Talk about Thomas Jefferson (find information from one good-quality internet source and relate the information to the uploaded materials)

excerpts_joseph_plumb_martin.pdf

HIST 120 Dr. Schaffer

Excerpt from the Autobiography of Joseph Plumb Martin

HIST 120 Dr. Schaffer

[Here Martin describes the actions of Mary Hays McCauley (aka

“Molly Pitcher”), the wife of a Pennsylvania private, at the Battle of

Monmouth Courthouse (1778). With their husbands away in battle,

many working-class women were unable to provide for themselves.

Some of them chose to follow their husbands from battle to battle.

Although they were looked down on by some, these women provided

much needed services for the poorly supplied Continental Army: they

cooked, cleaned the soldiers’ clothes, and served as nurses. 1 ]

…One little incident happened, during the heat of the

cannonade, which I was eyewitness to, and which I think it would be

unpardonable not to mention. A woman whose husband belonged to

the artillery, and who was then attached to a piece in the

engagement, attended with her husband at the piece the whole time.

While in the act of reaching a cartridge and having one of her feet as

far before the other as she could step, a cannon shot from the enemy

passed directly between her legs without doing any other damage

than carrying away all the lower part of her petticoat. Looking at it

with apparent unconcern, she observed that it was lucky it did not

pass a little higher, for in that case it might have carried away

something else, and continued her occupation.

1 Introduction and first excerpt from R.D. Marcus et al., eds, America

Firsthand, Vol. 1, 8 th

edn (Boston, 2010), pp. 110–16. Last excerpt from

Private Yankee Doodle Being a Narrative of the Adventures, Dangers and

Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier by Joseph Plumb Martin, ed. by G. F.

Scheer (Boston, 1962), pp. 132–3.