History is storytelling. All the stories have heroes and villains and rousing plot lines. Those who reduce the story to dates and data points scare off the audience. They spoil the fun of a good yarn.
History is like playing with children’s blocks: One account rests on another. Every historian is deeply indebted to the ones who came before: authors, scholars, and plain folk who contemporaneously recorded their times in pencil, ink, oils, diaries, and journals.
They say history is told by the victors—sounds right but is all wrong when it is told to the exclusion of, or the dehumanization of, the losers. It does happen, but it does no service to anyone.
How long did we tell American history by moving from great man to great man to the exclusion of women? We told about white people to the exclusion of Black people, the settlers to the exclusion of the Natives. We told a story jumping from war to war to the exclusion of the accomplishments in peacetime. Let’s not do that.
Now that we are wiser, we have Back History Month and Indigenous People’s Day. It enriches us to tell all the stories because we all made this country what it is. It will not enrich us if we start to tell the story of Black people without the white people or the women without the men. Let’s not do that either.
We were taught about a famous letter from Abigail Adams to her husband John in 1776. In it she wrote, “Remember the ladies …” What exactly did Abigail Adams mean?
In the letter, she went on, “… and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands.”
Aha, coverture!
Coverture was a legal doctrine in English common law in which a married woman’s legal existence was considered to be merged with that of her husband. Upon marriage, she had no independent legal existence of her own, in keeping with society’s expectation that her husband was to provide for and protect her. Under coverture, a woman became a feme covert, a person without legal rights and obligations.
It is true that most if not all 18th-century women wanted to be married. It was also true that marriage was a risky proposition; a woman’s future health and welfare, not to mention her social position, depended upon a good choice. The consequences of a bad choice could leave a woman lonely and her children cold and hungry if her husband were shiftless, profligate, intemperate, or disloyal.
If she married an abuser, a vulgarian, drunkard, slangwhanger (an officious, noisy, demagogue), slugabed (idler), or bindlestiff (wanderer, hobo), she had no legal recourse. Divorce was almost impossible because women were divorced from justice.
In the 18th century, feme covert meant “the covered female.” It was a law intended for the protection of married women. Mostly it protected a wife from having any rights at all.
“The legal being and existence of a wife is incorporated into that of her husband under whose protection and cover” she was supposed to do everything. In other words, without his “allowance and approbation,” a wife could do nothing.
A wife could not run for elected office or vote; she could not hold a job or serve on a jury, in the military, or in the clergy. She could not have a will (until 1809 in Connecticut and later in other states). She had little need for a will as by law she owned nothing—not property inherited, nor income earned, nor property owned prior to the marriage. All property, real and personal, was owned in common with her husband over which he had sole discretion. Her marriage contract was the last contract she could or would sign.
On a less formal level, a wife could not travel, purchase anything, order the routine of her life without male approbation. Far from illegal, physical discipline in the home was a responsibility of husbands and fathers. Responsible for his wife’s debts and misbehavior, a husband was entitled to exercise “moderate correction of her behavior. The same as he may do with apprentices and children.”
Still idolizing the past? Still feeling romantic about hoop skirts and carriage rides? Abigail wanted freedom from feme covert. As the men became independent from British rule, Abigail wanted independence from English common law and that part regulating the lives of wives.
I long to hear that you have declared an independency — and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. 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.
That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in imitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness.
Nostalgic? No, we are not going back. Yes, we go forward together—all together.
