Judith Sargent Murray and the Declaration of Independence

Judith Stevens (as she was then) was just twenty-five years old when a group of men in Philadelphia boldly declared the American colonies’ independence from England. Insisting that all men were created equal, and claiming that all people enjoyed the natural right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” these men unintentionally initiated a process that would one day upend the notions of hierarchy, dependence, and deference that had characterized the western world for centuries. They created the possibility for people from all walks of life—even African Americans, even women—to challenge the class, racial, and gender conventions that everyone in America had always taken for granted.

Judith Sargent Murray was one of eighteenth-century America’s leading proponents of women’s rights.[1] In Murray’s day, only Englishwoman Mary Wollstonecraft was more thoroughgoing and rigorous in her efforts to transcend traditional gender boundaries. A poet, essayist, novelist, and playwright, Murray is best known for her three-volume “miscellany,” The Gleaner, published in 1798. It is safe to say that had America not declared its independence when and how it did, Murray would not have shared her views with the public. She would have died, as so many women of her era did, without leaving any significant record of her existence. 

There is no evidence that Murray paid much attention to the events that led to America’s decision to sever its ties with England. Once those ties had been broken, however, she not only supported the war effort, but began to envision a world that allowed women as well as men to claim the fruits of independence for themselves. True enough, no women had been part of the conversation that led those men in Philadelphia to take the momentous step that they did. True as well, while those men wrote confidently of a world that favored equality and independence over hierarchy and deference, not one of them imagined that at least some women would seize upon the language of the Declaration of Independence to challenge the patriarchal order that characterized eighteenth-century families.

Despite the intentions of the founders, it is not altogether surprising that the “rights talk” that swept the new nation in the wake of the American Revolution gave some women a glimmer of hope for themselves and their daughters.[2] The egalitarian principles that permeated the Declaration of Independence seemed—at least for an all too short period of time—to put the powers that be on notice. Everything was in flux. No verity remained unchallenged. Questions about gender roles abounded. Were women “naturally” inferior to men? If they were in some ways equal to men, then how could Americans justify the legal, economic, and social dependence of women? Judith Sargent Murray was forthright in her insistence that women were, at the very least, men’s intellectual equals. Considered in the “aggregate,” she argued, the “minds of women [are] naturally as susceptible of improvement as those of men.”[3]

Judith was not alone in her efforts to question traditional gender roles. Granted, many—probably most—American women paid little attention to national affairs in the post-Revolutionary era, convinced that politics was the purview of men, never imagining that affairs of state affected their lives in any meaningful way.[4] But other women took the promise of the Declaration of Independence to heart, expressing their desire for equality and a measure of independence in ways that reflected their class and race. Some participated in patriotic parades, implicitly claiming a connection to the world of politics for themselves.[5] Others left undesirable or abusive husbands, convinced that their own, private declarations of independence were countenanced by the public declaration conceived in Philadelphia.[6] More audaciously, African American midwife Elizabeth Freeman (known as Mumbet) successfully used the egalitarian language of the Massachusetts Constitution to sue for her freedom, helping put an end to the institution of slavery in her state.[7] Finally, there were those few, talented, and elite women who—like Murray—used their pens to argue for a measure of equality for women.

Even as a child Judith Sargent Murray had been a “scribbler.” As a young adult she continued to write for her own pleasure, sharing her work with friends and relatives, never daring to hope that total strangers would be interested in her effusions.[8] The successful end of the war gave talented women like Murray the opportunity to enter the public arena, expressing their views on women’s place for all the world to see. Fortunately for her, her native New England boasted a number of magazines whose editors eagerly sought authors whose work would fill their pages with suitable essays. From the beginning, Judith’s submissions dealt with issues of gender equality. In 1784, she submitted her first essay, “Desultory Thoughts upon the Utility of Encouraging a Degree of Self-Complacency, Especially in Female Bosoms,” to the Gentleman’s and Lady’s Town and Country Magazine. More ambitiously, she began publishing her work in the Massachusetts Magazine. “On the Equality of the Sexes,” based on an essay, “The Sexes,” which she wrote in 1779, appeared in 1790. More efforts would follow.

To publish was in itself an implicitly revolutionary act, as it allowed Murray to enter a public sphere once forbidden to women, defying the boundaries that divided the male and female world. By using her pen to make the case for women’s equality, Judith more explicitly challenged male superiority. Her earliest essays laid out the essential arguments she would make for the rest of her life. She agreed that men and women were different in some ways, particularly in terms of bodily strength. But most often she stressed the common humanity of all people, especially where the intellect was concerned. The mind, she thought, had no sex. Nurture, not nature, made women appear to be weak and inferior. It was solely their lack of an education, Murray argued, that denied women the tools with which to engage in Thomas Jefferson’s “pursuit of happiness.” All too often, “ignorant or interested men, after clipping [women’s] wings, contrived to erect around them almost insurmountable barriers.”[9] If society removed those artificial barriers, she insisted, women’s aspirations would know virtually no limits.

Although Murray was no suffragist, she made an unusually strong case for women’s political rights. Her most famous essay, the four-part “Observations on Female Abilities,” which appeared in the third volume of The Gleaner, gave readers numerous examples of women who were possessed of the prerequisites for participation in the political arena. They were heroic and strong, courageous and patriotic—all virtues traditionally associated with men. History books were replete with examples of women who exhibited “incredible bravery,” or who ruled their countries wisely and courageously.[10] Murray admitted that America had yet to produce a “female Washington,” but she did not reject the possibility out of hand.[11] As a group, she argued, women were “as capable of supporting with honour the toils of government” as men.[12] And while she never demanded the vote, she believed that women could—and should—influence the body politic in other, perhaps more important, ways. “Reason allows,” she maintained, “a measure of patriotism, even to the female bosom.”[13] Because they were “equally concerned with men in the public weal,” they had the right—indeed the duty—to exercise their influence in quiet but nevertheless important ways.[14] They could make their political views known to their husbands. They could raise their sons to be moral, rational, and public-spirited citizens. Or they could, as Murray did, publish essays commenting on the political issues of the day, reaching a wider public while never leaving the privacy of their own homes.

Murray’s aspirations for her own and her country’s future were disappointed. The Gleaner did not reap the profits she had hoped for, nor did it give her the fame she craved. It would take a new generation of women who, in the mid-nineteenth century, mounted a campaign for women’s rights that went far beyond anything Judith Sargent Murray or any of her contemporaries could have imagined or even desired. Nevertheless, Murray’s achievements should not be denigrated or ignored. Her poems, essays, and plays, not to mention The Gleaner, all situate her in the pantheon of women who embraced the ideology of the Declaration of Independence, who thought systematically about women’s rights, and who were courageous enough to put those thoughts into print. Her hopes that women would be accorded the rights that Thomas Jefferson so eloquently claimed for “all men” were not realized. But she surely helped lay the foundations for gender equality that future generations could look back upon and admire.

Sheila L. Skemp is the Clare Leslie Marquette Professor of American History at the University of Mississippi. She is the author of several books, including Judith Sargent Murray: A Brief Biography with Documents (Bedford, 1998) and First Lady of Letters: Judith Sargent Murray and the Struggle for Women’s Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

[1] Judith was born Judith Sargent, became Judith Stevens when she married John Stevens in 1769, and became Judith Murray—or as she always designated herself, Judith Sargent Murray—upon marrying Universalist minister John Murray in 1788.

[2] See Rosemarie Zagarri, “The Rights of Man and Woman in Post-Revolutionary America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 60 (April 1998), 200–27.

[3] Judith Sargent Murray, The Gleaner: A Miscellaneous Production. In Three Volumes (Boston: I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, 1798), 1: 193; 3: 197, 198.

[4] See, as a prime example, the experience of Maine midwife Martha Ballard in Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1990). 

[5] Susan Branson, These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).

[6] Clare A. Lyons, Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

[7] Arthur Zilversmit, “Quok Walker, Mumbet, and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 25 (October 1968), 614–624.

[8] Judith Sargent Murray to the Rev. William Emerson, November 21, 1805. Murray (Judith Sargent) Papers. Letterbook 13:76. Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

[9] Murray, The Gleaner, 3:197.

[10] Murray, The Gleaner, 3:194.

[11] Judith Sargent Murray to Mr. Redding of Falmouth, England, May 7, 1801. Letterbook 11:288.

[12] Murray, The Gleaner, 3:198.

[13] Judith Sargent Murray to Mrs. Tenney of Exeter, January 5, 1802. Letterbook 11:323.

[14] Judith Sargent Murray to Mrs. Barrell of York, November 25, 1800. Letterbook 11:227–229.