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Welcome to Significant Others. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien. In yesterday's episode, we heard the story of Peggy Shippen, who, as a young wife and mother, was instrumental in turning her husband, Benedict Arnold, against his country. Today, we're going to talk a little bit more about women and the American Revolution. Joining me to do that is the hilarious and brilliant author, Sarah Vowell. Sara, what a pleasure and a treat to get to talk to you today. Thank you so much for doing this.

Sure thing, Liza.

So this episode is a follow-up to our Peggy Shippen episode, which aired yesterday. And Peggy, of course, is the wife of traitor Benedict Arnold, and she factored into his trajectory to a degree that I was completely unaware of. And I thought it would be great to talk to you, just because it's great to talk to you, but also because When I'm ingesting the story of Peggy Shippen and how she went from being what one can imagine as a fairly typical teenage girl who liked parties and dances and boys and loved her dad, but also had problems with him that maybe she wasn't quite reconciling at the time.

I cannot identify with that at all.

She becomes this force of, depending on what side of the revolution you sit on, a force for evil, in a way, in the service of trying to help her husband get what she thought was the best deal. I assume that she thought she was also doing what was best for her country, quote, unquote, although it wouldn't have actually been so much a country if she had gotten her way.

Well, that maybe wasn't totally her priority. But when you say which side you're on, even that, I mean, just thinking about it in terms of geometry, the simplistic version of that war, it's two parallel lines. It's these two sides squaring off, right? But when you get into it, it's more, I think, of this blobby Polygon, where Even her family, they were in Philadelphia, so they were neutral, which a lot of people were. A lot of people were just trying to get by and waiting to see, How's this going to shake out? Even in Philadelphia, loads of Quakers, even something as seemingly homogenous as Quaker society had all of these factions. They're inherently anti-war, but then you have the ones that were anti-war, totally neutral. The ones who were anti-war leaned toward the patriots, the ones who were loyalists, but anti-war. Then you have the complete contradiction of the fighting Quakers, like General Nathaniel Green, who goes against all of those principles to become one of Washington's favorite generals. So even the Quakers can't I don't agree. And then even the army and the Congress are always at odds. And pretty much the whole war, the Congress is always about to fire George Washington, who's the indispensable man to the whole enterprise.

I just think it's so in keeping with who we are as a people, because it's all squabbling, bickering. That's just on the Patriot side. Sometimes they fight the British, but mostly they're bickering with each other.

When you say it reflects or it's true to who we are as a people, do you think that's not just people, period? Are there a people who are better than we are?

I mean, there are some cultures that are a little more homogenous and united. I don't know much about Denmark, but the Danes seem pretty tight. Whereas to me, one of the most significant moments of the founding, basically in the first few minutes of the first continental Congress, somebody says, Oh, we should open with a prayer. The second thing that happens is someone stands up and No, I'm not praying with these other guys because they're congregationalists and Quakers and Church of England, Episcopalians, I mean. Sam Adams stands up and says, Well, I'm not a bigot, and I'll hear a prayer from anybody. But at that moment, they're a bunch of white Anglo-saxon Protestant males, and even they can't get along enough to say a prayer together.

Those seeds are still being- We are them. Reached today.

Yeah. Correct. Right. Yeah. It's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, one of the things... The deciding factor in the war, in my opinion, is the French come to our aid. But that didn't go well at first either. The French, there was this storm and their ship broke, and they left when they were supposed to help liberate Rhode Island. Massachusetts was really mad at the French. Lafayette writes this letter to Washington like, What? Everybody's being so mean about the French. Washington writes back, That's what we're doing here. We're building this new place where people are going to fight and bicker and disagree, and they're going to say things without thinking. That's who we are. That's our purpose, is this mess they're building. The fact that this teenage girl isn't necessarily on one side or the other. It isn't just her.

No. In fact, she has a brother who Their father is this remarkable coward, which I'm not saying in a pejorative way because I completely sympathize with his plight. He's there saying, I just want to survive this thing, and I'm not sure which way it's going to go. He was a loyalist, but he didn't want to get in trouble. His son runs off and starts fighting with the loyalists. He's super pissed because he's going to blow up the whole family, basically. She, even just in her own family, is wrestling with, okay, which, quote, unquote, side. Then her husband is this really fascinating portrait of a person who is deeply allegiant to one group. He loves Washington. He's devoted to Washington. He's completely anti-British rule. He's one of the first people to start fighting on behalf of the colonies. And yet he- Super brave.

He was very brave. Yes.

The antithesis of the father, in a way. And then he is also very allegiant to his own pride and his- Oh, my God.

Right? I mean, you could do just the whole history of the world based on the delicacy of the male ego. I mean, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Let's do it.

Do that now.

I mean, that's one reason Washington sticks with it. It's his ego. I mean, he has so much perseverance and stamina, but he wants to win. One reason the Marquita Lafayette comes over to volunteer is he wants glory like any 19-year-old boy. That doesn't sound so good, but then it made him brave. It made him helpful. He wanted to fight, just as Washington soldiers are abandoning the cause all the time, Lafayette is just always gung-ho to get in there and fight because of his ego. So it can be useful. But for Arnold, yeah. I mean, who doesn't identify with that, really? Like the idea, like, these people don't appreciate me.

Also, they owed him money. Congress refused to pay him. He had lost almost a leg and plenty of money. He had been paying his own trip. I mean, he was actually a really, really great general.

Yeah.

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Your point about male ego, I think, is a great segue into discussing the condition and limitations of women in a time where there wasn't really any opportunity to do much of anything outside of a domestic role.

And so we see- To me, that was the... It depends on when you think the war starts. You think the war starts in '75, Then it's just war as we think of war. But if you think of it as starting in 1765 with the Stamp Act and all of that, there is 10 years of resistance before the shots are fired. And that is, I think, led by the women because they're the ones who have to survive with all these boycott. I mean, one of the things we I remember the most famous is the Boston Tea Party because they don't want to pay for the tea tax. Those guys just throw the tea in the Harbor. But if you really think about what they were doing, boycotting the tea, their lives were just so miserable anyway. And these women, and now they have to... There are these stories about after they started boycotting tea, they would just boil basil leaves. I mean, You're a mom. Can you imagine raising your kids without caffeine? They're just doing all this. And then they also, part of it was boycotting British fabric because that was a huge industry in Britain.

And so all the women start boycotting luxury goods, and that includes fabric. And so they start making their own fabric, which becomes the homespun movement. And I thought that was interesting. I read your script about Peggy. And one thing I had never thought about with one of the great embarrassments, or there were several great embarrassments for the Revolution. One was losing New York City. That was Washington's biggest embarrassment. Losing New York City to the British, and then losing Philadelphia, the capital. I had never thought of it as fun.

To be a teenager in Revolutionary. Yeah, sure.

To a teenager because these British guys show up, and they have stuff, and they're throwing parties and balls.

Yeah, they have money. They have money, they have goods. And then they're also like, Listen, London is actually a great town. Let's do more of that here. Whereas had been Quaker rule, it had been this race of the Incipids, as John Adams called them.

And then her friendship with John André and that ball he throws, and it's all about the fabrics, right? It's like they're wearing turbans. And many different types of fabrics, lots of draping, and he was very interested in describing it all, which it's…

I mean, I'm just impressed that anyone had the energy to get through the day at this point, let alone dress it up like that.

Things have been so dour. I I actually have a bunch of citations to bring to you about the role of textiles. These women, they start making their own fabric. They're spinning their wool. They're sewing the clothes.

And this is beginning around 1765?

Yeah, and especially it cranks up again in 1774. There's the Intolerable Ax, and they start really seriously boycotting stuff. And John Adams sends this letter to Abigail. This is the mindset. Now, imagine you're a teenage girl and how you would feel about this. He says to Abigail, I hope the ladies are every day diminishing their and the gentleman, too. Let us eat potatoes and drink water. Let us wear canvas and undressed sheepskins rather than submit to the unrighteous and ignominious domination that is prepared for us. So much of all that resistance before the war is about austerity. We don't need the finer things. There's something about Homespun, to me, it's not just this movement. It's not just the cloth. It's almost this metaphor for our idea of America. Sure. I call it versus opera. This idea of these... I mean, if you forget the fact that an autocratic king of France was the one who bankrolled our victory, you just put that aside. Sure. It's just these scrappy farmers who are like... The French keep commenting, the word they keep using again and again to describe the American soldiers is naked, nearly naked. I mean, they are just so poor, and they're just so un gaveled, literally.

And then when the French show up, the Americans are so in awe of these French dandies with their pink colors and their satin. There was this one kid who was a messenger, and they think, Well, that guy must be the general because he's all gussied up. Then they think this guy, every time he goes over to the actual general, he's giving him orders because, of course, the guy who's the fanciest looking is in charge. The fabric Eric is almost the analogy for the American cause during the whole war and before. I never thought about it before, but there's this... When Benjamin Franklin, when he goes over to France to start trying to get the French government to help us, his daughter writes to him and she's like, Can you send me some French linen and lace? I'm like, Whoa. He writes back in. He said that he got this message, and he is, This disgusted me as much as if you had put salt into my strawberries. The spinning I see is laid aside, and you are to be dressed for the ball.

Oh, my.

She's in Philadelphia. So judgy. With your friend Peggy. Sure. This idea of the ball. That's right. You're wearing lace to a ball, this is a moral outrage to these patriots.

Do you feel a little like John Adams might have preferred austerity measures always anyway?

Yes. He was from Massachusetts. He was a Puritan descendant. I mean, that part of it is really at the core of a lot of these people, and it really did. I mean, luckily, they Most of them weren't interested in the finer things, except for Jefferson, who was a total shopaholic. But there's something I hadn't really thought about until you asked me to think about Peggy and that time in Philadelphia, which I just thought as like, occupation, yuck. I think of that in terms of World War II. But no, maybe it was a blast.

Right.

You could see how a teenage girl would get swept up in that.

Yeah, and how it can become very complicated when it's already, as we say, a complex landscape to navigate in terms of allegiance and what People are like... I mean, in hindsight, it's so easy to say.

Let me just say, they were both Chromebums. I'm just Peggy Ann Benedict. I think they're both Chromebums. Sure. But I'm trying to understand where she was coming from. Well, it's good to understand the psychology.

And that's where I began our conversation was saying I can drum up a little bit more empathy for her when I think about how unclear the stakes were and the sides and her father's acting bizarrely. And this other guy is really struggling with his boss, to put it one way. And I wonder how much of the male ego clash is playing out writ large everywhere in very obvious ways. And then if there's a female ego, it is by necessity, sublimated into domestic sphere. When we talked about having this conversation, you brought up Abigail Adams as a really interesting counterpoint, because I'm thinking like, Oh, maybe I should be more sympathetic to this person who It's not like she could be out running a company or she couldn't be fighting herself. I have to have some sensitivity to the fact that her whatever natural protesting energy she might have has to be channeled through her husband. It takes this interesting route. But Abigail Adams is this completely other example of how to be a woman.

I mean, for one thing, she's running the farm by herself for years and years, and it was no small enterprise. I can't remember what… There was something John Adams was doing with the Congress, and he's doing something world historical. That day, I think she's sick, and she's getting her kids inoculated for smallpox. It was like,.

Which was a totally untested practice at that point. She's taking a huge risk, and She might be killing them and herself. But it adds up.

So let's go for it. Yeah. He's off running the world. But I mean, she... Abigail is... Well, to me, she, other than Jefferson is one of the most quotable of the revolutionaries, just because her letters, the Abigail John letters, are the great literary product of the revolution, just because they're both such great writers. I was thinking about her just in terms of her… It wasn't just that she was bright. Like her husband, she was also spiteful. So much of the American side is just fueled by spite. I guess the British side, too. But theirs is more like condescension. But the American side is just fueled by this spite toward their overlords. There was this moment where one of my favorite letters of hers. I have that somewhere. Where did I write that down? I wrote things down on cards. I love it. When we're talking about there aren't two sides, to me, one of the perfect moments of that is the lead up to the Declaration of Independence, because not everyone in the Continental Congress was for declaring Independence. In fact, before they issued that, they had this last-ditch effort where they write this letter to George III saying, You're on our side, right?

You can help us out, right? George III doesn't even bother to read this letter they send. And not everyone was in favor of sending that letter, by the way, including John Adams. He just thought it was a waste of time. Because the war had already started in Massachusetts by that point. So they send this letter asking the King to help them out one last time. And it comes out that the king doesn't even read it. And when that comes out, Abigail Adams, it's like she's just done with them. And she sends this letter and she says, Let us separate They are unworthy to be our Brethren. Let us renounce them. Instead of supplications as formerly for their prosperity and happiness, let us beseech the Almighty to blast their counsels and bring to not all their devices. You don't want to cross her.

No, no, no. Yeah. No. My God.

Yeah.

I feel we've covered the range of options for women in revolutionary era colonial America.

Yeah. I mean, once I saw, I went to a reenactment of the Battle of Brandywine. It's all like the guys in the uniforms and the canons and all that. And there was one of the ladies, and she was sitting off to the side in her Revolutionary garb, and she's sitting on a blanket, quietly knitting. Yeah. And I mean, it was very absorbing to watch her. Yeah. But to me. But it was also like, you can see why people focus on these guys running around and there are the Highlanders with their bear hats and the cannons and their smoke and action, and You can see why people get a little more intrigued by that side of it.

Yeah. Unless we could get her interior monolog, which might be quite fascinating because I'm working on the final episode for this season, which I will not spoil here, but it involves revolutionary activity. The subject of the episode writes at one point how it's harder on the women, basically, because they have to just keep it all inside and keep going, and the men can have this cathartic clash, and the women are stuck home knitting and darning socks and- And doing and worse.

I mean? There's the great moment at Valley Forge. They've had this horrible winter. 2000 of them have died, but they start training with their German trainer, and they They're getting better. The news comes from France that the French are going to become officially their allies, and they're going to send soldiers in money. There's a great celebration. But in that moment, they've gotten that news from France. There's a letter from Lafayette, and it's from his wife, and their baby has died. Right. So that day, for him, it's the total contrast But you can imagine what it's like for her, who was also this pregnant teenager when he left to go fight in this war. And now this child has died, which, I mean, war is bad, but there's nothing worse than losing a child. That moment, to me, summarizes the human experience of that or any war, really.

Well, I think that's a very poignant and valid stopping point for today.

Kind of a bummer. Let's end on me reminding you that I once saw, I once went to Arnold's tomb, then it Arnold's tomb. We went to London. They went to London, and he was buried in the church at Battersea, St. Mary's, it's called, and in the crypt, which when I went a few years ago, had been turned into a kindergarten And Benedict Arnold's tomb was right there next to the fish tank.

Whoa.

Where he belongs.

I was going to say, I think he's lucky to have gotten a spot anywhere. I mean, he landed so poorly. He thought he was going to be received with a hero's welcome. And people who knew him literally would pretend not to see him when they passed in the street.

Right. So there he is in the kindergarten next to the fish tank.

That's amazing. Well, that is just one of the many gifts you've brought us here today. Thank you so much, Sarah, for talking with us.

You're welcome.

That does it for this follow-up episode. Join us next time on Significant Others to hear all about a civil rights hero many people have still never heard of. Significant Others is produced by Jenn Samples. Our executive producers are nick Liao, Adam Sacks, Jeff Ross, Colin Anderson. Engineering and sound design by Eduardo Perez, Rich Garcia, and Joanna Samuel. Music and scoring by Eduardo Perez and Hannah Brown. Research and Fact Checking by Michael Waters and Hannah Sio. Special thanks to Lisa Berm, Jason Chalemi, and Joanna Solitaroff. Talent Booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.

Fuel your team with Total Coffee from Staples Business Advantage. Our comprehensive program offers no upfront cost brewers, installation, maintenance, and supplies, plus our incredible selection of coffee and beverages, including our new Pick Me Up provisions brand. We handle everything from finding the best brewer to providing ongoing service, all at no cost with your minimum monthly spend on break room products. Visit staplesadvantage. Com/totalcoffee to get started.