Studies of loyalist women were at the forefront of studies of women in early America and the American Revolution. Scholars including Mary Beth Norton, Janice Potter-MacKinnon, Linda Kerber have examined how women, supporters, neutrals, and opponents alike, experienced and participated in the American Revolution. Contributing to this vibrant area of scholarship, Kacy Tillman\u2019s Stripped and Script: Loyalist Women Writers of the American Revolution<\/em> focuses on loyalist women as writers. While much scholarship on the American Revolution and loyalism examines the rhetoric and war writing in essays, broadsides, and pamphlets typically published by men, Stripped and Script<\/em> focuses on how women writers used \u201cpublic, if not published\u201d letters and journals to engage in politics and to craft their own senses of loyalties.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Much of the material in Tillman\u2019s book will be familiar to those who have read Norton\u2019s Liberty\u2019s Daughters<\/em> or other books on loyalist women. Tillman\u2019s methods are new, although her actors will be familiar to those who have worked on loyalists.\u00a0 Tillman offers a new interpretation of the lives of seven loyalist women: Grace Growden Galloway, Sarah Logan Fisher, Elizabeth Drinker, Margaret Hill Morris, Anna Rawle, Rebecca Shoemaker, and Deborah Norris Logan. In light of this familiarity, it is refreshing to read a new interpretation of the lives of these women and their written materials from the perspective of a historically informed scholar of literature with a keen eye to turns of phrase.<\/p>\n Tillman organizes the book by \u201cthe different shades of loyalism as they existed in the manuscripts\u201d in question. Some self-identified with the Crown, others were assumed to be loyalists because their husbands were loyalists, some were disaffected, or neutralists but were treated as loyalists.[2]<\/sup><\/a> At the beginning of the war, revolutionaries held that married women were unable to have their own sense of allegiance due to coverture. Over time, the definition of treason became increasingly gender-neutral or inclusive of women, implying that women could be as \u201cpolitically dangerous as men,\u201d a concept that undermined the status of coverture. This shift\u2013from coverture to \u201cexposure\u201d\u2014made women politically visible and \u201ccapable of being treated as legal citizens with their own rights.\u201d Writing in letter-journals allowed women to develop their own definitions of loyalism, but also left them vulnerable. Tillman examines how women \u201cused and were used by these manuscript spaces\u2014how they shaped and manipulated their publicity and privacy, and how they circulated the only bodies over which they possessed any semblance of control: their paper bodies.\u201d[3]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Tillman pays particular attention to how women used typically private sources like letters and diaries for public purposes. Her method of analysis is particularly well suited to offer a new and refreshing interpretation of poet Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson. Fergusson protested using petitions and letters, and launched a \u201cwide-reaching publicity campaign.\u201d Fergusson filed petitions with the state assembly, sent letters to the newspapers that were published and republished across the colonies, and wrote a poem intended to be circulated.\u00a0 By embracing a range of genres, Fergusson was able to transform herself from someone known as \u201c\u2018more dangerous to the American cause than any other woman\u2019\u201d to a beloved, admired literary figure and \u201c\u2018the most learned woman in America.\u2019\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Tillman skillfully walks the reader through the steps of her analysis\u2014a tactic that will be particularly rewarding for scholars who have spent more time with historical rather than literary scholarship (myself included). On the most basic level, Tillman is upfront and clear about defining the terms that form the basis of her analysis. In the second paragraph, Tillman describes that by \u201cstripped\u201d she means how many loyalist women read and reacted to the Revolution by using rhetoric that identified and opposed \u201cviolent abuse, oppressive political structures, and sexual assault.\u201d By \u201cscript,\u201d she means both the \u201cprocess of writing\u201d and the \u201cart of creating.\u201d Loyalist women used manuscript writing as a \u201ccomplex performance that was intended to achieve something,\u201d as well as a writer\u2019s \u201cinsistence on creating their own definition of loyalty.\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a> By being explicit about her terminology, Tillman helps readers follow her analysis as well as offers other historians with additional approaches to use in their own research.<\/p>\n For example, in her chapter on Margaret Morris, Tillman \u201cbroadens the concept of \u2018neutral ground,\u2019 from place to page.\u201d In physical \u201cneutral grounds,\u201d including\u00a0 Westchester County, New York, and Long Island Sound, residents\u2019 allegiances varied based on the relative success and failure of loyalists and revolutionaries, and many became \u201cdisaffected\u201d as a result of violence and property destruction. Just as how \u201cneutrality\u201d did not mean \u201cimpartiality\u201d in these physical locations, it had a similar meaning in Morris\u2019 letter-journal. Perhaps most importantly, while George Washington and other revolutionaries tried to control physical neutral grounds they failed to fully control the transmission of letters. Reflecting the impact of these letters, correspondence with the enemy was considered treason. Tillman suggests that \u201c[l]etters were as contested as the spaces in which they were written.\u201d[6]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n One of the most memorable aspects of the book is the vignette that begins each chapter.\u00a0 In each, Tillman describes her visit, or attempt to visit, the house where the woman in question lived.\u00a0 This approach helps to further develop Tillman\u2019s argument about writing as a kind of space. Given these loyalist women\u2019s fierce associations with and defense of their homes, as well as the sheer number of references these women make to their own homes and property in their writing, it is neat to learn about the present condition of these places. Tillman \u201cbreaks the fourth wall\u201d by bringing the reader into her own research experience. Perhaps one of the most striking anecdotes is her trip to visit Grace Growden Galloway\u2019s mansion in Bensalem Township, where the tenant who lived in the mansion would not allow the tour guide and Tillman into the house, the day after she was evicted. In addition to bringing the reader into her own research process, this story has remarkable parallels with Galloway\u2019s own life as the tenant\u2019s actions were nearly the same as Galloway\u2019s when the confiscation committee came to evict her.[7]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n It is worth noting that all but one woman Tillman focuses on lived in Philadelphia. Given the prolific amount of writing loyalist women in Philadelphia produced, and the sheer amount of it that has survived in archives such as the Historical Society of Philadelphia, the geographic focus of Stripped and Script<\/em> is understandable. Yet, by claiming to be painting a national picture, instead of one confined to Philadelphia, Tillman risks overstating her claims. Although it is possible that much of her analysis could be applied to women in other cities, such as Boston, Charleston, or Savannah, further research would be necessary in order to confirm this.<\/p>\n Stripped and Script<\/em>\u2019s biggest contribution is in the realm of methodology. By successfully using an approach that places literary analysis at the center, Tillman demonstrates the value of closely studying rhetoric. In doing so, Tillman offers new ways to use loyalist women\u2019s diaries and letters to discuss rhetoric and the position of loyalist women during the Revolution. By centering loyalist women and their writings, Tillman shows how some loyalist women \u201cused writing to assert their political agency.\u201d[8]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n [1]<\/sup><\/a> Kacy Dowd Tillman, <\/a>Stripped and Script: Loyalist Women Writers of the American Revolution<\/em><\/a> (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2019), 21.<\/a><\/p>\n [2]<\/sup><\/a> Tillman, 21.<\/a><\/p>\n [3]<\/sup><\/a> Tillman, 5.<\/a><\/p>\n [4]<\/sup><\/a> Tillman, 117\u201318.<\/a><\/p>\n [5]<\/sup><\/a> Tillman, 2.<\/a><\/p>\n [6]<\/sup><\/a> Tillman, 78.<\/a><\/p>\n [7]<\/sup><\/a> Tillman, 25\u201326.<\/a><\/p>\n [8]<\/sup><\/a> Tillman, 117.<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kacy Tillman, Stripped and Script: Loyalist Women Writers of the American Revolution (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2019). Studies of loyalist women were at the forefront of studies of women in early America and the American Revolution. Scholars including Mary Beth Norton, Janice Potter-MacKinnon, Linda Kerber have examined how women, supporters, neutrals, and opponents alike, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[14263,31682,31685,31684,31683],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-55233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-history","tag-junto","tag-kacy","tag-script","tag-stripped","tag-tillman"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/earlyamericanists.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/saved-and-stripped-cover-image-.jpg?w=550\")
Kacy Tillman, Stripped and Script: Loyalist Women Writers of the American Revolution<\/a> (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2019).<\/p>\n