SAMPSON, Deborah - YOUNG, William (ed.).

£1,850 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

"Domestic Intelligence." First edition of this uncommon contemporary account of Sampson's petition for pay, denied to them while fighting under the name Robert Shurtliff in the American Revolutionary War.Born to a family of farmers in Plympton, Massachusetts, Deborah Sampson (1760-1827) was five feet seven inches, described by contemporaries as "muscular... quick and strong: gestures naturally mild, animating and graceful, speech deliberate with firm articulation" (Young, pp. 43-5). In 1782, they enlisted in the Massachusetts militia under the name Timothy Thayer; soon exposed as a woman, they left, only to try again a few months later, this time under the name of Robert Shurtliff. Sampson served in the American forces for a year and a half, tending to their own wounds and bathing at sunrise in order to avoid detection. Their sex was eventually discovered by a physician, but only revealed publicly after the end of the war, when they were honourably discharged.In January 1792, Sampson petitioned the Massachusetts State Legislature for pay that the army had withheld because of their gender. "The whole history of the American Revolution... furnishes no other similar example of female heroism, fidelity, and courage" (House Report). Sampson became one of the first women to go on a national lecture tour to discuss their war experiences and was made the Massachusetts State Heroine in 1983.On pages 142-3 of this issue, the editor published a brief account of Sampson's story only a mo

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