Just as many women agitated in favor of independence and fought in the war on the patriot side, others argued in favor of reconciliation with Britain. Like Charles Inglis, Hannah Griffits, a Quaker from Philadelphia, took offense to what she viewed as Thomas Paine’s extremism. She wrote the following poem in April 1777 in response to “The American Crisis,” a series of articles written by Thomas Paine during the Revolutionary War.

On reading a few Paragraphs in the Crisis

April 1777

Paine, tho’ thy Tongue may now run glibber,

Warm’d with thy Independent Glow,

Thou art indeed, the boldest Fibber.

I ever knew or wish to know.

Here Page & Page, ev’n num’rous Pages,

Are void of Breeding, Sense or Truth,

I hope thou don’t receive thy Wages,

As Tutor to our rising Youth.

Of female Manners never scribble,

Nor with thy Rudeness wound our Ear,

How e’er thy trimming Pen may quibble,

The Delicate—is not thy Sphere;

And now to prove how false thy Stories

By Facts,—which wont admit a Doubt

Know there are conscientious Tories

And one poor Whig at least without

Wilt thou permit the Muse to mention,

A Whisper circulated round,

“Let Howe encrease the Scribblers Pension

No more will Paine a Whig be found.”—

For not from Principle, but Lucre,

He gains his Bread from out the Fire,

Let Court & Congress, both stand neuter,

And the poor Creature must expire.

Source: David S. Shields, ed., American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New York: The Library of America, 2007), 562–63.