Sisterhood of Blood: the Will to Descend and the Formation of The

6LVWHUKRRGRI%ORRG7KH:LOOWR'HVFHQGDQGWKH)RUPDWLRQ RIWKH'DXJKWHUVRIWKH$PHULFDQ5HYROXWLRQ Carolyn Strange Journal of Women's History, Volume 26, Number 3, Fall 2014, pp. 105-128 (Article) 3XEOLVKHGE\7KH-RKQV+RSNLQV8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV DOI: 10.1353/jowh.2014.0052 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jowh/summary/v026/26.3.strange.html Access provided by Australian National University (15 May 2015 02:16 GMT) 2014 Sisterhood of Blood The Will to Descend and the Formation of the Daughters of the American Revolution Carolyn Strange The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), one of many white lineal societies that emerged in the late-nineteenth century, promoted a fantasy of the nation as an extended white family, united by blood. Yet the DAR faced internal and external challenges before it could transform documented Revolutionary blood into political capital. The organization accomplished this by asserting its biological credentials selectively, not just in racial and class terms, but also in reference to the fitness of its ancestors and descendants. The DAR’s “will to descend,” and the ambition of its leaders, meant that patriotic character had to be demonstrated as well as celebrated. By narrating a compelling, ethno-nationalist interpretation of U.S. history—inclusive and elitist, democratic and demonstratively exclusionary—the DAR began to exercise a marked influence over political culture within a decade of its founding, culmi- nating in its enthusiastic support for the War with Spain. he 1890s was a particularly bloody decade in U.S. history, opening with the massacre at Wounded Knee and closing with a quick and victori- ousT war against Spain, followed by a protracted assault against Philippine resistance fighters. A different kind of bloody campaign characterized the decade as well: the homegrown craze for tracing bloodlines. As one mea- sure of this new interest in genealogy, in 1900 the journal Patriotic Review listed seventy heritage societies, half of which had emerged since 1890. The citizens who searched for blood relatives in family attics, graveyards, libraries, and archives, were as likely to be women as men, and they joined historical and genealogical societies by the tens of thousands. Ancestral research provided a bridge into public life for women, particularly those with the documentation required to join the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Founded in 1890, the DAR quickly became the largest women’s descent society, and one of the country’s most prominent women’s organizations. Five years after its establishment one of the DAR’s co-founders, Ellen Hardin Walworth, proudly declared “genealogy affords a field of study where men and women have an equal interest and a common bond.”1 The Society, and a crop of similar organizations that sprang up in the 1890s, sought to affirm another bond: the organic and indissoluble link © 2014 Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 26 No. 3, 105–128. 106 Journal of Women’s History Fall between the nation’s origins and its uncharted future.2 Nation-building rhetoric in the United States and other nascent nations, notably Italy and Germany, deployed tropes of common familial origin and ancestry to link blood, soil, and nation.3 The DAR contributed by stoking pride in, and reawakening the memory of, the Revolution and articulating its values in family terms. As the historian Stuart McConnell argues, white lineal societies imagined the nation “as a kind of extended family, held together by the blood tie of kinship.” Sectional politics had torn the Union apart in the mid-nineteenth century, but patriots believed blood relationships could rebind it. Genealogical groups set out accordingly to construct a kinship- defined national identity, one that linked “true Americanism” to a racial and ethnic cohort distinct from newly emancipated African Americans and from the rising numbers of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.4 As genealogy went public it became political, for women as well as men.5 Although female “guardians of tradition” had long demonstrated their capacity to lead such patriotic heritage projects as the preservation of Washington’s homestead at Mount Vernon and the establishment of the National Trust in England, the club movement of the late nineteenth century provided new impetus and infrastructure for women to organize and establish a public presence. Temperance, social purity, and suffrage were causes that inspired women internationally over this period, but national and nationalistic preoccupations also stirred women to action.6 Women able to trace their lineage to ancestors who had supported or fought for liberty could demonstrate to all Americans genealogy’s capacity to flesh out the story of the nation’s birth. Through the DAR, members collectively took pride in this scarce commodity: documented patriotic blood. Critical studies of the DAR’s history attribute its remarkable growth and national profile to its conservatism, specifically its appeal to middle- class white women. Attracted to the prospect of celebrating their family heritage and drawn to the opportunity to promote an exclusive notion of the national family, they could join the Society without compromising their domestic identities and class status. Although the DAR included self- identified suffragists it was not a woman’s rights organization; indeed, the Daughters’ veneration of heroic female forebears was more than matched by its celebration of male war heroes and political leaders, George Washing- ton in particular.7 The historian Francesca Morgan underscores the DAR’s exclusively white members’ ambition to augment their sense of distinction: “Agreeing that a combination of race and documented bloodlines denoted Americanness, many white women based American national belonging on descent rather than consent.”8 Yet their attempt to translate bloodlines into organizational power also provoked internal struggles over the value and 2014 Carolyn Strange 107 meanings of blood. In addition to facing external critics’ charges of elit- ism, the Society’s members and leaders had reason to question the quality of their patriotic blood five generations removed from the Revolutionary era. Because blood began to accrue new legal and political meanings for Americans in the 1890s, any patriot parading a biological passport to civic leadership invited scrutiny. But bloodlines also attracted scrutiny in more troubling ways. Indeed, even as prospective Daughters filled out their eligibility forms and presented their lineage documentation for approval, Bureau of Indian Affairs agents were traveling over the country, drawing up rolls of “full-blood” and “mixed blood” Indians; Jim Crow courts were ruling on racial status based on blood quantum; and immigration agents and school inspectors were beginning to screen suspect populations for signs of bad blood.9 This article examines the ways in which the DAR Board of Management and members manipulated the meanings of Revolutionary lineage over the 1890s in order to accomplish their overriding aim: to shape national political culture. Blood was culturally potent but the Society’s leaders soon discovered its political volatility. Historians who have examined the Daughters’ handling of blood have focused on the ideological incoherence of their rhetoric. The historian Woden Teachout describes the Daughters’ genealogical approach as paradoxical: they believed in “ideas of good blood and a kind of genealogical determinism,” while they also claimed to stand up for American values and democracy. Similarly the American studies scholar Michael Sweeney examines the DAR’s genealogical discourse in the early 1890s to analyze how the organization reconciled its discordant beliefs in “mutually supporting” ways.10 Yet the Daughters were political animals, not intellectuals, and they were led by ambitious, power-seeking individuals. The leadership’s goal was to convince the wider public that inheritors of blood could promote patriotism in unique ways, and the DAR accomplished this feat through its demonstrated commitment to nation building. From tending heroes’ graves to lobbying Congress on heritage and educational policy, Society members turned their energy to cultivating “true Americanism” in the citizenry at large, working with the government wherever possible. The DAR’s crowning achievement by the end of the decade was not just the growth in its membership but its direct support of military operations in the war against Spain.11 The Daughters’ schism over the merits of lineal versus collateral bloodlines provided an early sobering lesson: the public authority they sought could not rest on family pedigree alone. By connecting its members’ blood to an ethic of patriotic service, which conservative white Americans grew to value, the DAR’s founding strate- 108 Journal of Women’s History Fall gies paved the way for its later turn to right-wing extremism.12 Over its first few tumultuous years, however, the Society came close to collapsing until a policy to restrict its membership to lineal descendants was settled. Although the DAR used its members’ distinguished blood lines to justify its stewardship of civic programs, the Society’s culture-shaping ambitions led its leaders to focus less on the exclusivity of blood and more on the inclusivity of character: all Americans ought to celebrate the Revolutionary past and to conduct themselves according to the patriots’ example, although many required guidance from individuals

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