Episode 57: Those Tumultuous Assemblies of Men

Kathryn Gehred  00:04

Hello and welcome to Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant. This is a women's history podcast where we feature 18th and early 19th century women's letters that don't get as much attention as we think they should. I'm your host, Kathryn Gehred and I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Cynthia Kierner to the show. I first became familiar with Dr. Kierner's work when I was a guide at Monticello. And I read her book, Scandal At the Bizarre Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson's America, which is an absolutely incredible book, and you should read it. She also has published many other books, including Beyond the Household: Women's Place in the Early South, 1700 to 1835 and Inventing Disaster: The Culture of Calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood and Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello: Her Life and Times. Most recently, Dr. Kierner published the Tories Wife: A Woman and her Family in Revolutionary America, which is about Jane Welborn Spurgin, an absolutely fascinating North Carolinian woman in the American Revolution. Welcome, Dr. Kierner thank you so much for coming on the show.

Cindy Kierner  01:03

Thanks for inviting me.

Kathryn Gehred  01:06

I've noticed from looking up all of your books, a lot of your work has to do with women in the early south. Is there something that draws you to that subject?

Cindy Kierner  01:12

Well, I really see myself as an early Americanist, but I guess I gravitated toward women in what became the South with a capital S, because they were relatively understudied, at least when I was beginning my career. And I think that's because getting at the sources, particularly for the early period, is harder than it would be say for New England, places like that. Also, my first job was in North Carolina, where students were interested in local history, so I felt like I needed to know the sources in order to teach them research methods and so forth. And so that's when I started doing quote, unquote, Southern things. My first book in my dissertation had actually been on New York. And then after that, one project led to another. You mentioned Scandal at the Bizarre, well in some ways, that led really organically to my biography of Martha Jefferson Randolph, who had married into the family the Randolphs who became embroiled in that scandal. And I was attracted to her less because she was Jefferson's daughter than because she seemed to be like the only non crazy person in the family. She was pretty well grounded, unlike most of them.

Kathryn Gehred  02:17

I think of Peter Randolph of Roanoke all the time from that book. I am when I

Cindy Kierner  02:23

John?

Kathryn Gehred  02:23

Yeah, sorry. John Randolph of Roanoke, I see his portrait. I'm just like, I get angry.

Cindy Kierner  02:29

Yeah, a bit of a wacko.

Kathryn Gehred  02:32

So obviously, this is women's history podcast. We believe in women's history. Here. Is there something that you wish more people understood about women's history?

Cindy Kierner  02:40

Well, I mean, I guess that it's like real history, and I guess even more importantly, that what happened in the past often looked really different from a woman's perspective than from a man's that difference needs to be actually incorporated into what we consider to be the big picture of history, in the same way that, you know, we need to work harder to do the same thing for the histories of Black Americans, the histories of Indigenous people and so forth. It's not okay just to sort of have them kind of on the side and read books and say, Oh, this is really interesting, but it needs to be part of the larger whole that people consider to be real history with a capital H.

Kathryn Gehred  03:20

It's been striking me recently of this focus on objective history, and it seems like people think that if there's a perspective that's different from a white male's then it's necessarily not objective. But I don't understand why a woman's experience of something isn't a fact, yeah, no, somebody else's experience is a fact.

Cindy Kierner  03:35

Yeah, that's absolutely right.

Kathryn Gehred  03:36

Today, we're continuing our series on the American Revolution, and we're going to be talking about a letter from 1778 1778 and this is written by a man, but he's writing it to his sister. This is Richard Henry Lee to his sister, Hannah Lee Corbin, do you mind sort of introducing Richard Henry Lee to our listeners?

Cindy Kierner  03:54

So he was one of 11 children of Thomas and Hannah Ludwell Lee. He grew up at Stratford Hall. He and several of his brothers were important leaders of the revolutionary movement in Virginia. But I guess he is most famous as the member of the Continental Congress who made the motion to declare independence in 1776 and of course, he was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Kathryn Gehred  04:20

I do think of him in the musical 1776 there's a whole song about all believe. Yeah, right, so that's Richard Henry Lee, who you may have heard of in your textbooks, but tell me about Hannah Lee Corbin.

Cindy Kierner  04:32

Okay so she was Richard's older sister. She was well educated for a woman of her time, especially a Virginia woman of her time, the family hired all these tutors to teach her brothers, and she got taught by them as well. Unlike her brothers, though she didn't get to go to Europe for the grand tour after her schooling was over, and she got married when she was 19 in 1747, which just sounds just horribly young, but really wasn't that unusual. Her husband was a wealthy planter by the name of Gowen Corbin, and he was also her cousin, which, again, not terribly unusual. And he died in 1760 and when he died, Hannah assumed control of his property. And what that property was was thousands of acres and hundreds of enslaved people, besides other stuff, like furniture and what have you. But Gowin's Will said that Hannah would retain control of the property only if she didn't remarry. And again, that was a fairly typical condition of the time. But it seems to me that the really interesting thing about Hannah Lee Corbin, is what came next in widowhood. First of all, she became a Baptist, which might not seem like that big a deal, but it was actually a really, really radical choice for an upper class woman in a place like Virginia, the Church of England was the established church. That meant that it was supported by the state. The Church of England was also very closely associated with the power of the gentry, which, remember, were Hannah's people. The second thing that she did that was really unusual is that she started cohabiting with a fellow Baptist, a man, a physician whose name was Richard Lingon Hall, and they had two children together. So this clearly was not just a platonic relationship, and for one of two reasons, Hannah and Richard never got married, and we're not really sure the exact reason, but there are two possibilities. The first is that if she did remarriage, she would have lost control of her husband's property. But there was also a kind of like a moral or religious issue at stake, and that was that in colonial Virginia, because the Church of England was the established church, the only marriages that were legally valid were those performed according to the rights and rules of the Church of England. And as a Baptist, she likely did not consider those rights and rules to be legitimate. But yet, also as a Baptist. She couldn't marry as a Baptist because that would have been invalid or maybe even illegal. But she was, she was really interesting. I mean, she was doing things that you wouldn't expect, quote, unquote respectable ladies to be doing in Virginia at this time, and apparently, without severe she wasn't ostracized or anything like that. As a result.

Kathryn Gehred  07:24

I was surprised when I looked into this is showing my ignorance, but I sort of have a certain idea of like, what Baptists are like and Baptists in the south, but then looking at the history of the Baptist Church, particularly at this time period, it's so interestingly, radical,

Cindy Kierner  07:38

super radical. I mean, they let Black people preach, even enslaved people preach. They talked a lot about equality. I mean, even if they didn't always walk the walk, they just talked the talk. And, you know, and that's one of the reasons why, not only was being a Baptist, on Hannah's part, a kind of, you know, weird or eccentric choice. I mean, in some ways, it was a dangerous choice. I mean, basically the Baptist, the sort of social ideals of the Baptist were the antithesis of the sort of things that she had grown up learning at Stratford Hall, and the antithesis of things that the rest of her family likely believed even during the revolution.

Kathryn Gehred  08:21

Does it seem like a lot of the Lees were sort of radical politically? Do we know much about what Richard and Hannah's relationship was like?

Cindy Kierner  08:28

Well, like I said, several of the Lee brothers were important Patriot leaders during the revolution, so like on the issue of American independence, they were certainly radical, and they were in the group with like Jefferson and some others who were nudging some of the more conservative planters in the direction of independence. You know, in other ways, they're fundamentally conservative. I mean, they don't free their slaves. After the revolution in Virginia, there's still property qualifications for even men to vote. So in some ways they were radical, but in other ways, not so much. In terms of the relationship between Richard and Hannah. I don't think there are a lot of surviving letters between them, so I guess we don't really know a lot, but I do think that the letter we're discussing today shows a certain level of respect between the two of them. I mean, this is not just a goofy letter about non serious topics. It's about very serious topics, which suggests to me that she felt like she could talk to him about serious things, and that he would take her seriously.

Kathryn Gehred  09:33

And to sort of set the moment, set the place in time before we read the letter. Do you have any idea of what's going on for each of them at the time they wrote this letter.

Cindy Kierner  09:41

Well, for Hannah, she's living on her plantation with her children. Richard Hall actually died in 1774 so she's not technically a widow, because they weren't married, but she's without a significant other. The war hadn't really come to Virginia yet, so there's not like battles going, going on around her, but civilians were subject to high taxes to pay for the war. It was hard to sell tobacco and other produce because of British naval blockades. There were all sorts of shortages for kind of the same reasons. So she's at home coping with that. Meanwhile, Richard was in Philadelphia serving as one of Virginia's congressional delegates.

Kathryn Gehred  10:23

All right, so let's jump in

Kathryn Gehred  10:26

Okay, there's sort of a lot of 18th century legalese going on in this letter. Do you think you could sort of summarize what's going on?

Kathryn Gehred  10:26

Richard Henry Lee to Hannah Lee Corbin, Chantilly March 17, 1778 My dear Sister, Distressed as my mind is, and has been, by a vast variety of attentions, I am illy able by letter to give you the satisfaction I could wish on the several subjects of your letter. Reasonable as you are, and friendly to the freedom and happiness of your Country, I should have no doubt about giving you perfect comfort in a few hours conversation.  You complain that Widows are not represented, and that being temporary Possessors of their estates, ought not to be liable to the Tax. The doctrine of representation is a large subject, and it is certain that it ought to be extended far as wisdom and policy can allow. Nor do I see that either of these forbid Widows having property from voting, notwithstanding it has never been the practice either here or in England. Perhaps ’twas thought rather out of character for Women to press into those tumultuous Assemblies of Men where the business of choosing Representatives is conducted. And it might also have been considered as not so necessary, seeing, that the representatives themselves as well as their immediate Constituents, must suffer the Tax imposed in exact proportion as does all other property Taxed and that therefore it could not be supposed the Taxes would be laid where the public good di[d not] absolutely demand it. This then is the Widows security as well as the never married Women who have lands in their own right, for both of whom I have the greatest respect, and would at any time give my consent to establish their right of Voting, altho I am persuaded that it would not give them greater security, nor alter the mode of Taxation you complain of.  Because the Tax idea does not go to the consideration of perpetual property, but is accommodated to the high prices given for the Annual profits. Thus, no more than ½ percent is laid on the Assessed value, altho produce sells now three and four hundred percent above what it formerly did. Tobo. sold 5 & 6 years ago for 15 pounds & 2 pence, now ’tis at 50, & 55. A very considerable part of the property I hold is like yours temporary, for my life only, yet I see the propriety of paying my proportion of the Tax laid for the protection of property so long as that property remains in my possession and I derive use and profit from it.  When we complained of British Taxation we did so with much reason, and there is a great difference between our case and that of the unrepresented in this Country. The English Parliament nor their Representatives would pay a farthing of the Tax they imposed on us, but quite otherwise, their property would have been exonerated in exact proportion to the burthens they laid on ours. Oppression therefore without end, and Taxes without reason or public necessity would have been our fate had we submitted to British ursurpation.  For my part, I had much rather leave my Children free, than in possession [illegible] at nominal wealth, which would infallibly [have] been the case with all American possessions had our property been subject to the Arbitrary Taxation of a British Parliament.  With respect to Mr. Fauntleroy, if he spoke as you say, it is a very good reason why he ought not to be an Assessor. But if he should be, the law has wisely provided a remedy against the mistakes or the injustice of Assessors by giving the injured Party an Appeal to the Commissioners of the Tax, which Commissioners are annually chosen by the Freeholders and Householders, and in the choice of whom then, you have as legal a right to vote as any other person. I believe there is no instance in our new Government of unnecessary Placemen, and I know the rule is to make their Salaries moderate as possible, and even these moderate Salaries are to pay Tax. But should G. Britain gain her point, where we have one Placemen we should have a thousand, and pay pounds where we pay pence; nor should we dare to [illegible] of Military execution.  This, with the other horrid concomitants of Slavery, may well persuade the Americans to loose blood and pay taxes also, rather than submit to them. My extensive engagements have prevented me from adverting to yours and Dr. Halls subscriptions for L.[ord] Camdens picture not having been refunded, as the [illegible] have long since been, but the money is ready for your call. I am, my dear Sister most sincerely and affectionately yours Richard Henry Lee P.S. Dr. Steptoe & myself returned last night from a ten days confinement at Belleview where our brother Thos. has been in very great danger of losing his life by obstinate fever. I have the pleasure to inform you we left him out of danger. R. H. L.

Cindy Kierner  15:11

So the main issue here is why widows are being taxed without representation, without being able to elect, help elect the people who are levying the taxes. All right, so in Virginia, as in other states, only people who owned a certain amount of property could vote, and therefore only those people the voters had representation in the state legislature. And the state legislature was, of course, the body that was passing and implementing these tax laws in practice, though only male property owners voted, despite the fact that widows and single women could also own property, and in fact, did own property. As Richard pointed out in his letter, there was nothing explicit in the law that barred widows from voting. But, I mean, I think you can bet that if they tried, there would it would have been controversial, it might have even have been scandalous. And in fact, there's another Virginia widow, Mary willing bird, also an incredibly wealthy woman who expressed the same grievance in a letter to the governor of Virginia. She didn't get a whole lot of satisfaction either. I should add that wives were not at all a part of this discussion, because when a woman married, control of her property was vested in her husband, no one's asking this question about wives. It's widows and single women who control property.

Kathryn Gehred  16:35

In some of the books I read about Virginia at this time period, they talk about widows being sort of like a way of transferring money between different men in some ways. But it's interesting me that there's these widows dealing with legal issues, and it strikes them as sort of obvious. I should have representation, right? If the issue is whether or not you own property, whether you're a citizen, I am in control of quite a bit of property.

Cindy Kierner  16:56

Well, I mean, I kind of wonder though, I mean, so we've got Mary Willing Byrd, we've got Hannah Lee Corbin. I wonder how many other women are sort of articulating the same questions and the same criticisms, you know? And in fact, we'll never know, right? Because a lot of them are probably sitting at a kitchen table or in a tavern. If they're saying it, it's like, why can't I vote? And we'll never recapture that. Conceivably, there could also be other letters out there that did not survive, or, you know, on the other hand, maybe most women were just kind of like, okay, you know, it is what it is. And, you know, maybe voting would be great, but there are, like, other things I need more, you know? I mean, you know, I don't know. We'll never know. But I mean, I guess the thing that is worth noting is that it is the revolution that causes at least some people to start asking these questions that they presumably would not have asked before.

Kathryn Gehred  17:55

Yeah, if the whole system of governments being changed, then maybe this is another change we can throw in. I know the famous Abigail Adams letter.

Cindy Kierner  18:03

Yeah, which is very different from this, yeah. One way to read this letter is Richard being kind of exasperated with his sister, like, you know, honey, I'm busy. I'm like, in the Congress. And really, you want me to take this on. I think in a lot of ways, this is a pretty impressive letter. Richard took a fair amount of time writing by hand, right? We should remind listeners this longish letter and assessing the issue from both the legal and cultural angles. We might disagree with that assessment, but, I mean, I think it's significant that he didn't blow her off. He didn't dismiss her as being silly. You know, really girls voting? I, you know, I don't think so. And, I mean, I think that the really interesting comparison is actually to Abigail Adams, like super famous letter, you know, where she's telling John, also a member of Congress, to remember the ladies. You know, if you look at John's response, he pretty much laughed at her, and he really didn't address her concerns directly, whereas Richard Henry Lee is addressing Hannah's concerns directly, even if he's not necessarily giving her exactly the answer that she wants.

Kathryn Gehred  19:16

Yeah, I think that's fair. Reading it again, he's definitely addressing her points and responding to them. I noticed this time reading it that he talks about, I could clear this up with several hours conversation. So I like that idea of them sitting together, you know, by the fire and talking about politics really.

Cindy Kierner  19:31

Yep, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, it also might be a difference between, you know, the relationship between siblings and the relationship between husband and wife. On the other hand, there are a lot of letters between John and Abigail Adams that show that they respected each other enormously. But yet John Adams was either too busy or too amused to say, well, you know, Abigail, what exactly do you want us to do? And I really wish that he. Had said that because historians to this day debate the meaning of that letter. What did Abigail Adams want? I mean, we don't know for sure, because John laughed her off, right?

Kathryn Gehred  20:10

But the other section where he says, nor do I see that either of these forbid widows having property from voting. Notwithstanding, it has never been the practice, either here or in England, this sort of reminds me of constitution daily. Used to do a blog, and they had something about, like, when women got the right to vote. And the whole article was about, like, Well, women actually always had the constitutional right to vote, is like, they just chose not to. And I'm like, Yeah, okay, no.

Cindy Kierner  20:34

I don't think that's true. I mean, for one thing, the Constitution doesn't deal with voting rights at all until after the Civil War, and the state constitutions do, and in every case except one New Jersey, shout out to the Garden State. They specify that it's got to be men. And what happens in New Jersey is really instructive, because the 1776 constitution says, I mean exactly what Hannah Lee Corbin is saying people, including women, including free African Americans, who own a certain amount of property can vote, but in 18, 1807, they change it, and it's just like no white guys with a certain amount of property can vote. Oops. That was a mistake. So I would take issue with the idea that women always had the right to vote.

Kathryn Gehred  21:20

Yeah. It just struck me as odd. And then the way that Richard Henry Lee mentions the story talks about, I don't see that it forbids them, like it doesn't explicitly forbid them, he's really taking her point seriously.

Cindy Kierner  21:31

Absolutely. And it's like he's trying to explain where the prohibition on widows voting came from, and he's saying that it's not the result of law or policy. I mean, he actually says it's not the result of wisdom or policy. It just is, you know, it's like that expression, that annoying expression, it is what it is,

Kathryn Gehred  21:52

yeah. And the fact that at this time period when everything's changing, that all of a sudden it's like, oh, yeah, that is just this way, because of custom. Why is that that they're bringing up these questions is interesting, and then brings up perhaps it was thought rather out of character for women to press into those tumultuous assemblies of men where the business of choosing representatives is conducted. He's describing, sort of it's not women's place to be in this tumultuous assembly. And it kind of was depressing to me that seems like society's expectations for women haven't changed a whole lot well.

Cindy Kierner  22:21

I mean, I guess I agree, sort of, but I mean, without mentioning any names, I think it's worth noting that some of our most quote unquote tumultuous politicians today are women, and that, I guess, seems to be okay to even the most anti female segments of our society, if those women aren't trying to advance a feminist agenda, or better yet, if they're advancing an anti feminist one. In terms of Richard and Hannah, I think what he's trying to say is that the prohibitions or the taboos against women voting were more cultural than legal. And this sort of really important point there that he's not making, but I mean, I think we can sort of conclude is that culture is obviously harder to change than laws. You want to change a law, you lobby the legislature, you get support, you got it enacted. Changing culture is a whole lot harder, and it's certainly not something that Richard Henry Lee could do right, even if he wanted to, even if he wanted, not saying that he did want to, but even if he wanted to.

Kathryn Gehred  23:27

It does give me the nice mental image of Hannah, sort of elbowing her way into those tumultuous assemblies.

Cindy Kierner  23:34

Listen to me guys

Kathryn Gehred  23:35

Exactly. He says this, then is the widow security as well as the never married, women who have lands in their own right, for both of whom I have the greatest respect and would at any time give my consent to establish their right of voting, although I am persuaded it would not give them greater security, nor alter the mode of taxation you complain of. So this part, I was like, Oh, wow. He's really saying he supports women's rights to vote, and then he's saying, but it's not actually good for you. That part actually made me laugh. It's like I love women.

Cindy Kierner  24:03

I think he is saying that. I think he is, among other things, you know, trying to agree with Hannah, either sincerely or maybe insincerely, while knowing that even if he agreed with her like 1000% no one could expect him to change things. And I think the last bit about basically, yeah, you know, I'd be happy with you guys voting, but it's not really going to help you. I mean, I think what he's saying is, I love women. Women are great, but they don't really need this, right? Because we men will take care of them. I mean, it's not exactly chauvinistic, but it's very paternalistic, right? It's like you don't have to worry, because we'll take care of you. And in fact, you know the entire common law of marriage, coverture and all of that is based on the same premise that women are weak and they need taken care of. Now I don't think that Richard Henry Lee would say that women were weak. I mean, his sister surely wasn't. But I think he would say that, you know, men are up to the task of taking care of women, which, of course, is highly debatable, both in their time and in ours.

Kathryn Gehred  25:10

And that sort of makes me think of your most recent book, The Tory's Wife. Or the assumption is that if a woman is married, then her husband is representing her politically, like that's her sort of protection and legal protection. But that's not always the case. We know that married couples don't always agree politically, and then in the case of Jane Spurgin, we know that she had different political beliefs than her husband.

Cindy Kierner  25:30

Yeah, yeah. For me, the big question is, did the political beliefs cause the breakup of their marriage, or did their estrangement cause the difference in political beliefs. I don't think it necessarily matters, but I think the larger point is that, just like you know, the sort of cliche is, you know, brother against brother, well, can also be brother against sister. It can also be husband against wife. When you're talking about the revolution, which scholars now pretty much agree was, among other things, a brutal civil war. Hannah and Richard were on the same side.

Kathryn Gehred  26:09

It seems like the Lees agreed, yeah. Now the whole paragraph where he goes into percentage of profits on tobacco, I will admit that's a hard part for me to follow that entire paragraph. Do you have an idea of what's going on there?

Cindy Kierner  26:23

I mean, tobacco and the land and the enslaved people that produced it was such a fundamental part of these people's lives that it pops up in all sorts of discussions. And at this time, Hannah was overseeing several tobacco producing plantations, and we don't have her letter to Richard, but I imagine that her letter to Richard included a paragraph discussing tobacco prices or what have you, and that he's responding to that discussion here. It's also possible that she was somehow involved in watching over Richard's tobacco or plantation interest. While he was away in Philadelphia, he was a widower Richard, so he had no wife to look over his business interest, which is often what happened in families when the husband went off to serve in Congress or in the state legislature or in war. The other thing that's going on in that paragraph is he's talking about inflation, and you know how the prices of things have risen, and he's talking about that, I guess, in relation to the amount of taxes people are paying and why they're going up. Yet it underlines the extent to which tobacco is such a basic part of these people's lived experience, in terms of where they live, the environment in which they lived, in the economy in which they operated.

Kathryn Gehred  27:46

I have a pet theory, just from my work on the Martha Washington papers, that the specific details of how tobacco consignment was done in England is a much bigger reason for the American War of Independence than it's sometimes given credit for I know people have so many millions of arguments about why the American Revolution was fought, but I feel like the specifics of the tobacco trade were pretty significant.

Cindy Kierner  28:09

Well there's a book by T.H. Breen called Tobacco Culture. He argues that for Virginia planters who are still doing tobacco and still doing the consignment method, that's like a really important issue. But the fact of the matter is that a lot of Virginia planters are no longer doing tobacco, hardly for that reason, right? And that if it was just Virginia planters who were angry about tobacco, it wouldn't have been a very big revolution, right? So like George Washington is all in on wheat by the time we get to this period. And clearly, people in places like Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and even the Carolinas or South Carolina, they're not growing tobacco. They're doing other things. But yeah, you're right. I mean, all of this sort of figures into it in one way or another.

Kathryn Gehred  28:57

Now let's see. So when he talks about revolutionary language around how taxation is like slavery, that makes me wonder about, obviously, we don't have her letter. We don't know exactly what she was asking. But do you think she brought up she sort of tied in her ideas about taxation without representation to the actual revolution.

Cindy Kierner  29:16

You know, that was like a standard slogan, right? Going back to the days of the Stamp Act, the issue was taxation without representation. It seems to me that Hannah is obviously raising that issue. She's also raising the issue of the high cost of taxes, so it's kind of like doubly offensive to her that she doesn't get representation, and if she did, she surely would not have taxes be that high. And she likely did use that trope of slavery that Richard also is using, which was really common and here, of course, slavery doesn't really refer to the real thing, like with black people. Rather, it was a trope that they used. Used to describe what they saw as the violation of white people's rights by the king in Parliament during the Imperial crisis. I think Richard, in response, was saying that whatever taxation Hannah or other Virginians were being subject to, as you know, unpleasant as it might be, was still a huge improvement over what had been the situation during the colonial period, especially in the 1760s and 70s, for several reasons. First of all, because the Virginia legislators who enacted Revolutionary era taxes were local men who would also have to pay them. And so that's an argument that Americans expressed during the Imperial crisis. One of the reasons why they object to Parliament taxing them is that Parliament could levy enormous taxes on people living in the American colonies, and they wouldn't have to pay any of them, but people in Virginia, New York, or whatever would have to. And then the second thing that he brings up is Richard Henry Lee says, look, there are far fewer officials, what he calls placement, drawing government salaries, collecting taxes here than there had been during the colonial period. So not only are the taxes more legitimate, but they're also kind of more cost effective in that way. And also, under the new Virginia regime, those officials were also subject to the people's approval. You know who were the people will not Hannah Lee Corbin, because she doesn't have the right to vote, but at least some people's approval. And that's the whole discussion of Mr. Fauntleroy, which kind of seems like, you know, who is this and why do we care? Well, apparently, he wasn't a very good tax assessor, and Richard was suggesting that. Well, you know, if Hannah's complaining about him, maybe a lot of other people are complaining about him. He's not doing a very good job, and he'll be history, so to speak.

Kathryn Gehred  31:58

I like the idea that he did such a bad job tax assessing that she she's like, Hey, give me the right to vote.

Cindy Kierner  32:04

We're gonna get that Fauntleroy. Well, then the other thing about Fauntleroy is, I mean, I Googled him just because, I mean, I don't know who he was. And, I mean, I did find little bits of information about who I think this person was. And I guess the really salient point is that Fauntleroy and arguably the other tax assessors as well, were significantly below the lease in the social hierarchy. So basically, this guy is like coming to the homes of the gentry and saying, Hey, you owe this much pay up. And a lot of people are angry about the cost of taxes in the colonial period, Hannah Lee Corbin has this extra layer of unhappiness because she has no representation.

Kathryn Gehred  32:48

Always the tax assessors are the most beloved people. I had a comment about the PS at the end, but reading it again, I feel like it's probably just because he's writing it a week later. So he adds a PS, but like the little family news that he adds at the end that her brother is so sick. To me, it seemed like he was being a little snippy the first time I read it. But looking at it again, I'm not sure

Cindy Kierner  33:08

One of the reasons why people wrote letters during this period is basically to say, look, I'm still alive. Or, look, you know, your brother is still alive. One of my favorite Jefferson letters of all time is like, literally one sentence that he writes to his daughter Martha, while he's president. And I'm obviously paraphrasing, but it's basically like, yeah, not dead yet. The whole idea that illness and disease is everywhere medical science, I mean, I always enclose in air quotes, because, you know, sometimes you're better off without it. And when you read a lot of these letters, there is always a line, usually at the beginning or at the end, saying, everyone in the family is healthy, or everyone in the family is healthy, except for Mary, who has a fever. And so the way I read that PS is that that is one of the really common functions of letters during this period, to let people know that you're not dead yet, or that your brother's not dead yet, or that they've recovered, or whatever. You know, I also think Richard was probably getting tired that's with a quill pen while he's presumably got other things to do, it would be great if we had her letter. But yes, alas.

Kathryn Gehred  34:27

Maybe that's why he's sort of wistful at the beginning, like we could clear this up in a conversation.

Cindy Kierner  34:32

Yeah, right, exactly, exactly. But we're really glad that they didn't, because then we wouldn't even have his letter.

Kathryn Gehred  34:38

Yes, exactly. And that's why I like reading the whole letter, is you do get those little bits of family information, which I enjoy.

Cindy Kierner  34:45

And one of the things that I found out about this letter, which I did not know before, which is like, super interesting, is so the way most people get this letter is it's published in a collection of the letters of Richard Henry Lee that I think is two volumes. And I. Think was published in the 1880s maybe 1890s there is a little footnote in that book that says that the editors of that collection got the letter from a newspaper in Alexandria. It was published in 1875 so basically, it was undiscovered for like, almost a century, and the other people who published it were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in their history of the women's suffrage movement. And so I don't know, oh, wow, if Stanton and Anthony published it first and then it got exerted in this Alexandria newspaper, or it was the other way around. And this is like Richard Henry Lee's letter, even his letter on this issue was sort of buried, or kind of, I mean, obviously not destroyed, but not paid attention to in any way, until the 19th century women's suffrage movement, the point of their collection was, at least in part, to look for precedence so that they could make the argument that look I mean, we're not the first people to air these grievances, and we're not the first people to ask for, you know, representation or some satisfaction. In that regard, they were creating, in effect, a history of feminism to make feminism seem like it was more credible and more, I don't know, American or whatever, huh?

Kathryn Gehred  36:31

That's fascinating. When I was doing research on this letter, I found that the Library of Congress has Elizabeth Cady Stanton's notes, and she lists Hannah as one of the like feminist foremothers, yeah, which is pretty neat.

Cindy Kierner  36:45

It is pretty neat. But, you know, I mean, I also wonder how someone like Hannah Lee Corbin, or even, you know, Abigail Adams would react to that, you know, I mean, in certain ways, Hannah Lee Corbin was very conservative. She never frees her slaves. She never tells her own children, oh, don't marry, because marriage is a patriarchal, evil institution. She's not looking to leave a feminist legacy. But, you know, she's dead so they could say what they want.

Kathryn Gehred  37:14

Well, yeah, I mean, to take a historical figure and use them for political purpose. It's interesting to see how that's happened to her over time?

Cindy Kierner  37:21

Yeah, it's been known to happen. Well, I mean, it obviously it happens with, you know, Abigail Adams as well. But the thing is, we have Abigail Adams's words so people can sort of debate on both sides. Well, you know, no, she wasn't asking for the right to vote. Was she asking for an end of coverture? Was she asking for, you know, whatever. And I think well and scholars have come up with a lot of different interpretations of what she wanted. Hannah Corbin, at least, apparently, was very clear in the specific thing that she wanted. She didn't want women to have the right to vote. She wanted widows and single women with property to have the right to vote. So she didn't take issue with the property qualification, and she didn't take issue, apparently, with marriage being a sort of disqualifying thing for women to own property or to have the right to vote. And of course, we know married women's property acts don't really happen until the 1840s at best, and in some places a lot longer after that, in Virginia, it's like reconstruction, which is insane.

Kathryn Gehred  38:28

Yeah. Is there any other point that you really wanted to get to?

Cindy Kierner  38:31

Just that clearly, she was very aware of what was going on politically, and not just as politics related directly to her and her interests. So the last paragraph of the body of the letter where Richard is saying this with the other horrid comments of slavery, he goes down and he talks about getting a refund for her and Dr Hall's subscriptions for Lord Camden's picture. Now, Lord Camden was this British nobleman who was one of a handful of important British political figures who were really outspoken in terms of supporting the Americans in their protest during the Imperial crisis. I mean, this is why we have Camden, New Jersey. Camden, South Carolina, you know, the same way, like all these places, are named after William Pitt for the same reason, who later becomes the Earl of Chatham. So there's Pittsburgh and Pittsboro and Chatham, and you know, all of that. And so Camden, I think even at the time, was a less famous version of a kind of pro American voice than, say, someone like William Pitt. But yet, she and Dr. Hall, I mean, before he died, were buying pictures of the guy to hang in their house. So, I mean. And on the one hand, it shows that as late as 1774 when Dr. Hall was alive, Hannah and Dr. Hall are really pulling for there to be a reconciliation on terms favorable to the Americans, and that there, as indeed were most colonists at that point, but they're keenly aware of the political debates that are going on, not only in Williamsburg, but also in London. I thought that that was really interesting. I mean, I thought it was also really interesting that now, since that whole thing didn't work out, and they've got independence now, she wants her money back, damn it, and apparently she's gonna get it. So that's kind of cool.

Kathryn Gehred  40:45

Thank you. I didn't even look into that, but that's awesome. That's so interesting. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Dr. Kierner, this was awesome.

Cindy Kierner  40:53

Yeah, super fun.

Kathryn Gehred  40:54

We will provide links to this letter and other information in the show notes for my listeners, thank you very much for listening, and I am as ever, your most obedient and humble servant. Thank you very much. Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is a production of R2 Studios, part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. I'm Kathryn Gehred, the creator and host of this podcast, Jeanette Patrick and Jim Ambuske are the executive producers. Special thanks to Virginia Humanities for allowing me to use their recording studio. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell a friend and be sure to rate and review the series in your podcast app for more great history podcasts, head to r2studios.org, thanks for listening.