Deborah Sampson
Deborah Sampson
Deborah Sampson Gannett, better known as Deborah Sampson or Deborah Samson, was a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. She is one of a small number of women with a documented record of military combat experience in that war. She served 17 months in the army, as "Robert Shurtleff" of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, was wounded in 1782, and was honorably discharged at West Point, New York, in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWar Hero
Date of Birth17 December 1760
CityPlympton, MA
CountryUnited States of America
What shall I say further? Shall I not stop short and leave to your imaginations to portray the tragic deeds of war? Is it not enough that I here leave it even to unexperience to fancy the hardships, the anxieties, the dangers, even of the best life of a soldier?
On the whole, as we readily acquiesce in the acknowledgment that the field and the cabinet are the proper spheres assigned to our Masters and our Lords, may we also deserve the dignified title and encomium of Mistress and Lady in our kitchens and in our parlours.
Happy for America, happy for Europe, perhaps for the world when, on the delivery of Cornwallis's sword to the illustrious, the immortal Washington, or rather by his order, to the brave Lincoln, the sun of Liberty and Independence burst through a sable cloud, and his benign influence was, almost instantaneously, felt in our remotest corners!
I became an actor in that important drama with an inflexible resolution to persevere through the last scene, when we might be permitted and acknowledged to enjoy what we had so nobly declared we would possess, or lose with our lives - Freedom and Independence!
I burst the tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe.
I am indeed willing to acknowledge what I have done, an error and presumption. I will call it an error and presumption because I swerved from the accustomed flowery path of female delicacy, to walk upon the heroic precipice of feminine perdition!
Why can I not fight for my country too?
Wrought upon at length, you may say, by an enthusiasm and frenzy that could brook no control - I burst the tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe, and clandestinely, or by stealth, grasped an opportunity, which custom and the world seemed to deny, as a natural privilege.
As I was born to be unfortunate, my sun soon clouded.
As an overruling providence may succeed our wishes, let us rear an offspring in every respect worthy to fill the most illustrious stations of their predecessors.
November 11, 1802, I arrived at Judge Patterson's at Lisle. This respectable family treated me with every mark of distinction and friendship, and likewise all the people did the same. I really want for words to express my gratitude.
I take it to be from the greatest extremes, both in virtue and in vice, that the uniformly virtuous and reformed in life can derive the greatest and most salutary truths and impressions.
Repentance is a sweet solace to conscience as well as the most complete atonement to the Supreme Judge of our offenses; notwithstanding, the tongue of malevolence and scurrility may be continually preparing its most poisonous ingredients for the punishment of a crime, which has already received more than half a pardon.
Such is my experience - not that I ever mourned the loss of a child, but that I consider myself as lost!