Long before shots were fired on Lexington Green, the women in America had already stood up for the cause. Although only half of the women in America were literate, those who were kept diaries and journals, and in the lead-in to revolution we can see a clear change in these writings that flagged a change not just in mindset but in action.

Before the war, most women were ignorant of financial, political, and legal affairs, and they were expected to be obedient to their husbands’ rule. A man’s wife and children were considered his property, and his was the public world, while his wife’s was private. Men and women considered her role inferior. Her world consisted of spinning, weaving, washing, ironing, preserving, making candles, soap, cheese, butter, sausage, pies, and clothing. She cared for poultry and the vegetable garden. She bore children on an average of one every two years, and during their youngest years, not just their care but their education fell to her. As to her own education, if she could “sew a shirt and make a pudding,” it was considered complete.

But pre-1765 English goods had become cheap enough to import, and women no longer spent long hours spinning yarn and thread, weaving, knitting, and sewing clothes. Calculating a woman could spin an average of four skeins of wool a day, the freedom these imports provided was considerable.

Then came the Acts – Sugar, Stamp, Townsend. During the Sugar Act crisis (1764) women had become used to substituting molasses, honey, and syrup to avoid the highly taxed sugar. Within the home it was unusual for a husband to bring politics to the dinner table, but when that dinner table became part of the politics, that all changed. At...