Lydia Barrington Darragh And The History of Women Changing Political Allegiance
On September 26, 1777, the British Army took Philadelphia. The following day, Major John André, the British Army’s spy chief, paid a visit to Lydia Barrington Darragh. She happened to live across the street from the house General William Howe had decided to take as his residence. Given her proximity to their headquarters, the dashing Major informed Lydia the General’s staff would be quartered in her rooms. Lydia’s family would have to make the necessary accommodations.
A midwife, Quaker, and mother of 5 - not to mention a subject of the Crown - Lydia hardly had the means to object. And yet, she did, marching across the street to the General’s house. But traversing those few short feet, a chance meeting changed the course of history when she ran into Captain William Barrington. He shared both her maiden name and her Irish brogue. As it turned out, they were second cousins. Feeling the loyalty of kinship, Captain Barrington accompanied Lydia to see General Howe, and together, they persuaded him to allow her family to stay in their home. But, the general informed her that his staff would be using her parlor for meetings. Since the Darragh’s were Quakers, he reasoned they could be trusted to be neutral.
Fair enough, and so time went on without much to mark it until December 2, 1777, when a note sent by Howe’s staff requested that her family retire at 8 p.m. While her husband and children complied, Lydia snuck down the stairs and pressed her ear against the door.
In muffled tones, she heard orders for troops to march on December 4 to make a surprise attack on the Continental Army camped at White Marsh, led by none other than George Washington. Having heard enough, Lydia tiptoed back up the stairs, crawled into bed, and pretended to be asleep until Major André rapt on her door three times. She rose, followed him down the stairs, let the officers out, and extinguished the candles while buzzing with what she had just overheard.
Contriving a reason to cross enemy lines the following day, Lydia obtained permission to get flour in Frankfurt. She did, in fact, go to the mill, but once there, she dropped her empty bag inside and made a beeline for the American camp nearby. Luckily, Lydia didn’t have to go that far. She spotted several Continental officers dining at the Rising Sun Tavern on her way.
Inside, she once more used the excuse of needing to buy flour as a reason to talk with a senior officer. But when he said he’d find out one way or the other by that evening, she surreptitiously handed him an old needle book (which I just looked up and discovered to be a cloth booklet with pockets people used to store needles). Befuddled, the officer accepted it without comment and flipped through it later that evening. Each pocket was empty, save the last, where he found a tightly rolled piece of paper on which she had written incredibly precise details about the planned surprise attack.
On December 4, the Continental Army met the British with loaded cannons and muskets. With their plans undone, the Red Coats turned tail and fled back to Philadelphia.
And so began the storied tradition of American women changing political allegiances when necessity, circumstance, patriotism, or safety required. These aisle crossings have had profound political and historical consequences at various times.
Take, for instance, the mercurial case of Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe. Norma’s life story had very few easy moments. At 10, she robbed a gas station and ran away with a friend to Oklahoma City. They rented a hotel room where a maid walked in on them kissing then called the cops and reported them for homosexuality. The courts declared Norma a ward of the state and sent her to a Catholic Boarding school, where god knows what happened to her. At 16, she finished school, got married, got pregnant, gave birth, and then developed a severe drug and alcohol addiction.
To support her habits and herself, Norma became a sex worker and sold drugs. She also began to identify as a lesbian. Life was not easy and made more difficult still when she became pregnant again, and then once more in short succession. It was with this third pregnancy Norma became the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade.
For years after that, Norma worked in various capacities in the pro-choice movement. But despite being its champion, they never accepted her - not entirely. Norma was working class and far less educated than the movement’s leaders. She felt like an outcast, and in truth, they often made her feel like that.
In 1994, Norma published her book, I Am Roe: My Life, Roe V. Wade, and Freedom of Choice. She wrote candidly about her troubled upbringing, difficulty with substance abuse, and the hardships she had endured throughout her life. At the time, she was working at an abortion clinic in North Dallas where Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group, had opened an office next door.
Perhaps sensing a troubled soul, an easy mark, or some combination of the two, the group’s leader, Flip Benham, began cultivating a relationship with Norma. Eventually, he convinced her to renounce her pro-choice stance. All hell broke loose.
Both sides used her as a hockey puck, trying to score political points with her story without ever much considering the impact on her life. Nevertheless, her change in allegiance created the kind of stir capable of swaying public discourse and changing popular opinion.
There are, of course, innumerable other instances in which women have seen the writing on the wall - whatever it might say - and moved accordingly. Elizabeth Dole, Bob Dole’s wife, began her life in politics by campaigning for the Kennedy–Johnson presidential ticket and then working for the Johnson Administration before becoming a paragon of conservatism. Former NRA spokeswoman and far-right commentator Dana Lynn Loesch cut her political chops working for Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign.
And yet, in recent years, there’s been an uptick in women crossing the aisle out of self-interest, self-preservation, and patriotism.
For instance, former Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews and former White House aide Cassidy Hutchenson testified during the January 6 Committee. Then there’s former Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention Elizabeth Neuman and former White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, who regularly make the cable talk show rounds. And there’s former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham and reproduction rights advocate Kate Cox, who spoke at the 2024 DNC. This is just to name a few of the women who’ve recently changed their allegiance from Republican to Democrat, or more specifically, from a supporter of the President-Elect to his ardent detractor.
For some, their Rubicon was the attempted coup on January 6, 2020, while others came to their conclusions gradually. Some made their decisions based on ethics, and some on the physical or psychological consequences that resulted from his first term in office.
But what is nearly universally true is that all of these women - and the women before them - were broadly accepted by the side of their new choosing without question. They were welcomed into the fold with open arms.
As we stare into the abyss of another 4 years of chaos, grifting, misogyny, crime, racism, and international turmoil, I expect there will be another wave of women who will abandon the GOP’s sinking ship. But I doubt the same grace will be afforded to them as those who came before.
The stakes are higher this time, and the repercussions are bound to be much more destructive and lasting. What’s more - they knew, we all knew, informed if not by his first term than by his unAmerican, undemocratic, and unapologetically fascistic campaign. Left, right, or center, Fox or MSNBC, X or Bluesky, the evidence was there, plain as day. He didn’t try to hide it. Indeed, aberrant behavior and selfishness formed the twin pillars of his platform.
As restrictive anti-choice laws negatively impact more women and girls, there will no doubt be many who find themselves harmed by such punitive measures. As inflationary tariffs tax families’ pocketbooks, more will be forced to accept that we live in a community of nations. As mass deportations go into effect, millions will come to terms with our reliance on immigrant labor and the brutality of such a policy. As dangerous dramas unfold daily in the world’s most powerful office, a significant portion of America will be confronted with the fact that they have made a poor choice in a president.
It will no doubt be tempting to indulge in schadenfreude, the pleasure or joy that comes from witnessing another person’s misfortune when such things inevitably come to pass. It’s already present in social media feeds reporting MAGA malaise and Trump regrets. It will be difficult to accept a change of heart in those who had such a steep learning curve when we were all made to suffer for their willed ignorance.
Yet, if we are to build a sustainable movement toward gender parity in the American government, a great deal of forgiveness will be required paired with a healthy dose of responsibility sharing. This is not only because we will need those women who would choose to change sides, but also because it will be imperative to listen to why they voted against their self-interest in the first place. Only through deep listening and profound acceptance can we enact the changes that can lift us out of the maelstrom ahead.
Sources
Recollections of the revolution