Martha Washington And Deborah Sampson: Two Paths Of Courage

We explore how Martha Washington and Deborah Sampson advanced the Revolution through very different forms of leadership. One shaped morale and public life; the other broke barriers to fight and spy under a borrowed name.

• Pairing Martha Washington and Deborah Sampson through military connection
• Deborah Sampson’s enlistment as Robert Shirtliff and covert missions
• Self-treatment of wounds to protect her identity
• Discovery, honorable discharge, and veteran legacy
• Martha Washington’s destroyed correspondence and historical traces
• Presence at Valley Forge and role in sustaining morale
• Defining the social tone for the early capital and first ladies
• Multiple models of women’s leadership including Abigail Adams
• Service, virtue, and contributing to ends larger than self

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome back everyone to Civic Senior Year.
We have our Women of theFounding expert, Dr.
Kirsten Burkhog.
And today we're talking aboutMartha Washington and Deborah
Samson, which is veryinteresting because, you know,
when we were kind of doing ourpre-discussion on women of the
founding, this came up and I'dnever heard of Deborah Sampson.

(00:23):
So Dr.
Burkhogg, again, thank you forcoming here.
Why is it important for us tostudy Martha Washington and
Deborah Sampson kind oftogether?

SPEAKER_01 (00:35):
I think the clearest connection between them probably
runs through their connection tothe military.
So Martha Washington, of course,is the wife of the General
George Washington, the you know,pinnacle of military
commandership during theAmerican Revolution.

(00:56):
Comparatively, Deborah Sampson,who I'm guessing many people
listening to this podcast havenever heard of before, was a
woman who served in the AmericanRevolution in a time before
women were allowed to serve inthe military in the United
States and in Great Britain.
So there was no precedent forher service.

(01:17):
And in fact, she had to disguiseherself as a man in order to
serve in the AmericanRevolution.
So that's the clearestconnection between the two.
And there's lots we could talkabout in terms of Martha
Washington and her service tothe men of the American
Revolution, particularly duringthe Valley Forge winter.
So yeah, I think that's theclearest connection between the

(01:38):
two and why we might think ofthem together is that they're
both women who are surroundingand involved in the military
efforts of the AmericanRevolution.

SPEAKER_00 (01:50):
So if women weren't allowed to serve in the
military, how is Deborah Sampsonserving in our military?

SPEAKER_01 (02:00):
So she fully disguised herself as a man.
You may have heard the ancientChinese legend of Mulan or seen
the Disney movie.
Deborah Sampson's kind of likethat.
She disguises herself as a manin 1782.
She takes on a fake name.
She calls herself RobertShortliffe.
And she joins the MassachusettsReg Regiment, serves under

(02:21):
George Webb for two years,completely just concealing her
gender.
So somehow, throughout thecourse of all of this, she
managed to keep a secret thatshe was in fact a woman.
She lived as Robert Shirtlifffor a couple of years.
And she was assigned serious andimportant missions.
She was not just a soldier, shewas also a spy.

(02:43):
She was tasked frequently withspying and scouting and led a
number of raids on Britishsoldiers.
And she also knew throughout thecourse of this that if it was
ever discovered she was a woman,she would never, she would not
be allowed to serve.
And as a result, just tried tokeep that as secret as possible.
She treated a lot of her ownbattle wounds, in fact, in order

(03:04):
to keep these things concealed,right?
To prevent people knowing shewas a woman.
She actually personally removeda bullet from her own thigh in
order to prevent people fromfinding out that she's a woman.
And eventually this runs out,right?
She is eventually discovered in1783.
She falls ill, has to be kind oftaken, you know, to like an

(03:27):
inpatient hospital inPhiladelphia, and it is
discovered she is a woman whileshe is unconscious.
So after that, she's no longerallowed to serve, but she is
actually awarded a fullhonorable discharge from the
U.S.
military.
She goes on to marry, she hassome kids.
And when she dies in 1826, herhusband was awarded spousal

(03:51):
support as the husband of asoldier.
He is the first recordedinstance of a man receiving US
military spousal support after aspouse's death.
So a cool bundle of things withDeborah Sampson.
Another little tidbit about herthat I always like is that after
the American Revolution, therewould often be circumstances

(04:13):
where Revolutionary War veteranswould be invited to speak or
even give reenactments of thingsthat happened during the
American Revolution.
And she participated in thesewith gusto and always wore her
full uniform to do them.
So that's Deborah Sampson.
Yeah, she is a reallyfascinating, fascinating and
understudied figure.

SPEAKER_00 (04:34):
Wow.
I I mean listeners can't see,but I feel like my mouth has
been open this whole time, andI'm just it is.
It's so interesting that oncethey found out though, like she
still received the respectalmost of any other, you know,
soldier at that time.
So and then we have MarthaWashington, right, who did not

(04:56):
fight but was still on thebattlefront.
Can you tell us a little bitabout like Martha Washington's
role in this?

SPEAKER_01 (05:04):
Yeah.
So Martha Washington is someoneabout whom we know less than we
would like.
And this is in part because itwas very much standard practice
to burn most, if not all, of thepersonal correspondence of
individuals upon their death.
Now, of course, you have somepeople who know that they are

(05:26):
going to be well remembered,famous, like Alexander Hamilton,
who preserves a ton of hiscorrespondence, but he does burn
some of it, right?
If there's anything sensitive,they're very concerned to have
that destroyed.
And in particular, MarthaWashingtiff had all of her
correspondence with her husbanddestroyed.
So we do have some knowledge ofwho she was through some of her

(05:46):
remaining letters, but much lessthan we would like.
I do think one way we can kindof get at the importance of
Martha, especially in regards toher husband, is by examining
what other people had to sayabout Washington and his wife.
So at Washington's funeral,there's this really interesting
quote from General Henry Lee.

(06:07):
And a lot of people know thisquote.
He says Washington is first inwar, first in peace, first in
the hearts of his countrymen.
But there's a whole second halfto that sentence that we always
miss, where he also says thatWashington was second to none in
the humble and endearing scenesof private life.
That Washington was equally asconcerned with his home and his

(06:28):
wife and their family as he waswith his political and military
pursuits.
And we can see how this was inmany ways a reciprocal
relationship.
Martha Washington, she married,she's Martha Dandridge when
she's born.
She's Martha Custis later withher first husband.

(06:48):
He dies in 1757.
They, she and George Washingtonhave a kind of short courtship.
She has a couple of childrenwith Custis.
Those are the only children thatshe has.
Of course, Washington has nochildren.
They get married in 1759.
Only less than a couple of fulldecades later, the American
Revolution is in full swing andGeorge is at the head of it.

(07:10):
And she traveled with himthroughout the course of the
American Revolution.
She often lived in the militaryencampments, uh, including the
Valley Forge militaryencampments during the winters
of 1777 and 1778, which arelargely well known as like the
kind of really, really badwinters of the American

(07:30):
Revolution.
They're eating their horses,right?
And she is there.
She is there with GeorgeWashington.
And we see in her existingletters that the reason she does
this and doesn't stay in herhome state of Virginia, which
she loved, by the way.
She was a Virginian born andraised and always wanted to
return there.
The reason she doesn't just stayin Virginia is because she

(07:51):
believes she can be of serviceto her husband.
She can do something to help, tohelp him.
And if she can help him, he canbetter help his men.
She thinks she has a reallyimportant role to play by just
being a moral support andencouragement to George.
Right.
And then later on, of course,George Washington becomes
president, and she again can'tlive in her beloved home state

(08:15):
of Virginia.
She removes with him to theCapitol and has a hand in
setting the tone for how firstladies would deal with capital
society, which is kind of anongoing conversation, is what is
the role of the first lady?
And for her, she went a long wayin establishing what is often
considered today a kind ofcourtly society, right?

(08:36):
That she and her husband were atthe center of this, and that she
was the leader of the society,particularly of women in and
around the capital.
And this goes a long way insetting the tone for how capital
society was going to operate inthe future.
So, right, this is MarthaWashington, you know, who is the
kind of person behind GeorgeWashington.

(08:58):
And it's clear in his devotionto her and how people talked
about him that he viewed her asimportant and these sorts of
roles.
So that's one way that we canthink about Martha Washington
and her role, in particular inthe American Revolution.

SPEAKER_00 (09:15):
And so both of these women had very different roles
within the revolution.
And they're both leadershiproles, essentially.
They just look a little bitdifferent.
So how can we really start tounderstand the role of women
when it is so complex?
There's so many different rolesthat women had in the American

(09:38):
Revolution.

SPEAKER_01 (09:40):
Yes, there are.
And I think that that might, inessence, be the point that there
are different roles that womenfulfill during the American
Revolution because there is noone size fits all definition of
how a woman ought to lead orwhat that leadership should look
like within the confines of amarriage.

(10:01):
I'll throw in another examplethat we've talked about recently
as well, Abigail Adams duringthe course of the American
Revolution.
John is not in the military.
John is really active in thepolitics, and he is never home.
So she is running the economy oftheir household.
That is also a really differentrole than what Martha Washington
is doing, than what DeborahSampson is doing, right?

(10:23):
But all of them are serving andthey have a focus on serving
others and serving the potentialfuture of this country that
they're fighting for.
So all of them have similargoals.
It's not just simply about doingwhat you want to do because you
want to do it.

(10:44):
They all are suited for theroles that they have, but it's
always for some kind of greatergood besides what they want.
And I think that we see this notonly in virtuous women, but in
virtuous people is thatultimately we are not ends in
and of ourselves, but we canserve greater ends.

(11:04):
We can be the instruments ofbigger things.
That doesn't mean that we don'tmatter.
It doesn't mean that weshouldn't try to find roles that
suit us, that we're good at,that we can be useful and
helpful and of service in, butit does mean that the world
doesn't revolve around us andthat we're always looking for

(11:25):
ways to contribute to bigger andbetter things than just our own
desires.

SPEAKER_00 (11:32):
And I think that's the perfect place to end this
specific episode.
Again, we're gonna have more,but Dr.
Bernhardt, again, I've just I'velearned so much, and I have so
many tabs open on my computernow because today is the first
time I've heard of DeborahSamson and even thinking about
Martha Washington too.
I mean, I know that when shewhen George Washington was

(11:56):
president, she didn't coin theterm first lady.
That came a little bit later,but she really was the first and
kind of set the standard of whatthat looks like.
So again, thank you for yourexpertise, and I'm so excited
for our next one.

SPEAKER_01 (12:09):
Thank you.