Abstract: Peggy Shippen, Benedict Arnold’s wife, is rarely remembered in the telling of the American Revolution, yet her efforts nearly changed the course of the war. This lecture uses Shippen's story as a case study in how historical narratives are constructed, erased, and recovered. The lecture traces how Shippen was reduced by contemporaries and early historians alike to a beautiful, emotionally fragile bystander to the more nuanced version of her story, especially considering her work during the war. Drawing on historiographical shifts and scholars such as Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Joan Scott, it examines how the expansion of women's history - from "women worthies" to intersectional frameworks - transformed what sources historians trust, what questions they ask, and whose lives are deemed historically significant. Through the lens of parlor politics and agency-centered scholarship, Shippen emerges not as a footnote to Arnold's treason but as its architect. Ultimately, I argue that perspective forms both the historical and the present; how history is written shapes how we understand power, possibility, and ourselves.