I asked John once what you would think of me, stepping into your life the way I did. Stepping into your shoes.
He simply said, “She would welcome you here. But you brought your own shoes and made your own life. You didn’t take hers.”
And we left it at that.
John became a judge—he’s been a judge for many years. He’s never lost an election. I think I told you about that. He went to Congress for two years too, but it required too much time away from home, and he did not run again.
The people trust him, and he is fair. They love that he was a general and are willing to look past the uncomfortable fact that I am his wife. Once, a newspaper man asked him about me on the stump. John called me up, introduced me, and I gave the speech I’d memorized, complete with paragraphs from the declaration, my thoughts on the rights of all men and women, and my Pilgrim ancestry. I even finished with my musket and the manual of arms.
No one asked about me again.
Your daughters are grown. My children too. They call each other siblings, and it makes my heart glad. Our grandchildren run about and race and holler when they are here. We have a granddaughter named Elizabeth and one named Deborah, and they are the best of friends. They have challenged the eldest boys to a footrace, and I have fashioned them each a pair of magic breeches to make it a little more fair.
It’s been twenty-five years since my first speaking tour, and I only do small engagements here and there, now and then. It’s always an honor that people still want to meet me, and they are always surprised by the way I look and the way I speak. They say things like, “You must have appeared much different then,” or “I thought you would be taller.” I find that one remarkable, for I am still very tall. The general says they are surprised that I look like a woman. “They don’t expect you to be lovely or wise or well-spoken,” he says. “They expect a Samson and you are a Deborah.”
I like to think I am both.
Some don’t believe I ever really served. They think me a liar, and I’ve been the source of talk—most of it unbecoming—since I started telling my story. But John knows the truth, and I know the truth, and together we have kept hope burning.
Agrippa Hull knows the truth too, and he likes to say that change is slow, but once it comes, it stays. He is still in Stockbridge. He’s as much a celebrity in these parts as I am, probably more so, though no one ever has a bad thing to say about him. People still gather around him on sunny days on the town green to hear him tell stories from the war.
He found a woman he likes to look at and one who likes to look at him. Their children are grown too, freemen born of freemen, but slavery hasn’t ended, not even all these years after the war. Slavery hasn’t ended, and women still have our place, and we’d best not venture out of it. Maybe it is because we are treasured, as John once said, but it is one thing to be treasured and it is another to be a treasure. One is valued, one is possessed, and people aren’t possessions.
I applied for a soldier’s pension and sent dozens of letters to Congress, asking to have my service acknowledged. John says I earned it, same as all the others, and I should have it, but it wasn’t until 1818, even though I had letters of support from Paul Revere, who has become a dear friend, and President John Quincy Adams himself, that Congress finally relented, and I received my pay. Paul Revere delivered it personally, and the papers wrote that I was once again drinking in taverns with men, and the long-ago story from Sproat’s Tavern in Middleborough resurfaced.
I’ve made John promise that he will apply as a soldier’s spouse if I pass before he does. I put his promise in writing and made him sign it Major General John Paterson. He doesn’t argue with me anymore—not on such things—but when I get too bossy, he refers to me as Private Shurtliff, reminding me he outranks me. Then he smiles that secret smile, the one that makes me catch my breath, and we remember how it was when I ceased to be Shurtliff and he became my beloved John.
I was a soldier, and I am proud of that. I am a mother too, and a wife, and I have not wished away the blessings or power of womanhood, as you once counseled. I have embraced every role, played every part, and made my mark on the world.
But the world has made its mark on me too.
In Genesis, when Jacob wrestled with God, he limped forever after. I limp too. The years have taught me that we never leave our battles, as worthy as they are, unscathed. Every cause has a cost, and so many have paid it. So many. And much of the world will never know the part they played, the part I played, a girl called Samson.