The softening has begun. My own heart is much affected, and Proverbs 18:16 keeps playing in my mind.
“A man’s gift makes room for him, and brings him before great men.”
I do not know what the future holds or where I will find the stamina to continue. But if we have won the war, as some believe, I will call myself blessed for the gifts—gifts Deacon Thomas thought wasted on a woman—that have brought me before great men. —RS
The sticky heat that sat on our shoulders and weighed down the march from Philadelphia had retreated before us, and the exodus from Yorktown was accompanied by a full-throated fall in temperatures, heralding winter. Instead of heat and damp, we endured cold and wet, and the hot rush to battle in September became a dreary, forty-five-day slog back to the highlands.
I could not tally the miles I had marched, but my shoes, new when I enlisted, looked a hundred years old, and I felt no younger. When we stopped at night, I studied the miserable men beside me, half-dressed, half-starved, feet bleeding from walking without proper shoes or any shoes at all. They turned their bodies in front of paltry fires like rabbits on a spit, trying to warm themselves, and my awe increased.
I had never considered it a privilege to be a woman. Not even once. I had struggled at the bit of my sex, at the reins of society, at the saddle of tradition. It had not occurred to me that men had their own burdens, that they were bridled too. It was not women who died on the battlefield.
I had been denied and barred entry to a world I wanted to experience, but had I been barred because I was disdained or because I was valued? I suspected it was both. Even so, I was less inclined to complain about my lot.
We’d been promised that we would winter at the Point, rest and warmth dangled in front of us as we traversed the miles. But movement was my friend—it had always been my friend—and the dread of months spent in the barracks settled upon me.
The war was not over.
If negotiations for a treaty had begun, Congress wasn’t forthcoming, and no one was being discharged. It would be spring, many said. Or maybe the fall. Surely the British knew the war was lost. Surely it couldn’t go on much longer. But General Washington retreated to New Windsor, we arrived back in the highlands in mid-November, and I began to beseech God for another blessing. I had come too far to be defeated by winter quarters.
14
CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS
It was cold and the hunger and deprivation relentless. I was darning stockings and repairing coats far more often than I was shooting at regulars. We weren’t getting the supplies General Paterson continually petitioned Congress for, so we raided instead. Every mission was sanctioned and approved, but it felt more like stealing than anything.
The scouting parties were not made up of men of the highest character, nor were they probably the worst of the lot. They were men—and I include myself in that group—that had never been given anything, so taking wasn’t all that hard. Our only virtue was that we tried to take from those who had plenty, and we sought to be stealthy enough that no one would have to lose their lives over grain and whiskey and eggs. I volunteered for the scouting expeditions simply because it got me out of camp.
On our second expedition, a raid on a farmhouse that belonged to a loyalist, we came up with nothing but a few rotten bushels of fruit, a bag of cornmeal, and a cook kettle too heavy to carry back. The property had been stripped or abandoned long before we got there. We made a small fire, and I dug through the sodden fruit, cut off the salvageable bits, and put it in the stewpot with some water and my rum ration. I boiled it until it became a sticky sweet soup and then added the cornmeal, forming a yellow batter. The finished cake wasn’t too bad, but it was hardly worth the effort we’d expended to conduct the raid.
Some of the men in the scouting party decided they would just keep on going. A man named Davis Dornan was the most vocal, and after a few hours spent around the fire eating my johnnycake and complaining about the conditions, he and three of the other men from our party of eight were bent on desertion.
“I’m going home,” Dornan said. “I’m not going to sit up in that garrison all winter. None of us have seen a dollar since we enlisted. I heard they were promising new recruits land.”
That news swayed a few more, and the grousing became louder.
“What do you think, Shurtliff? You coming with us?” Dornan asked. “You aren’t a bad man to have around. You always surprise me.” He picked a crumb from the cook kettle and licked his fingers.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m staying at the Point. I don’t have a home to go back to.”