While the Women Only Wept: Loyalist Refugee Women in Eastern Ontario // Review

Abstract

Historians have long - known that the American Revolution created Canada in a political sense as surely as it created the United States. Consequently any work that changes our understanding of the Loyalists, or of the way political ideas were formed in the revolutionary and post - revolutionary era, is of fundamental importance. These five quite different yet superb books provide interesting perspectives on the Loyalists, and on the way Loyalist Canadians saw their politics. To begin with, patriarchal values loomed large in Loyalist thought as it emerged after 1785. Historians, not recognizing this, have misread the history of Loyalism, perpetuated gender stereotypes and misconstrued an important thread in our understanding of political culture in Canada. As Janice Potter - MacKinnon convincingly demonstrates, Loyalist ideology was defined in exile, complete with short - term objectives and deliberate misrepresentation.Potter - MacKinnon wonders why women have been disadvantaged and ignored in the historiography of the Loyalists. Loyalist women played key roles in the decisions of families to become Loyalist. Often, they ran the family farms and businesses when husbands had to leave suddenly to avoid capture by the Patriots. During these periods the contributions of these women were recognized as valuable by their families, by the British authorities and by the American Patriots.Within the patriarchal conventions of the eighteenth century, women were treated as extensions of their husbands. While this was also true for Patriot women, it was at least possible to create legends around women who advanced the Patriot cause. For one thing, revolutionary rhetoric, unlike Loyalist rhetoric, lent itself to a loosening of the prevailing paternalism.For Loyalist women, the war tightened patriarchal values. In the early stages of the war, women could be independent as long as they remained where they were. Where they were, however, was increasingly behind the lines in a bitter civil war, open to abuse and mistreatment by their neighbours, especially if they were easily labelled as traitors. They lacked legal guarantees to their rights or properties; aside from dower rights, land and chattel were considered the property of their husbands. If the husband had left, or if he were considered an enemy, his property could be confiscated even while his wife and children occupied it.There was pressure on Loyalist women to leave, even at great sacrifice. However, in leaving they lost any semblance of independence. They often required permission from local committees of vigilance. Then, they needed aid and assistance from Indian and military guides to reach husbands stationed in military forts or in refugee camps. In these forts and camps, they were only significant as spouses; they were treated as dependents and as burdens. Now weak and dependent, they sought compensation for very real sacrifices from a British government only interested in helping those with military experience. Women's assistance was rarely considered militarily important, partly because of the limitations of language and ideology: male values had assertive qualities, females, submissive ones. Consequently, their petitions for assistance were couched in a language of submissiveness and paternalism: all sacrifices had to be translated in terms of husbands, for only husbands were likely to be compensated.The experience of exile framed a Loyalist culture and ideology. A female Loyalist ideology would have found strength from the decisions and sacrifices made before exile; in exile, the female experience was neither valued nor liberating. "Loyalty, service, and sacrifice, as defined in Loyalist petitions, were all male concepts" (126). Women had to write in the language of suffering and enfeeblement (151).Potter - MacKinnon makes a convincing case that women have been given short shrift by historians. The internal dynamics of the "rebel - to - exile" drama, coupled with the prevailing views of women's proper roles, deprived women of their independence. …