Women in American Revolution (Essay Sample)

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Women in the American Revolution
As men were on the forefront of the battlefields during the American Revolution, women too substantively played key roles in aiding the success of the Revolution (Kerber 2017). Women were compelled by the innate need to be useful and as such, they were tasked with the following duties but not limited to making home-made attires, known as homespun, spying, organizing fundraising initiatives, furnishing troops with essential needs, tending to the wounded soldiers, and even rare case of evidence that one disguised as a man and actively participated at the warfront. As American men at the time of revolution got actively engaged at battle fronts, women were left home bestowed upon more responsibilities. A number of these women did put their lives at risk acting as spies. There were instances where American women would infiltrate British camps in the pretext of prostitution and reveling at recreation centers only to furrow out vital information. Such information proved to be of cardinal essence to the American soldiers and aided vitally in succeeding against the British Soldiers (Kerber, 2017). Hitherto, this paper seeks to examine closely the role women played during the American Revolution with particular interest in Deborah Sampson, alias Robert Shurtleff.
Deborah Sampson Early Life
Deborah Sampson attained the threshold of heroin standards in the American Revolution when she cloaked as a man and joined the Patriot Platoon. Deborah was born in Plympton, Massachusetts in 1760 to Jonathan Sampson Jr. and Bradford Sampson. Sampson’s family was struggling financially and when their father failed to come back from a sea voyage, her mother had to send them to various homestead as maidens. At the age of ten years, Deborah was indentured as a servant to the house of Jeremiah Thomas where served for eight years straight. Having moved from home to home, Deborah become aware of the fact that she needs to be self-sufficient and fend for herself (Tise and Jeffrey, 2017). As such, when her indenture came to an end in 1778, Deborah opted to teaching a school in order to support herself. The process was followed suit with her trying out various business ideas ranging from weaving to selling items door-to-door.
Conscripting in the Army
Deborah Simpson first made attempt to join the Revolution battlefront when the Revolution was in its closing months. In late 1781, she made herself a man’s suit and disguised herself as a man during a brief recruitment window. Simpson enlisted to the Forces under a penname “Timothy Thayer” during a recruitment process in Middleborough. However, her identity was soon discovered even before she was absorbed into service. Despite being publically disgraced, Deborah Simpson never backed out of her urge to serve the Revolution in a much more action oriented manner (Tise and Jeffrey, 2017). Therefore, Deborah left Middleborough and walked to a port in New Bedford, a place where she enrolled to work in an American cruiser. The cruiser voyaged through the suburbs of Boston, and upon arriving in the Boston Suburbs, Deborah Simpson again disguised herself as a man and adopted to a new name as “Robert Shurtleff”. While bearing a new identity, Deborah was admitted to the Light Infantry Company, the Fourth Massachusetts Infantry as Private Shurtleff.
Sooner than later Deborah came face to face with combat in the most gruesome manner. In a couple of weeks into her service, around July, 1782, Deborah participated in a battle in the neighborhood of Tarrytown in New York. Simpson got severely injured during the war as she was hard-struck by two musket balls in her leg and a sword laceration on her forehead. Scared of being found out, Deborah pleaded with her comrades to leave her by the battlefield to die, the comrades declined and instead to her to the surgeon. Stealthy, Deborah Simpson sneaked out of the surgeons’ hospital and extracted the bullet in her leg using a small pocketknife. Regardless, Deborah Simpson was physically disabled and therefore assigned as a waitress to the General John Patterson. At this point the war was fundamentally over, and Deborah Simpson would have just gone back home, but opted to stick around as America troops were still by the fie