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A Woman Ready to Fight

Charity Clarke, a spirited New Yorker, writes of her resolve to win freedom

By George DeWan | Staff Writer

Charity Clarke was a young New York City woman with strong opinions about the growing tensions caused by Great Britain's tightening grip on its American colonies. A staunch defender of the American cause, she waged a rousing war of words with her cousin Joseph Jekyll, a London lawyer, in a series of letters written between 1768 and 1774.

``When there is the least show of oppression or invading of liberty you may depend on our working ourselves to the utmost of our power,'' Clarke wrote on Nov. 6, 1768. What had aroused her ire was the landing in Boston a month earlier of a garrison of British soldiers to quell increasing disorders brought about by the Townshend Acts, which put customs duties on a number of imports, including tea.

Clarke, who signed her letters, ``Your friend and affectionate cousin,'' could nevertheless be ironic and slyly sarcastic when the occasion called for it:

What a pretty figure your expedition to Boston will make in history ... They may now employ themselves in gathering of shells or what may please for they have nothing else to do ... As to insurrections, we know of none. And unruly mobs we'll leave to England, they don't govern America.

These letters, which are owned by Columbia University, were written when Clarke, who was born in 1747, was just entering her 20s. They provide one American woman's first-hand look at the troubles that led to the American Revolution.

Charity Clarke brushed history in other ways. Her father, Thomas Clarke, named his property in lower Manhattan ``Chelsea,'' for the soldiers' hospital near London, and thus gave a name to the Chelsea neighborhood of New York. She married Benjamin Moore, who later became the second Protestant Episcopal bishop of New York and president of Columbia College. Their only child, Clement Clarke Moore, a respected biblical scholar, is best-known for his poem ``A Visit From St. Nicholas.''

On March 31, 1769, Clarke echoed a general sentiment among Americans: They wanted an accommodation with Great Britain, not separation. One of the weapons being used by the colonies was a restriction on English imports, a tactic that caused some problems:

The attention of every American is fixed on England. The last accounts from thence are very displeasing to those who wish a good understanding between Britain and her colonies. The Americans are firm in their resolution of no importations from England. The want of money is so great among us that land sells for less than half price. The merchants have no cash to buy bills of exchange, which are now very low.

The following June, Clarke announced her readiness to join ``a fighting army of Amazones'' who would take to take to the hills, if necessary, to flee the oppressive British.

If you English folks won't give us the liberty we ask ... I will try to gather a number of ladies armed with spinning wheels [along with men] who shall all learn to weave & keep sheep, and will retire beyond the reach of arbitrary power, cloathed with the work of our hands, feeding on what the country affords ... In short, we will found a new Arcadia.

Worried about how her cousin might react to her scrappy letters, Clarke wrote in December, 1769, to wish that he be not offended:

I will not however rescind, no not even to possess your good opinion. They are my sentiments and I cannot help them, nor can I by any means think them seditious.

By Oct. 28, 1771, the Townshend Acts had been annulled, except for the tax on tea. But in the spring of 1770, five Patriots had died in the Boston Massacre, and anger was rising in the colonies. Charity Clarke wore her patriotism on her sleeve:

Unaffected patriotism & true virtue will I trust distinguish America in every age, and among every nation. So my dear Coz your fears are groundless. America still practices the though unboasted list of virtues, which the generality of English men have scarce an idea of.

King George III makes an interesting appearance in a letter of May 7, 1772. Whereas the king has become the symbol for everything wrong with late-18th Century British colonial policy, Clarke has sympathy for him, reserving her barbs for the policies of the British Parliament, and the barely competent prime minister, Frederick, Lord North.

How I pity the situation of our poor King, what with the death of his mother, the folly of his brother & the misfortunes (I hope not vices) of his sister. He has enough to overwhelm his heart with sorrow & embitter every enjoyment of life.

That spring, the latest scandal in London was that the king's favorite brother, 29-year-old William, had been for six years secretly married to a widow with three children - when all along the king thought the woman was merely William's mistress. The king's youngest sister, 21-year-old Caroline - who had married her first cousin, the disreputable King Christian VII of Denmark, when she was 16 - had long been the mistress of Christian's court physician, Johann Struensee, who earlier in 1772 had been jailed for plotting against King Christian.

Months passed, and things in America got worse. The last pre-revolutionary letter is dated Sept. 10, 1774. A year earlier, the Boston Tea Party had inflated British temperatures, and Parliament passed acts limiting the freedom of the colonists, especially in Massachusetts. But for Charity Clarke, ``rebel'' was a misnomer:

On what instance pray are the Americans called Rebels? What have they done to deserve the name? They have asserted their rights, and are determined to maintain them . . . Great Britain stands ready to destroy her sons for inheriting her spirit.

Clarke was now in high dudgeon, writing like a pamphleteer.

What care we for your fleets and armies, we are not going to fight with them unless drove to it by the last necessity, or the highest provocation ... Though this body is not clad with silken garments, these limbs are armed with strength. The soul is fortified by Virtue, and the love of Liberty is cherished within this bosom.

Then she attacked Lord North:

A proud, ambitious Minister governs in Britain. By his sophistry makes the King deaf to the remonstrances of his subjects, by his bribery obtains the majority of Parliament and by his power would spread tyranny to the western continent. But its inhabitants are not sunk in luxury, nor are they clouded by pomp. Their eyes watch over their liberty, observe every encroachment and oppose it. And is this their crime in your eyes, my Cousin? Do you condemn them for not being foolish enough to give away the property of their posterity? Surely you ought not to condemn America.

The final pages of this letter are missing. Thus, abruptly and in mid-tirade, ends Miss Charity Clarke's letters to her London cousin Joseph Jekyll on the eve of the American Revolution.