characterized by their courage, patriotism, and selflessness along with their willingness to take
action (Snyder 23-24). For Machiavelli, these traits of civic virtue are interchangeable with
masculinity. As Hannah Pitkin points out, Machiavelli repeatedly defines virtu against all that is
“effeminato” (quoted in Snyder 1999, 24)—all that is either passive and meek on the one hand
(Snyder 25), or wily, cunning, and unpredictable on the other (Brown 1995, 89). This array of
feminine traits stands in stark opposition with the qualities of the citizen soldier. Courage,
patriotism, and so forth are realized through action that defies the passivity of Christian
effeminacy and that subdues the fickle ways of feminine Fortuna. And, as Snyder highlights, by
way of this opposition to all that is associated with femininity, the figure of the citizen solder
brings together “soldiering, masculinity, and citizenship” (25).
The armed masculinity of Machiavelli’s citizen soldier reverberated in the organization
of the Revolutionary-era U.S. military, as did its symbolic feminine counterpart. But in this
instance, femininity was linked less with passivity or cunning seductiveness than with
domesticity and reproductive labor. Indeed, the attributes associated with soldiering alongside
those associated with “republican motherhood” put the gendered dynamics of the division of
labor into stark relief. The masculine citizen soldier was counterpoised against the ideal of the
republican mother—the embodiment of feminine citizen virtue realized through performing
reproductive labor. The concept of republican motherhood has become ubiquitous in feminist
scholarship, but its origin lies in Linda Kerber’s analysis of women’s roles in the American
Revolution. Republican motherhood derived in part from the role assigned to women to perform
the social reproductive labor to support members of the army. Kerber explains that “the
American army offered political uses for traditional domestic skills. … Wives and children who
had no means of support when their husbands and fathers were pressed into service followed
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Convention