More than equal: unlikely (s)heroes of the Revolutionary War
For International Women’s MONTH: Women’s bravery in battle has been lost to history and sexism
[Why only a day? Why not a month…for all International Women? They are, after all, half of the population…shouldn’t they get six months?
I digress…]
Sometimes I am moved to tip my hat to some of the remarkable humans who have walked the paving stones of history. Not all humans have been lying, thieving, sociopathic scalawags like Trump, or murderous, self-justifying psychopaths like Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Andrew Jackson (with Netanyahu slowly creeping up the list). Some people have been exemplary models of valor, dignity, generosity, consensus-building and problem-solving, stars in the dark firmament showing the true beauty that a human being is capable of.
The ones I typically admire are those who have overcome great adversity to accomplish remarkable feats, even heroic ones. The ones who had to fight for recognition of their humanity against the despots and bigots of their own time. In this era of “me me me” solipsism, I sit up attentively over the tales of people who have risked life and limb to advance their own humanity, and in the process marched the human race a step closer to its own.
Margaret Cochran Corbin, the first woman who…
Allow me to introduce you to Margaret Cochran Corbin, the first woman combatant to take a bullet for revolutionary America. Young America was seeking to throw off its colonial chains from Great Britain, and Margaret’s bravery in battle and fortitude in life are a tribute to our collective humanity, as well as our ongoing redefinition of femininity.
Margaret Corbin was not some delicate wallflower. Oh no, she reportedly could cuss and drink with the crustiness of any man. And she was a better shooter than Caitlin Clark, though her shot was of a different kind, and with a different kind of ball.
She was born in 1751 on the frontier of central Pennsylvania near Gettysburg. When she was a child the French and Indian War broke out, and the local Shawnee and Delaware tribes allied with the French and attacked English settlements to reclaim territory they had lost in the previous decades. Native warriors attacked her home, killing her father and kidnapping her mother who she never saw again. Margaret and her brother were adopted and raised by an uncle.
The hardships of Corbin’s young frontier life perhaps instilled in her the resilience that would serve her well during the Revolution when history came knocking.
When Margaret was 21 she married a farmer named John Corbin, who soon joined the Continental Army in 1775 and was promptly sent off to war. Like so many wives of Revolutionary soldiers, Margaret had to decide between staying behind and fending for herself on the frontier — the potential dangers including poverty, starvation and British attacks — or she could travel with her husband and other soldiers and endure all the hardships and dangers of life in a poorly equipped and barely disciplined Patriot army.
Camp followers
Margaret chose to stay with her husband and joined the ranks of the Continental Army’s camp followers. “Camp follower” was the name for all the women and children who traveled with the Army throughout the war. Life for these tagalongs was hard, most were the wives or daughters of soldiers. They were paid small wages to cook, sew and do laundry for the troops, and to care for the sick and wounded. They received meals from the Army’s rations and slept in the camps. Some of the women also aided the men in their duties, particularly artillerymen, where the wives observed and at times stepped in to lend a hand during drills and maintenance of the cannon. No one is certain about the number of camp followers, though some historians estimate as many as 20,000 over the course of the American Revolution.
The reputation of some camp followers raised a disapproving eyebrow, rumors circulating that some of the women were prostitutes. Soldiering was a rough and dirty business, and many of the women were rough-mannered and prone to swearing and drinking. General George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental Army, tried to limit the number of followers but even he recognized that they provided a number of indispensable services and that their presence kept many of his soldiers from deserting.
Margaret herself reportedly was gruff and strong, and at five feet eight inches tall she was as tall as many men. Her husband was a maltross – he assisted the gunners in loading and firing the cannon. Margaret reportedly fit right in among the cannon crew, both in size and temperament. One report says she dressed more like a man. Possessed with a forceful personality, she apparently made few friends among the women in camp, instead feeling more at home smoking and conversing with the other soldiers in her husband’s company who affectionately called her “Captain Molly” (many of these women were given the nickname Molly, including the more famous Molly Pitcher, whose real name was Mary Ludwig Hays and who carried water to thirsty soldiers and to cool the cannons when she became a camp follower two years later)
(S)Heroism at the battle of Fort Washington near New York City
In 1776, Margaret’s regiment marched to New York and was stationed at Fort Washington in northern Manhattan, the island on which New York City resides. When the British took control of the city, Fort Washington became the only American stronghold left on the island. The British attacked the garrison with 8,000 British and Hessian mercenary forces mounting a fierce charge. Margaret and other “Molly Pitchers” followed their husbands into battle to assist with carrying water and caring for the wounded.
As the Hessians moved up the hill toward the fort, John Corbin and most of his cannon team were strafed and killed. Rather than retreat to a safer location, Margaret, who had stayed alongside her husband, took over firing the cannon. Her aim was so deadly, and she inflicted so much devastation upon the attacking Hessians, that the enemy halted their advance to focus on eliminating her. They pointed over a dozen cannon on her position, raining down solid shot and grape shot.
It took hours of constant fighting for the Hessian troops to reach the top of the ridge (today known as Bennett Park, the highest natural point in Manhattan). Eventually Margaret was cut down by three musket balls and a well-aimed cannon blast. The hot metal balls ripped into her left shoulder and breast, nearly severing her arm while also carving into her jaw. Her cannon was the last to fall silent. Severely wounded, Margaret lay beside her cannon while the Hessian troops swarmed over the top of the ridge and pushed back the remaining Patriot riflemen (see the enactment painting at the head of this article).
Once the British captured the fort, they found Margaret by her cannon in critical condition. She was taken prisoner, along with a couple thousand of her fellow soldiers who were marched to makeshift prisons in New York City and onto prison hulks anchored in the harbor. Only 800 of them survived due to malnutrition and disease from the sordid prison conditions. British doctors treated Margaret for her severe wounds and saved her life, but her left arm was permanently paralyzed.
Margaret was eventually released by her captors and returned to Philadelphia. She was completely incapacitated and virtually unable to care for herself. And she was alone in the world, with no family support. She applied for financial help from the Pennsylvania government and in 1779 it granted her a measly $30 to cover her needs, but then passed her case on to Congress’ Board of War.
To recognize or ignore…
The Board had never recognized a female soldier before, much less granted a pension to a woman. Finally the Board decided that “as [Corbin] had [courage] enough to supply the place of her husband after his fall in the service of his Country, and in the execution of that task received the dangerous wound under which she now labors, the board can but consider her as entitled to the same grateful return which would be made to a soldier in circumstance equally unfortunate.” She was granted a lifelong monthly pension as a soldier in the Continental Army – but only half that of male combatants, a measly $3.30 per month. Nevertheless, that made her the first woman to be awarded a pension for military service.
Post-war battle for recognition
The rest of her short life was a struggle. Her wounds incapacitated her for the rest of her life. She could not earn a living on her own and required assistance even for simple tasks, such as dressing and eating. In 1780 she was allowed to enroll in the Corps of Invalids, composed of disabled soldiers who were employed in garrisons, hospitals and prisons, and was eventually stationed in West Point, New York where she helped care for other wounded soldiers.
There she lived out the rest of her days, reportedly displaying a sharp tongue and quick temper. One contemporary account remembered her as “the famous Irish woman called Captain Molly…she generally dressed in the petticoats of her sex, with an artilleryman’s coat over.” Behind her back people referred to her as ‘Dirty Kate,’ but when face to face, she was saluted as Captain Molly and was held in high regard.
Margaret eventually succumbed to complications from her old wounds and died on a cold winter morning, January 16, 1800, aged 48. She did not receive full military honors upon her death, like other veterans, and was buried in a little cemetery where her inscriptionless grave quickly became overgrown and -- along with the memory of her heroics – forgotten to nearly everyone.
She rested there for 126 years until the New York State Society of Daughters of the American Revolution brought new interest in Corbin’s life. In 1926, after extensive research involving local historians and physicians, the body was exhumed and examined to confirm it was hers based on the injuries on her skeleton. The body was reinterred at the West Point Cemetery with full military honors, becoming one of only two Revolutionary War soldiers to be buried there.
The Daughters of the American Revolution erected the Margaret Corbin Monument over her new gravesite, to commemorate the bravery and patriotism of a remarkable woman. So too, Margaret Corbin is recognized in New York City at Fort Tryon, the renamed Fort Washington which she had defended so bravely along with her husband’s cannon crew. A tablet praises Margaret Corbin as the “first woman to take a soldier’s part in the war for liberty.”
But Margaret’s re-interment was not the final chapter of her life and story. In 2016, following an accidental disturbance of her gravesite, anthropologist Elizabeth DiGangi was asked to examine the bones. Dr. DiGangi announced that the bones “were biologically consistent with a tall, middle-aged man alive between the colonial period and the 19th century. Therefore, the remains are not that of Corbin, but rather an unknown male.”
Oops. The authorities had buried (and reburied) the wrong person!
It has been said that in the fog of war, the first casualty is the truth. Including sometimes who is buried where. Though her remains are still lost, that does not detract from the heroism of her deeds. Tragically, Margaret Cochran Corbin fought to defend a document -- "All men are created equal" -- that didn't fully defend her.
Debra Sampson
And she wasn’t the only one. Debra Sampson also served in George Washington's Continental Army with valor and distinction – disguised as a man. She joined the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, and during combat "Robert Shirtliff" was shot in her thigh and sustained a sword gash on her forehead. Afraid that a doctor would discover her true identity, she fled the hospital and used a penknife to dig out the musket ball herself, and then sewed herself back up.
Debra’s identity was revealed eventually when she became dangerously ill and was taken to a hospital where she lost consciousness and the medical staff removed her clothes. She was then honorably discharged, after a year and a half of service, but she was withheld her army pay because she was a woman. Her leg never healed, and twenty years later she was a wife and mother, disabled by her war wound, and her petition for a veteran’s pension had long been ignored by Congress.
Another woman frustrated by the discrimination that she faced in a man’s world, Sampson once again was forced to don men’s clothing to seek opportunity and dignity: to earn income, she embarked on a lecture tour about her wartime service, including performing in her army uniform conducting military drills and a ceremony routine. After an intervention on her behalf by famous patriot Paul Revere, Congress finally granted her pension request as gratitude for being a disabled soldier.
These are just a couple of the many remarkable stories of everyday women struggling with courage, persistence and brilliance in late 18th century colonial America. A time when famous leaders like John Adams (husband of Abigail Adams: “Remember the Ladies…we are determined to foment a Rebellion”) and Thomas Jefferson were what passed for leading humanists, and even “colonial feminists.” But the Founder’s own words remain an indictment of the times and its narrow construction of women’s rights. Margaret Corbin and Debra Sampson were just as much pioneers as Jefferson and Adams, leaders of that generation’s “Me too” movement.
Steven Hill @StevenHill1776
I love your writing mr. Hill. Thank you for these stories! Viviane DeLeon