When we think of the Revolutionary War, we don’t often think of it as one in which home life played a significant part. To many of us, the war was a series of battles between ragtag bands of Patriots and organized formations of Redcoats. The only real problem on the home front, in the lingering national memory, was the quartering of British soldiers. Quartering has, in turn, become a bit of a joke — a piece of national lore about British tyranny that spawned an obscure constitutional amendment and little more of interest.
Some historians have, however, challenged this way of looking at things. Lauren Duval is a David and Linda Gibson Postdoctoral Fellow in Democracy at UVA’s Karsh Institute of Democracy and an assistant professor of history at the University of Oklahoma. She argues in her recently-published book, “The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence,” that this view isn’t necessarily accurate. It oversimplifies the complexities of quartering and minimizes the broader significance of the home in the development of the new nation.
On Thursday, Duval gave a talk on her new book as part of an event with the Karsh Institute. The talk was introduced by Professor Laurent Dubois, Academic Director of the Karsh Institute, and moderated by Jane Kamensky, Professor Emerita of History at Harvard University and current President and CEO of Monticello.
Kamensky began the panel by asking Duval to give some context behind her book. Duval explained that in the years leading up to the American Revolution, the idea, taken from English common law, that a man’s house was his castle — independent and self-sufficient — predominated. She noted that the home was, in many ways, a microcosm of colonial society: while the traditional arrangement often promoted patriarchal structures, it also gave many women some authority; servants and slaves were also prominent in many colonial households, developing their own ways of asserting a degree of independence.
Kamensky’s next two questions dealt with the differences in the home front in urban and rural areas, and asked Duval to explain why she decided to mostly focus on cities. Duval stated that the focus on cities related to how military occupation worked during the Revolutionary War. The British, in need of extensive supplies from urban ports, mostly focused on taking cities from Patriot forces. She made sure to note, however, that rural areas, especially those in close proximity to cities, were also affected by the outbreak of war. Wherever British forces were stationed, Duval explained, the home became a profoundly political space with ideological confrontations between Patriots, Loyalists, and neutrals.
The next part of the conversation dealt with the practice of “quartering” soldiers in the homes of American colonists. Duval explained that the actual practice of quartering was very different from what is generally taught in American schools: the British, on paper, had strict regulations for quartering, only allowing officers to quarter in homes and providing a system through which civilians could launch complaints against officers. This system often allowed for a good deal of negotiation between colonists and the British. Duval provided the example of a Quaker woman in Philadelphia who had to navigate the competing interests of her pacifist faith, her British-skeptical husband, and the British officer quartering in her house over the course of the war.
At the same time, Duval was quick to note that quartering could have a very dark side: British and Patriot soldiers engaged in physical and sometimes sexual violence against the people they quartered with. Officers frequently used their high social status to get away with particularly egregious crimes. Both social status and gender, Duval explained, were highly influential factors at play on the Revolutionary War home front.
The conversation then moved to evidence. Duval drew from a large base of evidence to write her book, but called attention to one story in particular: She came across an advertisement for a runaway enslaved woman in a New York paper, and then found a later column from the enslaved woman’s owner apparently responding in relation to the escape. Digging deeper, she was able to find a column in another paper written by none other than the enslaved woman herself, who explained that her owner had promised her freedom in exchange for money but refused to give it upon payment. Duval used this example to illustrate the value of going further into the archives and following loose ends when they appear.
Duval concluded by explaining how the significance of the home front during the war influenced later American perceptions of their nation’s identity. When the fledgling country was establishing its legal system, politicians made a significant effort to pass laws protecting the rights of the household, and often explained the country’s new political system through metaphors involving the household. Indeed, looking at the United States almost 250 years later, we can see that this individualistic, fiercely protective attitude towards personal control of one’s own home still predominates, for better or for worse.
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