It was this same Arnold who was mentioned in the diary of another belle of Philadelphia, Miss Sally Wister, when she wrote: "Our brave, our heroic General Washington was escorted by fifty of the Life Guard, with drawn swords. Each day he acquires an addition to his goodness. We have been very anxious to know how the inhabitants of Philadelphia have fared. I understand that General Arnold, who bears a good character, has the command of the city." She was writing from the Foulks estate, in Montgomery County, where she was staying for a time, and her diary, which concludes with the above quoted entry, is full of such warm expressions of patriotism that none can doubt that Miss Sally, who died a spinster, placed the cause of America even before the attractions of such men as Major Stoddert and Captain Dandridge, who vainly attempted to influence her to "change her condition," as the quaint old phrase puts it.
The days of the Revolution were full of romance as well as of sterner history, and while the women of Massachusetts and the Carolinas, as well as those of interior Pennsylvania and rural New York, proved themselves made of sterner stuff than is the custom to expect from their sex, the belles of the great cities--great only for their times--of New York and Philadelphia flirted and danced and jested and made themselves in all ways agreeable to the red-clad soldiers of England. It may be that these last ladies unwittingly and against their will served the cause of their country by enervating the soldiers of the king and keeping them from the sterner training which was making hardy veterans of the Continentals. But romance and the stern aspects of war were not infrequently blended in strange fashion, as in the case of Mary Piper--better known as Polly Piper--of Boston, who was loved by a British soldier named Samuel Lee. Before the beginning of the struggle the Pipers moved to Concord; and when the "regulars" marched upon that place to secure the ammunition which was reported to General Gage as being stored there, Lee went with his regiment. But his heart was not in his work: love had taught him something, and he no longer, as at first, looked upon all Americans as benighted savages and their cause as flat treason. Miss Polly had scorned his suit as that of a British soldier, and this fact had worked a result. In the "running fight" at Concord he did not fire his musket; but he was shot as he ran from the field and was carried, severely wounded, into a house where the stricken were being cared for. A woman bent over him; and he opened his eyes to meet those of Polly Piper. He recovered, but not to serve again as a soldier of England; he returned no more to the red flag, but married Miss Polly and lived quietly in Concord until his death in 1790. Thus love won from the enemies of America at least one sword, and thus was romance justified of its works.
The patriotic spirit which flamed throughout the land burned with no steadier or more brilliant glow than among the women. All are familiar with the famous picture entitled The Spirit of '76; but that picture is incomplete. The octogenarian and the boy should be waved upon their march by the wife and the mother, sending husband and son forth to peril or death, while they themselves turn with a smile to the bearing of privation or actual starvation. Not more strongly and nobly did the "spirit of '76" flourish in the hearts of the sons of the oppressed country than in those of its daughters, nor was the response more splendid.
There was no distinction of high and low. The stately dame, lapped in luxury all her days and a stranger to hardship or even anxiety, gave up to her country's cause her dearest joys, and not only sent husband or son to the forefront of the battle, but herself, if she was in the path of war, bore unflinchingly the outrages of an incensed soldiery and saw her home given to the flames and the very lives of herself and her children threatened, and yet thought it not too great a price to pay for her country's liberty. The wife of the humble tiller of the soil, with perhaps even more complete, though hardly as recognized, surrender of self, sent forth with cheery words the breadwinner, the support of herself and her children, and turned with grand courage to keep them and herself from hunger, while her goodman was fighting for the rescue of his native land from oppression. Each bore her part, and all with no reserve of gift.
The ebullition of the feminine spirit of those days was often little less than fanatical in nature. Women do nothing by halves; they are faithful lovers and enthusiastic haters, and they are not always governed in either feeling by the monitions of unbiased justice or even judgment. In a letter from Mrs. Hannah Winthrop, of Cambridge, we find a reference to the fight at Lexington, which, in all its stiltedness of language, shows the fiery and bitter hatred that was held by patriot women for the enemies of their country: "Nor can she ever forget, nor will old Time ever erase, the horrors of that midnight cry, preceding the bloody massacre at Lexington, when we were roused from the benign slumbers of the season by beat of drum and ringing of bells, with the dire alarm that a thousand of the troops of George the Third had gone forth to murder the peaceful inhabitants of the surrounding villages. A few hours, with the dawning day, convinced us the bloody purpose was executing; the platoon firing assured us that the rising sun must witness the bloody carnage. Not knowing what the event would be at Cambridge, at the return of these bloody ruffians, and seeing another brigade dispatched to the assistance of the former, looking with the ferocity of barbarians, it seemed necessary to retire to some place of safety, till the calamity was passed."
The lady is evidently overfond of a certain epithet of sanguinary denotation, nor can she be complimented upon her high-flown style; but it is evident that behind the affectation of phrase there is an intense earnestness of hatred that stands as typical of its sexual source. To the patriot women of America the British were "ruffians" and "barbarians" and the most bloody-minded of human beings just as to the Loyalists the Continentals were "rebels" and "traitors," for whom hanging would have been a punishment so mild as to suggest weakness in the administrator. To the patriot woman poor old George III. was the very incarnation of all evil and malice, just as to the Tory lady another George was the vilest of ingrates to lead the armies of the rebels against the authority of so gracious a king as he of England. Both were honest in their extremes of fanaticism and so may well be pardoned, and even admired, for those extremes, with their resultant enthusiasm in the cause of freedom or loyalty.
Meanwhile there existed, though hardly flourished, the gentler arts among the women of America; and Mercy Warren, wife of James Warren and daughter of James Otis, she to whom Mrs. Winthrop's letter was addressed, wielded a more refined and therefore more effective pen than that of her friend, being the one female writer of her day who may be called notable. She was hardly less enthusiastic than Mrs. Winthrop in the cause of liberty, and she was possessed of a very respectable gift of satire which made her writings a power in their way. When there was discussed among the colonists the plan of suspending all commerce with Great Britain because of the vexed matter of the taxes, Mrs. Warren wrote a long poetic effusion which exemplifies her gift of satire, of which the best lines are these:
"'Tis true, we love the courtly mien and air,
The pride of dress, and all the debonair:
Yet Clara quits the more dressed negligé,