Each section of the country had its special burdens, trials, and dangers. The populous districts bore the first brunt of the enemy's attack; the thinly settled regions were drained of men, and the women were left in a pitiable condition of weakness and isolation. This was largely the condition of Massachusetts and Connecticut, where nearly every family sent some, if not all, of its men to the war. In the South the patriots were forced to practice continual vigilance in consequence of the divided feeling upon the question of the propriety of separation from the mother-country. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were battle grounds, and here, perhaps more fully than elsewhere, were experienced war's woes and desolation. But in every State throughout the thirteen colonies, and in every town, hamlet, or household, where there were patriot wives, mothers, or daughters, woman's claims to moral greatness in that crisis were gloriously vindicated.
If we were to search for traits and incidents to illustrate the whole circle of both the stronger and the gentler virtues, we might find them in woman's record during the American Revolution.
In scenes of carnage and death women not seldom displayed a cool courage which made them peers of the bravest soldiers who bore flint-locks at Bunker Hill or Trenton. Of such bravery, the following quartette of heroines will serve as examples.
During the attack on Fort Washington, Mrs. Margaret Corbin, seeing her husband, who was an artillery man, fall, unhesitatingly took his place and heroically performed his duties. Her services were appreciated by the officers of the army, and honorably noticed by Congress. This body passed the following resolution in July, 1779:
Resolved, That Margaret Corbin, wounded and disabled at the battle of Fort Washington while she heroically filled the post of her husband, who was killed by her side, serving a piece of artillery, do receive during her natural life, or continuance of said disability, one half the monthly pay drawn by a soldier in the service of these States; and that she now receive out of public store one suit of clothes, or value thereof in money.
Soon after the commencement of the Revolutionary War, the family of a Dr. Channing, being in England, removed to France, and shortly afterwards sailed for the United States. The vessel, said to be stout and well armed, was attacked on the voyage by a privateer, and a fierce engagement ensued. During its continuance, Mrs. Channing stood on the deck, exhorting the crew not to give up, encouraging them with words of cheer, handing them cartridges and aiding such of them as were disabled by wounds. When at length the colors of the vessel were struck, she seized her husband's pistol and side arms and flung them into the sea, declaring that she would prefer death to the spectacle of their surrender into the hands of the foe.
At the siege of one of the forts of the Mohawk Valley, it is related by the author of the "Border Wars of the American Revolution," that an interesting young woman, whose name yet lives in story among her own mountains, perceiving, as she thought, symptoms of fear in a soldier who had been ordered to fetch water from a well, without the ranks and within range of the enemy's fire, snatched the bucket from his hands and ran to the well herself. Without changing color or giving the slightest evidence of fear, she drew and brought back bucket after bucket to the thirsty soldiers, and providentially escaped without injury.
Four or five miles north of the village of Herkimer, N. Y., stood the block-house of John Christian Shell, whose wife acted a heroic part when attacked by the Tories, in 1781. From two o'clock in the afternoon until twilight, the besieged kept up an almost incessant firing, Mrs. Shell loading the guns for her husband and older sons to discharge. During the siege, McDonald, the leader of the Tories, attempted to force the door with, a crow-bar, and was shot in the leg, seized by Shell, and drawn within doors. Exasperated by this bold feat, the enemy soon attempted to carry the fortress by assault; five of them leaping upon the walls and thrusting their guns through the loop-holes. At that moment the cool courageous woman, Mrs. Shell, seized an axe, smote the barrels, bent and spoiled them. The enemy soon after shouldered their guns, crooked barrels and all, and quickly buried themselves in the dense forest.
Heroism in those days was confined to no section of our country. Moll Pitcher, at Monmouth, battle-stained, avenged her husband by the death-dealing cannon which she loaded and aimed. Cornelia Beekman, at Croton, faced down the armed Tories with the fire of her eye; Angelica Vrooman, at Schoharie, moulded bullets amid the war and carnage of battle, while Mary Hagidorn defended the fort with a pike; Mrs. Fitzhugh, of Maryland, accompanied her blind and decrepit husband when taken prisoner at midnight and carried into the enemy's lines.
Dicey Langston, of South Carolina, also showed a "soul of love and bravery." Living in a frontier settlement, and in the midst of Tories, and being patriotically inquisitive, she often learned by accident, or discovered by strategy, the plottings so common in those days against the Whigs. Such intelligence she was accustomed to communicate to the friends of freedom on the opposite side of the Ennosee river.