Women's Political Involvement in 1790S United States Capitals
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W&M ScholarWorks Undergraduate Honors Theses Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 4-2020 A Space of Their Own: Women's Political Involvement in 1790s United States Capitals Tessa Payer Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses Part of the Political History Commons, Public History Commons, Social History Commons, United States History Commons, and the Women's History Commons Recommended Citation Payer, Tessa, "A Space of Their Own: Women's Political Involvement in 1790s United States Capitals" (2020). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 1442. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/1442 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Space of Their Own: Women’s Political Involvement in 1790s United States Capitals A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in History from The College of William and Mary by Tessa Payer Accepted for ___Highest Honors___________________ (Honors, High Honors, Highest Honors) ____Julie Richter_________________________ Julie Richter, Director __ __________________ Abby Schreiber Patricia M.Wesp_____________________ Patricia Wesp Williamsburg, VA April 24 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS TITLE PAGE .................................................................................................................................................. I TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................. II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................................... III INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................................... 1 WOMEN IN THE 1790S ................................................................................................................................... 2 MATERIAL CULTURE .................................................................................................................................... 7 OVERVIEW .................................................................................................................................................... 9 THE POLITICIZATION OF ‘DOMESTIC SPACE’: WOMEN AND AMERICAN IDENTITY IN THE PARLOR AND DINING ROOM ...................................................................................................... 10 THE DEVELOPMENT AND POLITICIZATION OF SOCIAL SPACES ................................................................... 12 “REPUBLICAN SIMPLICITY”: FASHION AND IDENTITY IN THE NEW NATION ............................................... 16 POLITICAL SOCIABILITY AND THE PARLOR ................................................................................................. 25 “FIXING THE TASTE OF OUR COUNTRY” IN THE DINING ROOM ................................................................... 36 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................................. 48 PRIVATE LIVES: WOMEN AND POLITICAL IDENTITY IN THE BEDROOM ........................... 50 THE MARITAL BED AND THE “MUTUAL” PARTNERSHIPS OF THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC ................ 52 REPUBLICAN WOMEN AT THE WRITING DESK ............................................................................................ 60 FEMALE FRIENDSHIPS, THE WORK TABLE, AND AMERICAN IDENTITY ....................................................... 71 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................................. 76 ON THE STREETS OF NEW YORK AND PHILADELPHIA: WOMEN’S PUBLIC POLITICAL IDENTITY .................................................................................................................................................... 78 FEMALE POLITICIANS IN THE GALLERIES: FEDERAL HALL AND CONGRESS HALL ...................................... 80 WOMEN AS POLITICAL ACTRESSES: THE THEATRE .................................................................................... 87 “MARCHING IN PARADE”: NATIONAL HOLIDAYS, PUBLIC DEMONSTRATIONS, AND AMERICAN IDENTITY 92 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................ 101 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................................... 103 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................................................... 106 II Acknowledgments My thesis did not come together on its own, but with the help of a whole host of wonderful individuals. I can’t thank all of them enough for helping me throughout this process, offering research advice, writing tips, brainstorming, emotional support, and more. To the staffs of the various museums and archives I visited, thank you for welcoming me into your workplaces, encouraging a student-researcher, and giving me advice, not only for my thesis, but for entering the museum field. To Professor Limoncelli and the other students in my Fall 2019 Honors class, thank you so much for helping me brainstorm when I was struggling to organize my research. Having a thesis support group was exactly what I needed to start the writing process. To my family and friends, thank you for listening as I rambled about research, put off social events so I could edit, and brought countless thesis related books so I could keep writing on our spring break trip. To my parents, Rebecca and Tony Payer, thank you for joining me on countless research related trips and letting me share my love of history at the dinner table. To my committee members, Patricia Wesp and Abby Schreiber, thank you for reading, reflecting on my writing, and for adjusting to a Zoom defense rather than one in person. And, of course, a million thanks to my advisor, Julie Richter, who has supported me through various applications, research projects, and classes. Thank you for all you have done for me, and for letting me talk your ear off about some public history related subject at our meetings. To the women of the 1790s who inspired my research, thank you for your stories, your writings, your material world, and everything you left behind. It has been so rewarding to learn about you and recognize the impact you left on this country. Thank you. III Introduction It was a sunny summer day when I visited one of the last remnants of Federal America in New York City; a yellow and white building, matching porches on each side, and an entrance porch complete with Neoclassical columns. This was the Grange, known to the world as the home of Alexander Hamilton, but best known to me as the home of his wife, Eliza Hamilton. Now run by the National Park Service, it was a home I had visited before, but I was excited to return for a celebration of Eliza’s birthday and what I hoped would be a reinterpretation focused on her life. Eliza spent about thirty years in the Grange, compared to Alexander’s four, yet the interpretation of the home focused on his life, his politics, and his death. The entrance hall was decorated with an enormous portrait of the former Treasury Secretary, nearly taking up an entire wall, and a marble bust of Hamilton by Ceracchi. The parlor was where he retired with his family, ever the doting father, and the dining room held a replica of the silver wine cooler gifted to Alexander by George Washington during the unfolding scandal of the Reynolds Pamphlet. Eliza was an afterthought. Eliza Hamilton lived during a time when women’s lives were becoming increasingly politicized, and America was changing drastically. As the United States government formed, Eliza enabled discussion in her parlor, hosting receptions where she led conversations on congressional debates. Her dining room was a place where she helped to form American identity through food choices and decorative styles, visually communicating classical motifs. In the privacy of her bedroom, her close relationships further enmeshed her in the political world, connecting her to an infamous Federalist leader as well as a beloved First Lady. She was never 1 fully cloistered away in the Grange, however, and walked the streets of New York City, the United States capitol between 1789 and 1790, to attend politically driven performances in theatres or engage with sessions of Congress. Her political activity can be traced through the various spaces she inhabited, best of all at her home at the Grange. I started my research with two ideas; women of all classes were political actors in the 1790s United States, and the spaces they inhabited and navigated through were vitally important to understanding their political work. Though I have found documentary sources illustrating women’s political beliefs, feminine words from the eighteenth century are less privileged than those of men. Additional details about the experience of women can be reconstructed, however, through non-traditional sources, namely material culture, to match the non-traditional avenues they used to express themselves. Physical