Post #2: British View of the Patriots Activism

      The British's overall view towards the increasing activism in Americans was anything but accepting. The British did not take the new found activism seriously whatsoever. "An ironic fate overtook that generation of Americans who loved being English, boasted of their rights as Britons, and celebrated their membership in the all-conquering empire. That very pride drove colonials into rebellion, for the men who ran the British empire after 1763 would not allow Americans to be English." This quote from Nation of Nations (p.122), shows how the Americans activism is seen in the picture "Society of Patriotic Women at Edenton, North Carolina (1774)." In this picture you can see how the British view the patriotic women as responsible, loose, and not really serious or in charge, the picture is a good example of the British's displeasure with the activism of the patriots.
       The basic idea of the picture is showing the women of Edenton meeting in response to the "Coercive Acts", called by the patriots, the "Intolerable Acts." The women are meeting to discuss the refusal to buy British products, especially tea. The picture, which is done by the British is basically mocking the attempts of the women to be "involved." The British don't take the activism seriously at all and they want to portray the patriots as having a similar non-serious attitude toward their overall goal to be liberated. You can see that they view the women as irresponsible if you look at certain places in the picture. Underneath the table is a small child, left unattended to, eating scraps off the floor and having its face licked by a dog who is at the same time urinating on the floor. The women also seem unfocused, several women are off on different sides of the picture talking in small groups or talking to a man. The women are also viewed as being loose and only being allowed to have this much involvement because of their "loose" nature. In the middle of the picture you can see a woman being groped by a man. The British view teh women's activism a joke, and that the men of the colonies are letting the women "think" that they are contributing but in all actuality they are not doing anything of any importance.
       Another thing seen in the picture is the apparrent change in the role of the women. Instead of having the women being at home doing what were know as "womanly duties" back then, they were trying to take an active role in politics because of the struggle with the British's policies. But obviously the British are mocking the women's newfound determination.
       The basic attitude of the picture and the British is a mocking attitude. The men view the women as irresponsible and loose and the view of the men is as if the women are now politically in charge over the men. For the most part the picture is biased in that if was drawn by the British to show that they do not have to worry about the coloines and the patriots making any advances in society and will stay controlled by the British government and policies.

For additional information you can visit the following links:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/aw05e/d12.html (Society of Patriotic Women at Edenton, North Carolina 1774)

http://www.picturehistory.com/find/c/295/p/15/mcms.html (more images from the time period)

http://www.gpschools.org/ci/ce/elem/fifth/ss5/research/op.htm (tarr and feather, join or die images)

Group Report:

    In class last week Wednesday, we assigned roles for the group blog report. Morgan Hall and Neal Wobbe worked together to formulate the post as the first draft writer and editer/proofreader respectively. Julie Montgomery did the textbook research, while Jerami Rinaldi worked with the link and image researching. Chelstan Char did the group reporting. The group met the night of Tuesday the 20th at 8:00pm at the Information Desk in the Johnson Center. Our main goal was to get everything together and organized and to make sure that the blog was up to everyone's standard. For the first group assignment, everything ran very smoothly and the group feels confident in being able to operate well together on the rest of our posts.

Comments

[Danica-Ella Pantoja]

First off, it's a good idea that you at least posted the most important picture up since you didn't post any other images (maybe you might want to consider that). Also, the portrait's depictions mentioned were also good in supporting the thesis, which I hope is: the British disliked the activism of the Patriots. What I do think needs extra concentration is organization, spelling, and grammar. The essay is a bit unorganized. I suggest to add in some kind of syntax in your thesis to basically order the following body paragraphs. If you were to list the main reasons why British disliked the Patriot's activism, then have that be the structure of your body paragraphs. Have them correspond to your list in the thesis. Secondly, there are numerous misspellings in the post. All you need to do to fix that is to look over it, or use Microsoft Word to check grammar and spelling. Thirdly, I'm not sure whether you spotted it but, in the thesis you had said that the women were "responsible", loose, etc. Do you mean "irresponsible"? It also seems like the thesis is a run-on sentence. The latter half of the sentence should be a new sentence; or, if possible, you can combine in such a way so it does not look like a run-on sentence. My main suggestion overall is to reread your post over, and to consider structure and organization.