" We Are Not Slaves": Female Shoe and Textile Workers in Marblehead, Massachusetts, 1860

Abstract: On George Washington's birthday, 1860, the largest industrial strike to date in the United States started in Lynn, Massachusetts, a coastal town north of Boston. The efforts of the Lynn strikers encouraged shoe and textile workers--including many women--in the nearby town of Marblehead. In Marblehead, as in Lynn, workers invoked the republican values of the American revolution to press their cause. Carrying banners proclaiming "we are not slaves," they referred both to the rhetorical slavery employed by revolutionary leaders and to the real slave system that would collapse in the imminent Civil War. The New York Times reporter who wrote this article, however, was less interested in the historical resonance of the events he witnessed than he was in the loss of revenue to Lynn merchants, the novelty of women gathering in public, and having a good time with his Boston colleagues.

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