Women Who Shaped the American Revolution

In 1969, a new musical opened on Broadway, bringing the Founding Fathers to life on stage. 1776 brought viewers front and center to the debates over drafting the Declaration of Independence. For the first time, many Americans could visualize scenes that had previously existed primarily in history books. A filmed version soon carried the story to an even wider audience, while revivals in 1997 and 2022 have ensured that the show continues to shape how Americans imagine the nation’s founding.

Almost half a century later, Hamilton offered a new interpretation of the revolutionary story many Americans thought they already knew. With fast-paced rap and diverse casting, the musical invited audiences to reconsider the world of the revolutionary generation.

Both shows have given Americans a chance to explore how the Founding Fathers imagined the future of the United States. In some ways, that task seems easy enough: The men left behind documents and records that preserved their ideas. They wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, leaving historians a detailed record of their debates. Most Americans can name at least a few of the men who helped breathe life into the United States.

In Hamilton, Eliza Hamilton famously burns the letters her husband sent her; in composer Lin-Manuel Miranda’s words, she’s “erasing herself from the narrative.” Yet many more American women were never included in the original story. Their political engagement rarely took the form of speeches in Philadelphia, signatures on founding documents, or indeed in musical reenactments. Instead, it often appeared in the choices they made in their homes and communities — political engagement of a kind that rarely makes it into song-and-dance numbers on a Broadway stage.