It is an indisputable fact that women are often forgotten in history. The history of women is often shoved in the back of the books no one bothers to read. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about women in American history. As children we are taught the very one dimensional role they played; the housemaker, the child bearer, the mother. While all of these things are perfectly acceptable things for women to be, it isn’t all they did. Women were spies. Women were soldiers. Women were powerful in American history, whether we as a society would like to believe it or not. Society has an obsession with constantly making women into victims that can’t seem to handle themselves. However if you actually sat down and delved deeper into reality, our nation’s most treasured and brilliant men would be nothing without the women who hoisted them up. The tragedy of these women, is that they ended up telling everyone else’s history while simultaneously forgetting to record their own. The biggest example that comes to mind right now is Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton. The wife of first treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton, Elizabeth (called Eliza or Betsey for short), didn’t have it easy. Though she grew up a child of wealth and financial stability, her married life onward was hardly that. Eliza married Hamilton knowing all too well that he was indeed, penniless. Social status and wealth never seemed to matter to her. They wrote endless correspondence to one another, and she was said to often leave Alexander Hamilton, a man of one too many words, speechless. Eliza never served secretly in the military. She never delivered correspondence in secrecy to the Continental Army. She was however, Alexander’s biggest support system, and at times his only support system. For the rest of his life she remained his trusted confidant. When she found herself in the middle of the country’s first sex-scandal, she held her head steadily atop her shoulders and somehow found it in her heart to forgive her unfaithful husband. This feat alone shows how powerful she was emotionally. It seems a cruel irony that while her husband was killed at the age of 49 in a duel with the sitting Vice President, Aaron Burr, she would have to continue to soldier on for 50 years. Eliza was left with a crippling debt, seven young children, and a heartbreak that no one should have to endure. So what does she do? She takes her time to grieve. She begins to mend the broken home that her husband left with her. Mrs. Hamilton makes up her mind quickly– she will not rest until she brings justice to the memory of “her Hamilton”. With a larger than life staff by her side, Eliza began the nearly impossible task of sifting through her late husbands work. She surrounded herself with his writings and letters and memory all while dealing with an outside world who continued to attack Hamilton, even while he was long dead. Determined to prove them wrong, Eliza was working harder than ever. She interviewed soldiers that served under and with her husband. She declared her views as an abolitionist. In memory of Alexander, who grew up an orphan, she co-founded the Graham Windham organization, the very first private orphanage in New York City. That same organization is still around today, and still doing incredible deeds for the children of NYC. Eliza Hamilton spent fifty years working tirelessly to make sure the world would not forget her husband. She worked so tirelessly in fact, that she managed to make the world forget her. Eliza’s legacy is a constant reminder to me of how women have been treated since the beginning of time– with forgetfulness. For all of history, we as women have raised up men. We have managed to make even the worst men, into the greatest legends. With a few minor exceptions, we have left our own history behind, some of it never to be recovered again. If I could take one lesson from the life of Eliza Hamilton, it would be not to let our greatness go unnoticed. I believe we as women need to support our sisters. We need to be the ones to tell each other’s stories.We need to hoist each other up and empower each other. Lucky enough for this generation of women, it’s never been easier to share stories and empower each other. Social media is one of the simplest, yet incredibly crucial forms of storytelling. With platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and even Instagram, you can share the story of someone from across the world in a matter of seconds. We can educate each other, make each other laugh, make each other cry, and sometimes, with the right words, give each other the strength to push ourselves through the day. With all of this power directly at our fingertips, we have no excuse not to tell each other’s stories. We don’t have to stay silent anymore, and we’re making incredible progress. Within the past few years there has been an influx of women making sure their voices are heard. Women from all walks of life are standing up and speaking out to defend their basic human right to exist on the same playing field as men. We’re making sure that we aren’t forgotten, and we’re making it clear that we aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. This progress is one of the reasons Eliza Hamilton is one of the most important women in Revolutionary United States and why she cannot be forgotten. Her unbreakable spirit and never give up or give in work ethic contributes to the effort to dismantle the stereotype that women from that period in time were weak and forgettable. A woman of endless nerve, spirit, tenacity, and strength, Eliza Hamilton deserves to be recognized for her work. Without her, the memory of Alexander Hamilton and the American Revolution, may have been lost, or in the case of the war, missing crucial pieces. We cannot let this woman be completely erased from our history. May this generation be kinder to her than those of the past.
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