{"product_id":"defiant-brides-isbn-9780807033265","title":"Defiant Brides","description":"\u003cb\u003eGet a “fresh perspective on the American Revolution” as an award-winning author reveals the true story of two young women who defied their Loyalist families to marry radical patriots, Henry Knox and Benedict Arnold (\u003ci\u003eShelf Awareness\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eWhen Peggy Shippen, the celebrated blonde belle of Philadelphia, married American military hero Benedict Arnold in 1779, she anticipated a life of fame and fortune, but financial debts and political intrigues prompted her to conspire with her treasonous husband against George Washington and the American Revolution. In spite of her commendable efforts to rehabilitate her husband’s name, Peggy Shippen continues to be remembered as a traitor bride.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Peggy’s patriotic counterpart was Lucy Flucker, the spirited and voluptuous brunette, who in 1774 defied her wealthy Tory parents by marrying a poor Boston bookbinder simply for love. When her husband, Henry Knox, later became a famous general in the American Revolutionary War, Lucy faithfully followed him through Washington’s army camps where she birthed and lost babies, befriended Martha Washington, was praised for her social skills, and secured her legacy as an admired patriot wife.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And yet, as esteemed biographer Nancy Rubin Stuart reveals, a closer look at the lives of both spirited women reveals that neither was simply a “traitor” or “patriot.” In \u003ci\u003eDefiant Brides\u003c\/i\u003e, the first dual biography of both Peggy Shippen Arnold and Lucy Flucker Knox,\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eStuart has crafted a rich portrait of two rebellious women who defied expectations and struggled—publicly and privately—in a volatile political moment in early America.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Drawing from never-before-published correspondence, Stuart traces the evolution of these women from passionate teenage brides to mature matrons, bringing both women from the sidelines of history to its vital center. Readers will be enthralled by Stuart’s dramatic account of the epic lives of these defiant brides, which begin with romance, are complicated by politics, and involve spies, disappointments, heroic deeds, tragedies, and personal triumphs.List of Internal Pictures \u003cbr\u003e Preface\u003cbr\u003e Part I:              DEFIANT BRIDES \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 1:   “The Handsomest Woman in America”                                  \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 2: “The Best and Tenderest of Friends”\u003cb\u003e                                       \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 3:   “The Delight, and Comfort of her Adoring General”            \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 4:    “Our Sweetest Hopes Embittered by Disappointment”        \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 5:   “Fortitude Under Stress”                                                        \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e PART  II:  TENDER WIVES            \u003cbr\u003eChapter 6:   “ As Good and innocent as an Angel”                                  \u003cbr\u003eChapter 7:   “A Momentary Pang”                                                           \u003cbr\u003eChapter 8:   “Haste Happy Time When We Shall Be No More Separate”\u003cbr\u003eChapter 9:   “Yet We Wade On”                                                                \u003cbr\u003eChapter 10:  “ My Regret at this Cruel, Dreadful Separation”                   \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e PART III:  SHADOW SISTERS \u003cbr\u003eChapter 11:  “Illusive Bubbles”                                                    \u003cbr\u003eChapter 12:  “ An Irresistible but Invisible Force”                                      \u003cbr\u003eChapter 13:  “ I Do Not Suffer My Spirits to Overcome Me”                    \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 14:  The Brides’s Legacies                                                             \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS  \u003cbr\u003eNOTES \u003cbr\u003eBIBLIOGRAPHY \u003cbr\u003eINDEX \u003cbr\u003eCREDITS“An ingenious means of bringing new life to the oldest story in our nation’s past: the American Revolution from the perspective of the young and clear-sighted wives of generals Benedict Arnold and Henry Knox. Tracing the parallel lives of two couples with conflicting loyalties, Nancy Rubin Stuart achieves a you-are-there verisimilitude in \u003ci\u003eDefiant Brides \u003c\/i\u003ethat is rare and not to be missed.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Megan Marshall, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Peabody Sisters \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eMargaret Fuller\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “In this lively double-biography, Nancy Rubin Stuart reveals the resilient lives of a leading patriot and a notorious Loyalist: both of them women. \u003cbr\u003e Lucy Flucker Knox and Peggy Shippen Arnold deftly performed the parlor politics that helped to shape the American Revolution in surprising ways.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Alan Taylor, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Civil War of 1812\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Written with verve and compassion, Nancy Rubin Stuart’s portrait of two extraordinary marriages of the American Revolution offers a valuable and moving reminder that even in the most dramatic of public events, private passions prevailed and participants remained, first and foremost, husbands and wives.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Marla R. Miller, author of \u003ci\u003eBetsy Ross and the Making of America\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e   \u003cbr\u003e “A captivating look at two marriages, marked by bold rebellion and fierce loyalty. The wives of traitor Benedict Arnold and Revolutionary hero Henry Knox never met, and died an ocean apart, but Stuart’s story of their marriages, full of love, passion, betrayal, and disappointments, reads like a Hollywood script.” \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Betty Boyd Caroli, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eFirst Ladies\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An effortless read and a fresh perspective on the American Revolution.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eShelf Awareness\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Stuart… draws on her long experience writing about women and social history to show that strong women have always driven their husbands to perform prominent actions, both good and bad.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"With the seemingly endless parade of books devoted to both founding fathers and revolutionary rascals, it’s nice to see some attention paid to the fervor with which some remarkable women navigated the romantic, political, and wartime challenges of the era.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eNancy Rubin Stuart\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eis an award-winning author specializing in women’s and social history. She has appeared on national television and NPR and has written for the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, among other publications. Stuart is a board member of the Women Writing Women’s Lives Seminar at the CUNY Graduate Center and executive director of the Cape Cod Writers Center.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVisit her on Facebook at https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/NancyRubinStuart\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eor on Twitter at http:\/\/twitter.com\/redancer1\u003cb\u003ePreface\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLove stories from eighteenth-century America are rare and often fragmented. Fortunately enough of the correspondence of Lucy Flucker Knox (1760–1824) and Margaret (Peggy) Shippen Arnold (1760–1804) has been preserved to trace their controversial marriages and dramatic lives.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Born four years apart to wealthy parents in pre–Revolutionary Boston and Philadelphia, Lucy and Peggy were intelligent, well-educated girls. As each developed into an attractive teenager in the mid-1770s, the political ferment of the American Revolution reached the boiling point. In the midst of that turmoil, both might have married men of their privileged class and led docile, if historically invisible, lives.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThankfully that did not happen. As the title of this double biography, \u003ci\u003eDefiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eRadical Men They Married\u003c\/i\u003e, implies both teenagers bucked social convention. One married radical patriot and poor bookseller Henry Knox in 1774; the other wed the then-military hero Benedict Arnold in 1779. Coupled with the young women’s fateful marriages was their feistiness. Under different circumstances, Lucy and Peggy might have become friends. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor generations, the books devoted to the Founding Fathers and the Revolution’s military leaders have dismissed both women as mere footnotes to history, either as laughable or trivial helpmates married to Knox and Arnold. A close examination of their lives tells quite a different story, revealing Lucy and Peggy as remarkably resilient women who intimately witnessed and participated in the Revolution’s turbulent course. The same spirit that impelled the annually pregnant Lucy to follow Henry Knox through the Revolution’s army camps also drove her mirror opposite, Peggy, to support Arnold’s betrayal of America and subsequently troubled life in England and the loyal colonies in North America later known as Canada.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSuperficially Lucy’s patriotism seems as commendable as Peggy’s treason is condemnable. Yet that is not quite fair. For all our glorification of its origins, the Revolution was not universally supported by the American colonists. An estimated one-third of those living in America’s thirteen states in the years following the Battle of Lexington and Concord doubted the wisdom of independence from the mother country. Some citizens remained Loyalists. Others, unnerved by the economic hardships of the war, hedged, declaring themselves neutralists. It was thus natural that as an enamored eighteen-year-old bride, Lucy would side with her husband, Henry Knox, to support the American Revolution. It was equally understandable that the teenaged Peggy Shippen would sympathize with her politically disappointed bridegroom, Benedict Arnold, to betray America to the British. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat twinned blend of youthful defiance and dedication to their men, though a hallmark of adolescent passion in any age, drew me to research the lives of Lucy Flucker Knox and Peggy Shippen Arnold in the context of the American Revolution. At first I suspected that the two women must have met. Arnold, after all, had gallantly escorted Lucy and her toddler from New Haven in late spring 1778 to join her husband in Valley Forge. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEight months later, Henry Knox rode to Philadelphia to meet with Congress. From there he enthusiastically wrote his brother about Arnold’s engagement to the wealthy, beautiful, and accomplished Peggy Shippen. Lucy, however, had not accompanied him; then in the last weeks of pregnancy, she had remained in the Knoxes’ temporary home near the Middlebrook army camp. As their lives diverged, the two women had no other occasion to meet, although they knew about each other through their husbands. Nor have letters between Lucy and Peggy subsequently been discovered.\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDefiant Brides\u003c\/i\u003e, nevertheless, traces Lucy and Peggy’s initially parallel lives, from those as smitten newlyweds to mature wives and mothers. While researching this book I found several frustrating gaps in each of set of their correspondences. Lucy rarely wrote to anyone other than her husband, and then only when separated from him during the war. Today, most of her letters are preserved in archives, especially at the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Massachusetts Historical Society.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeggy’s correspondence from her youth and the early years of her marriage was lost, a consequence of Shippen’s decision to destroy it to protect her from accusations as Arnold’s co-conspirator. Fortunately, the Shippen family began saving Peggy’s letters after the September 1783 Peace of Paris, which formalized the British surrender. Today the Historical Society of Pennsylvania retains Peggy’s correspondence from the last twenty-one years of her life. Many of those letters also appear in Lewis Burd Walker’s 1900–1902 series in the \u003ci\u003ePennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring the Revolution, Lucy and Peggy stood on opposite sides of the political schism, one as a staunch patriot, the second as a spy; one in shabby homespun, the other in silken English gowns; one in a log hut, the second in a luxurious townhouse; unwitting counterparts who lived dramatically different lives in the service of connubial love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs women, their personal evolutions also stand in sharp relief. Subsequent to the Revolution, the exiled Peggy endured hisses and taunts as a suspected accomplice to Arnold’s treason; crossed the Atlantic three times; excused her husband’s public, often fractious enmities with peers and business associates; and, after his 1801 death, resolutely paid off his debts. During those same years, Lucy’s devotion to Knox, her legendary hospitality, the deaths of ten of her children, and her obsession with cards transformed her into a superficially formidable, but ultimately sympathetic, character.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheir attitudes towards their husbands were equally contrasted. Although lamenting her separations from Knox during the war, Lucy refused to be intimidated by his promotions as General George Washington’s chief of artillery and brigadier-general of the Continental army. In one of her letters, written during the siege of New York in 1777, she insisted upon having an equal voice in their marriage. Bluntly, she wrote that Knox must not “consider yourself as commander in chief of your own house, but be convinced . . . that there is such a thing as equal command.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1. In contrast was Peggy’s solicitous attitude towards Arnold—“the General,” as she referred to him. During the tense days preceding a July 1792 duel in London between the contentious Arnold and the feckless Earl of Lauderdale, the frightened Peggy practiced restraint. To do so, as she later wrote her father, Judge Edward Shippen, in Philadelphia, had required “all my fortitude . . . [to] prevent [me from] . . . sinking under it, which would unman him [Arnold] and prevent his acting himself.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2. Their marital styles were as significant as their political sensibilities. As the following pages reveal, Lucy, for all her patriotism and personal losses, was a temperamental, often difficult mate; Peggy, a shrewd accomplice to Arnold’s treason, endured emotional and fi nancial hardships with genteel restraint. It was my hope that their pairing in \u003ci\u003eDefiant Brides \u003c\/i\u003ewould transcend the coincidence of their “defiant” marriages to reveal how lapses in one of them inadvertently highlighted admirable traits in the other.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIs treason or betrayal of others forgivable if the rest of that person’s life seems admirable? Do sacrifices for patriotism—or for any other pro-social cause—excuse selfishness or insensitivities towards a loved one? To make such judgments must be left to you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy goal was to capture the lives of Lucy Flucker Knox and Peggy Shippen Arnold beyond their iconic portraits as patriot and traitor, respectively, and depict them as human beings, as vulnerable, fallible, and praiseworthy as we are today.","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303778799845,"sku":"NP9780807033265","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780807033265.jpg?v=1767724961","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/defiant-brides-isbn-9780807033265","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}