on his political activities and traveling. Thomas, who adored his wife, stayed by her side for four bedridden months before she died after giving birth to their final child, Lucy, who would also die less than three years later from whooping cough. An inconsolable Jefferson, according to his daughter Martha, “kept to his room for three weeks,” and Martha never left his side. Martha would end up being her father’s chief companion for the rest of his life.

Founding Mothers is an extremely well-written piece of history that one has a hard time putting down. It is full of rich narrative and interesting details regarding the stature of these women, as well as touching personal accounts of what these women went through. There were many women in this book that were only briefly touched on, however, and it sometimes left you searching for more. But as Roberts acknowledges in the beginning of the book, most of the women left no written documents to study and analyze. Those who did, or whose husbands were to become major historical figures, are certainly much easier to write about and this is why Roberts devotes so much time to such Founding Mothers as Abigail Adams, Martha Washington, Mercy Otis Warren.

Roberts also does a good job of giving us the political differences between men and women in this period and how it sometimes caused conflict between the sexes. Abigail Adams, perhaps most of all, was adamant about women having more liberties as the new nation came together. In a letter to John in March 1776 regarding the question of declaring independence and the issue of slavery (Abigail long opposed the institution and held Southerners in contempt for depriving slaves of liberty), she wrote: “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

The weaknesses in Founding Mothers are few, but for the individual that already knows the American Revolution well will come across parts of the book that regurgitate the key events between 1775 and 1789. In fact, the second half of the book seems to have less intriguing facts about the women than the first half does. However, overall, Founding Mothers is an excellent book to read. It puts a much needed emphasis on the women that played different key roles in the Revolution and the book flows from one page to the next. I highly recommend it as required reading for all American citizens.

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