The following is a guest post by Danielle Herring, an intern with the Digital Resources Division of the Law Library of Congress. She is a graduate of the School of Information at Florida State University.
On a winter’s night in 1769 ladies assembled at a ball held in the future Virginia capitol of Richmond, an unremarkable event, yet their attendance, or specifically, what they were wearing, merited a mention in the colony’s newspaper. The Virginia Gazette reported that more than 100 of the women at the ball had worn homespun gowns, and the publication encouraged other American women to follow their example.
What was the significance of this wardrobe choice? The promotion of homespun clothing in the American colonies traces its origin to resistance on the part of colonists to several British laws that required the taxation of imported goods.
The Navigation Acts