(1645) "Mr. Hopkins, the governour of Hartford upon Connecticut, came to Boston and brought his wife with him (a godly young woman, and of special parts), who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, which had been growing upon her divers years, by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing, and had written many books. If she had attended to her household affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might have improved them usefully and honorably in the place God had set her."
Thomas Jefferson, writing from Paris in 1788 to Mrs. Bingham, spoke in less positive language but perhaps just as clearly the opinion of the eighteenth century: "The gay and thoughtless Paris is now become a furnace of politics. Men, women, children talk nothing else & you know that naturally they talk much, loud & warm.... You too have had your political fever. But our good ladies, I trust, have been too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics. They are contented to soothe & calm the minds of their husbands returning ruffled from political debate. They have the good sense to value domestic happiness above all others. There is no part of the earth where so much of this is enjoyed as in America. You agree with me in this; but you think that the pleasures of Paris more than supply its wants; in other words, that a Parisian is happier than an American. You will change your opinion, my dear madam, and come over to mine in the end. Recollect the women of this capital, some on foot, some on horses, & some in carriages hunting pleasure in the streets in routes, assemblies, & forgetting that they have left it behind them in their nurseries & compare them with our own country women occupied in the tender and tranquil amusements of domestic life, and confess that it is a comparison of Americans and angels."[120]
And Franklin writes thus to his wife from London in 1758: "You are very prudent not to engage in party Disputes. Women never should meddle with them except in Endeavors to reconcile their Husbands, Brothers, and Friends, who happen to be of contrary Sides. If your Sex can keep cool, you may be a means of cooling ours the sooner, and restoring more speedily that social Harmony among Fellow Citizens that is so desirable after long and bitter Dissension."[121] Again, he writes thus to his sister: "Remember that modesty, as it makes the most homely virgin amiable and charming, so the want of it infallably renders the perfect beauty disagreeable and odious. But when that brightest of female virtues shines among other perfections of body and mind in the same mind, it makes the woman more lovely than angels."[122]
What seems rather strange to the twentieth century American, the women of colonial days apparently agreed with such views. So few avenues of activity outside the home had ever been open to them that they may have considered it unnatural to desire other forms of work; but, be that as it may, there are exceedingly few instances in those days, of neglect of home for the sake of a career in public work. Abigail Adams frequently expressed it as her belief that a woman's first business was to help her husband, and that a wife should desire no greater pleasure. "To be the strength, the inmost joy, of a man who within the conditions of his life seems to you a hero at every turn—there is no happiness more penetrating for a wife than this."[123]
Women like Eliza Pinckney, Mercy Warren, Jane Turell, Margaret Winthrop, Catherine Schuyler, and Elizabeth Hamilton most certainly believed this, and their lives and the careers of their husbands testify to the success of such womanly endeavors. Mercy Warren was a writer of considerable talent, author of some rather widely read verse, and of a History of the Revolution; but such literary efforts did not hinder her from doing her best for husband and children; while Eliza Pinckney, with all her wide reading, study of philosophy, agricultural investigations, experiments in the production of indigo and silk, was first of all a genuine homemaker. In fact, some times the manner in which these true-hearted women stood by their husbands, whether in prosperity or adversity, has a touch of the tragic in it. Beautiful Peggy Shippen, for instance, wife of Benedict Arnold—what a life of distress was hers! Little more than a year of married life had passed when the disgrace fell upon her. Hamilton in a letter to his future wife tells how Mrs. Arnold received the news of her husband's guilt: "She for a considerable time entirely lost her self control. The General went up to see her. She upbraided him with being in a plot to murder her child. One moment she raved, another she melted into tears. Sometimes she pressed her infant to her bosom and lamented its fate, occasioned by the imprudence of its father, in a manner that would have pierced insensibility itself." "Could I forgive Arnold for sacrificing his honor, reputation, duty, I could not forgive him for acting a part that must have forfeited the esteem of so fine a woman. At present she almost forgets his crime in his misfortunes; and her horror at the guilt of the traitor is lost in her love of the man."[124]
Her friends whispered it about New York and Philadelphia that she would gladly forsake her husband and return to her father's home; but there is absolutely no proof of the truth of such a statement, and it was probably passed about to protect her family. No such choice, however, was given her; for within a month there came to her an official notice that decisively settled the matter:
"IN COUNCIL
"Philadelphia, Friday, Oct. 27, 1780.
"The Council taking into consideration the case of Mrs. Margaret Arnold (the wife of Benedict Arnold, an attainted traitor with the enemy at New York), whose residence in this city has become dangerous to the public safety, and this Board being desirous as much as possible to prevent any correspondence and intercourse being carried on with persons of disaffected character in this State and the enemy at New York, and especially with the said Benedict Arnold: therefore
"RESOLVED, That the said Margaret Arnold depart this State within fourteen days from the date hereof, and that she do not return again during the continuance of the present war."
It is highly probable that she would ultimately have followed her husband, anyhow; but this notice caused her to join him immediately in New York, and from this time forth she was ever with him, bore him four children, and was his only real friend and comforter throughout the remainder of his life.