Jen Deaderick - She the People: A Graphic History of Uprisings, Breakdowns, Setbacks, Revolts, and Enduring Hope on the Unfinished Road to Women’s Equality

Copyright 2019 Jen Deaderick

Illustrations by Rita Sapunor. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Alex Camlin

Cover image by Rita Sapunor

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First Edition: March 2019

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBNs: 978-1-58005-871-1 (paperback), 978-1-58005-872-8 (ebook)

E3-20190129-JV-NF-ORI

For the two Rosalinds and my mother, Ann, who made sure I knew about Victoria Woodhull

T HE NEWS OF THE DECLARATION spread rapidly. Copies of the document had been printed immediately, and riders distributed them all over the colonies. Embarrassingly, an overly enthusiastic patriot in tiny Worcester, Massachusetts, not yet an industrial powerhouse, intercepted a copy en route to Boston and read it aloud to a private crowd, but the event in Boston on July 18, two weeks after the signing, was still special.

THE DECLARATION was read from the balcony of the Town-House, the seat of the Massachusetts colonial government, overlooking the very spot where, just two years earlier, rioters had been shot and killed by British soldiers in what became known as the BOSTON MASSACRE. The Town-House was where the colonial legislature met, and statues of a lion and a unicornsymbols of the Crown and reminders to the citizens of Boston of whose royal decree they ultimately lived underadorned its roof. The building sat atop a hill that rolled gently down to the harbor, just a half mile away. After the REVOLUTION, it would be claimed as the State House, the meeting place of the state legislature.

The crowd was mixed. Sailors from around the world mingled with Black and White residents of the city in the bustling markets surrounding the square, though the recent military occupation of the agitated and rebellious city had reduced their number.

And, of course, many of the people in the square that day were womenwomen are always in all of these stories whether their presence is noted or not. That day, more women than usual came to witness history happening.

ABIGAIL ADAMS, whose husband would later become president, was in the crowd, and described the scene in a letter to her husband a few days later, using the irregular spelling of the day:

Last Thursday after hearing a very Good Sermon I went with the Multitude into Kings Street to hear the proclamation for independance read and proclamed. Some Field peices with the Train were brought there, the troops appeard under Arms and all the inhabitants assembled there (the small pox prevented many thousand from the Country). When Col. Crafts read from the Belcona of the State House the Proclamation, great attention was given to every word. As soon as he ended, the cry from the Belcona, was God Save our American States and then 3 cheers which rended the air, the Bells rang, the privateers fired, the forts and Batteries, the cannon were discharged, the platoons followed and every face appeard joyfull.

Of course, we know which words kept the crowd rapt: the opening sentences that broadly and assuredly speak of human events and the dissolution of political bonds. The magnificent list of grievances against the king. The pledging of lives, fortune, and sacred honor. Ringing bells and blasting cannons were the only way to follow the reading.

Bostonians, always looking for a good excuse to riot, climbed onto the roof of the Town-House and tore down the symbols of the Crown, the lion and unicorn. Consent of the governed, indeed.

But its the opening of the second paragraph that changed everything. Its what still rings in our ears more than two centuries later:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.