"I am wounded, Colonel." "Think no more of it, Baxter, but stand to your post," called back Horry. "But I can't stand, Colonel, I am wounded a second time." "Then lie down, Baxter, but quit not your post." "Colonel," cried the suffering man, "they have shot me again, and if I remain longer here I shall be shot to pieces." "Be it so Baxter," returned Horry, "but stir not."
The part that women took in the Revolution has been sung by poets and made the nucleus of writers' efforts for a hundred years and more. Those Revolutionary women had brawn as well as brain. They were able to defend their homes from the depredations of the Royalists; they could bid the Indian begone, not only by word of mouth but at the musket's end. They could plow and sow and reap; they could care for their families and they could take up arms in liberty's cause if the need arose. Oh, those women of the American Revolution! What a history of bravery and fortitude and endurance they bequeathed to their descendants! There is some humor, too, in the stories left to us in record of their heroism.
It was the fashion among certain circles of Whig women, during the dark days of the Revolution, to wear deep mourning as an indication of their feelings. The black typified the darkness of the times and was worn by the town ladies who could afford it. One of these ladies, a Mrs. Brewton, was walking along Broad street in Charleston one morning, when she was joined by an insolently familiar British officer. At that very moment, the crepe flounce on her dress was accidently torn off. She quickly picked it up and passing just at that time the house of the absent Governor, John Rutledge, she sprang up the steps before the astonished eyes of the officer and decked the door with crepe, saying in ringing tones, "Where are you, dearest Governor? Surely the magnanimous Britons will not deem it a crime if I cause your house as well as your friends to mourn your absence." Colonel Moncrief, the English engineer, was occupying the house at the time, and his feelings were hurt at the action of Mrs. Brewton, as were those of the officer who had been with her, and she was arrested a few hours afterward and sent to Philadelphia.
One of the most marked women of the Revolution, a woman who figured in many a ludicrous as well as serious incident, was Nancy Hart, of Georgia. Nancy had a frightful temper, a big ungainly body, and she suffered from a most marked obliquity of sight. In fact Nancy was so cross-eyed, that her own children never could tell when their mother was looking at them and were perhaps better behaved on that very account. One time a party of Tories entered her modest home on food intent. They had taken the precaution of providing food for themselves, shooting Nancy's last remaining gobbler. Mrs. Hart had her head muffled up and no one had noticed her cross-eyes. The soldiers stacked their arms within reach and Nancy passed between them and the table, assiduous in her attention to the diners. The party had a jug, of course, and when they were becoming right merry, Nancy suddenly tore the mufflers from her head and snatching up one of the guns, swore that she would kill every last man who tried to get his gun or who delayed in getting out of the cabin. The men looked at Nancy's eyes and each man thinking she was aiming at him only, made a hasty and determined exit. But the terrible woman killed three Tories that day with her own hands. One day Nancy was boiling soap. As she industriously stirred, one of her eyes caught a glimpse of a Tory peeking through a chink in the cabin. Stirring busily away, Nancy kept one eye on the soap and the other on the chink. When the spy again appeared she let drive full at the chink, a good big ladle full of hot soap. A scream satisfied her that she had hit the mark, and she finished her soap-making with great satisfaction. This woman was termed by one of the patriots: "A honey of a patriot, but the devil of a wife."
The Revolutionary woman's resources were indeed great, and the strategy she employed was as satisfactory as it was many times humorous. A Whig woman of New York State, a Mrs. Fisher, was one morning surprised by the hurried entrance of a Whig neighbor, who begged of her to conceal him as the Tories were pursuing him. Just outside her door was an ash heap four or five feet high. Seizing a shovel, Mrs. Fisher immediately excavated a place in the ashes and buried her friend in it. But first she had taken precaution to place a number of quills one in the other and extend them from the prisoner's mouth to the air, that he might breathe, and there he remained snugly ensconced until the Tories had come and gone, and even though they ran over the ash heap, they never suspected what lay beneath it.
Equally resourceful was that woman of the Revolution, who when her husband was pursued by Tories, hustled him down cellar and into a meat barrel partially filled with brine and meat. The Tories went into the cellar and even peered into the barrel, but they did not discover the man, who at the risk of terribly inflamed eyes, ducked his head beneath the brine, when he heard the soldiers' hands on the head of the barrel. Inflamed eyes were easier to bear than imprisonment in the hands of the British.
Bill Nye's description of the close of the war is as humorous as it is correct. Nye wrote: "The country was free and independent, but oh, how ignorant it was about the science of government. The author does not wish to be personal when he states that the country at that time did not know enough about affairs to carry water for a circus elephant. It was heavily in debt, with no power to raise money. New England refused to pay tribute to King George and he in turn directed his hired men to overturn the government; but a felon broke out on his thumb and before he could put it down, the crisis was averted and the country saved."
And so it goes; the sad and the humorous are blended on every side in life's struggles either in war or peace. Fortunate is the man or woman who can halt a little by the wayside and for a few moments laugh dull care away.—Compiled from Federation Magazine.