Americans fought for different reasons. My husband fought to preserve his rights as an Englishman and I fought beside him as a helpmate. As an American woman of the eighteenth-century, my position was largely defined by the position of my husband. Under the English law, our husbands are the protectors and the absolute masters. I was not allowed to do many things in public but I was a good wife. Being a good wife means running the household and raising the children.
Running the household includes cooking, cleaning, butchering animals, smoking the meat, making cheese after the milking the cow, sewing clothes, making soap, growing and preserving the vegetables for dinner. If it had anything to do with housework women performed the duty. The only occupation that we women were able to get that paid high salaries was midwifery and dressmaking. Other women ran their husbands’ businesses after the passing of their husbands to keep the business going. Women rely on the males of the family to provide financial needs.
I am part of the lower class of the colonial cities. I am an African American woman who so happened to marry a free African American man. Slaves were bought to cultivate the fields and the rice plantations. When there was a shortage of workers or not enough white workers to hire more slaves were shipped from Africa. This was not by choice but by force. The African Americans were brought in chains and forced to become slaves. Stable families were hard to build amongst the African American communities because the males were sometimes sold off to different buyers to meet the merchant’s debts. The North was beginning to object to slavery because they felt slavery was inhuman and immoral but slavery was of crucial importance to the southern economy. African Americans were not the only ones that were part of the lower class. Free laborers, sailors, fishermen, seamstresses, and prostitutes were also considered...