The Sentiments Of An American Women Analysis

The excerpt from “The Sentiments of an American Woman” suggests that women in the war couldn’t join the army because “opinion and manners… forbid” them (“The Sentiments of an American Woman”). At the time, women were considered to be fragile and delicate, and their only place was at home. Traditional women who wanted to help the war effort made clothes for soldiers and raised funds for guns and ammunition. Some women had such “love for the public good” that they overcame these stereotypes to help the war effort directly (“The Sentiments”). Women on both sides of the war helped to deliver messages and carried water and food to battling soldiers. Sometimes women even spied on the British or snuck into the American ranks to fight. Some women were more traditional in their beliefs. These women stayed at home raising funds instead of going to fight or spy. Several women, including Ben Franklin's daughter Sarah Bache, went door to door in Philadelphia asking for donations and raised over $300,000 for the war effort. Even raising funds was a little untraditional …show more content…
THey did laundry and cooked for soldiers and smiths. Some other women helped both sides by delivering secret messages to officers and generals. Emily Geiger, for example, was a South Carolina woman who was caught delivering a message for General Greene of the Continental Army. After Emily was captured and while the British looked for a woman to search her, Emily memorized and ate the message that she was supposed to deliver so as to not be discovered. After the British found no message, they released her. She reached the rebel camp and recited the message to General Sumter (MacLean). While these women certainly aided the war effort in ways that the men couldn’t, there were many who put themselves in even more danger for their