Last week, the Pentagon lifted the military’s ban on women in combat. Stating that it is “the responsibility of every citizen to protect the nation,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta reversed the rule excluding women from armor, artillery, infantry and other combat roles. President Obama applauded the decision as “another step toward fulfilling our nation’s founding ideals of fairness and equality.”
Yet many forget that unsung founding mothers fought to make those ideals — and our nation — possible.
American women were crucial to winning the Revolutionary War. The patriot ladies were particularly active on the home front, quartering soldiers, defending their homes, and hiding supplies from enemy raids. By working the fields and sewing uniforms, they fed and outfitted the troops.
But they weren’t limited to supporting roles.
In one comical incident recounted by Abigail Adams, a “stingy merchant” in Boston refused to sell his coffee, a commodity that was in very short supply. His refusal was deemed unpatriotic, and so a hundred or more caffeine-deprived women marched down to demand the coffee.
When they arrived, the wealthy bachelor rebuffed them — not the smartest move. As “a large concourse of men stood amazed,” one of the women “seized him by his neck and tossed him into the cart.” Terrified, the merchant handed over his keys and the women seized the coffee. The miser purportedly received multiple spankings before the women finally released him.
Some women even followed the men right onto the battlefield. Like many others, Mary Hays McCauley was eager to take an active role in the fight for independence. She joined her husband at the army camp, where she cooked and cared for the soldiers. But the fiery 23-year-old did not stop there; she became a “pitcher,” bringing water to cool the cannon that her husband manned.
A strong, heavyset woman described as having a florid complexion and a love of banter, she dashed through the smoke, whizzing to and fro, helping her husband and his fellow soldiers. When her husband was wounded, accounts state that an enraged Mary grabbed a ramrod, hiked up her dress, took over the cannon and continued to fire incessantly at the approaching British. Both the Americans and their enemies were stunned. One soldier described the scene in his diary:
One little incident happened, during the heat of the cannonade, which I was eye-witness to, and which I think would be unpardonable not to mention. . . . [W]hile 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 ended her and her occupation.
George Washington applauded her courage and the American women’s fierce defense of the republic.
Some women even enlisted. As one patriot observed, “It was not an unusual circumstance to find women in the ranks disguised as men, such was their ardor for independence.” The Americans needed all the help they could get, and Washington certainly appreciated patriotic zeal from wherever it came.
Some even viewed women as the last line of defense should America’s men fail them. When John Adams wrote his wife of the Continental Army’s defeats, Abigail confidently declared that if Washington’s troops were overrun, the British forces would then be forced to fight “a race of Amazons in America.”
And with the Pentagon’s decision, women will move from that last line to the front lines as they carry on the legacy of the valiant women who founded these United States.
Logan Beirne is an Olin Scholar at Yale Law School and the author of the forthcoming book “Blood of Tyrants: George Washington & the Forging of the Presidency” (Encounter Books).