“And liberty and justice for all.” As a little girl, my class and I would open each school day with an essential part of every military child’s liturgy: the Pledge of Allegiance. The smell of chalk dust and freshly sharpened pencils mingled with the echo of our dutifully unison voices, traveling down the hall where other classrooms identical to ours were just convening. I remember the conviction with which my classmates and I would say those words. Despite our young age, we were sons and daughters of soldiers; we had been catechized in the language of patriotism and began to form ideas of what that allegiance meant. In the innocence of childhood, and 9/11 not yet a part of our vocabulary, it was easy enough to navigate the world of military moves, new schools, and our fathers’ routine deployments.
This United States that many of us were either born or immigrated into, came at great cost to those who came before us. Many of them, having never heard the Pledge of Allegiance – which wasn’t adopted by Congress until 1942 – lived out their allegiance by their actions.
Of those whose courage and resolve were on display from the very beginning of our fledgling nation, there are few as underrepresented and overlooked as the 51 brave women of Edenton, North Carolina.
In October of 1774, the ladies of Edenton banded together to hold what is believed to be the first documented American political protest led by women. Having very few political and legal rights of their own, these women, led by Penelope Barker, a colonist who was well-acquainted with tragedy, asserted their belief in the innate rights of North Carolinians to decide their own destiny. Penelope’s courage, and her ability to rally other women, all of whom held virtually no political influence in the colony, let alone in international affairs, is an incredible example of defiant, but composed, audacity in the face of tyrants.
Of those whose courage and resolve were on display from the very beginning of our fledgling nation, there are few as underrepresented and overlooked as the 51 brave women of Edenton, North Carolina.
Their immediate reward for this act of justified rebellion was to become the object of British scorn, their names smeared among the English press, who went so far as to suggest they were women of loose morals and neglectful mothers. Yet that threat of not only reputational harm, but also the potential for physical peril, did not deter the women. The punishment for defying the Crown could be as heavy as being convicted for treason, which carried with it the penalty of death.
The ladies of Edenton’s example also set the stage for suffragists, like Susan B. Anthony, Charlotte Lozier, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who over a century later would later advocate for the 19th Amendment, which secured a woman’s right to vote. Penelope Barker and her fellow tea partiers’ example was the whisper before the roar of independence.
And that’s the story we’ve sought to tell in A Letter To The King. The Edenton women who signed the letter, titled the Edenton Resolves, were compelled by a deep sense of duty. In their letter they lay out their reasoning: “We cannot be indifferent on any occasion that appears nearly to affect the peace and happiness of our country, and…it is a duty to which we owe, not only to our near and dear connections,…but to ourselves.”
“We cannot be indifferent…” It’s been said that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. During a time when many lament the decline in community, with neighbors never bothering to meet one another, civic association at low-levels, and institutional distrust at an all time high, the siren song of indifference has plunged many into depths of disconnect and suspicion, unwilling to consider the beauty of living in this city on a hill, America. The ladies of Edenton would have none of that.
Instead, they felt the same sense of duty that those who love liberty in our day do. And I hope that as you consider the courage of the women of Edenton, you’ll remember that in every generation, Americans have had to vigilantly guard the liberties that were secured by the sacrifices of those who came before us. Are we prepared to do the same? Are we ready to pledge allegiance in our actions, not just our words?
You can watch A Letter To The King here. Also, keep checking for updates at johnlocke.org for additional resources as we celebrate North Carolina’s pivotal role in the American Revolution by following our NC250: Freedom’s Vanguard work.
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Author: Brooke Medina
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