It is important to realize that in using the rhetoric of Independence, the authors of the Declaration of Sentiments were not the first. In important ways, they built upon the rhetoric of the Lowell Mill strikers' use of liberty rhetoric as well. The Lowell strikers linked their action expressly to the tradition of the Revolutionary War, to the efforts of their patriotic ancestors to win independence from England. These women expressed their pride and their sense of independence as they talked of being "daughters of freemen".

For example, note the following poem, which concluded their petition to the manufacturers in 1834:

Let oppression shrug her shoulders,
And a haughty tyrant frown,
And I itt le upstart Ignorance,
In mockery look down.
Yet I value not the feeble threats
Of Tories in disguise,
While the flag of Independence
O'er our noble nation flies.

By appropriating the revolutionary rhetoric (which the male labor movement did as well), the women workers at Lowell gave their protests legitimacy, for they became, in their own eyes at least, the direct heirs of the revolutionary tradition. Wage cuts were thus not questions of purely economic concern; they were interpreted more broadly, as attempts to enslave women workers and to deprive them of independent status. This is visible again the 1836 actions, in song Iyrics sung by protesting workers:

Oh! isn't it a pity, such a pretty girl as I
Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die?
Oh! I cannot be a slave, I will not be a slave,
For I'm so fond of liberty,
That I cannot be a slave.

Prepared by Professor Catherine Lavender for History 286 (American Women's History), The Department of History, The College of Staten Island of The City University of New York. Send email to lavender@postbox.csi.cuny.edu
Fall Semester 1997. Last modified: Wednesday 22 October 1997