Founding Myths (49 page)

                
In 1822, forty-four years after Monmouth, “Molly McKolly” was awarded a government pension amounting to a private's half-pay. The initial draft of the bill read “widow of a soldier,” but the revised version read “for services rendered.” (Thompson and Schaumann, “Goodbye, Molly Pitcher,” 20.) The specific nature of those services was not stipulated, but might they have included her manning the cannon of her stricken husband? Later commentators have assumed so, but contemporary reports made no mention of such heroism, as newsworthy as it might have been. The Philadelphia
Chronicle
reported flatly, “It appeared satisfactory that this heroine had braved the hardships of the camp and dangers of the field with her husband who was a soldier of the Revolution.” In New York, on the other hand, a press report added some embellishment, but nothing about firing her husband's cannon at Monmouth: “Molly Macauly, who received a pension from the state of Pennsylvania for service rendered during the Revolutionary War, was well-known to the general officers as a brave and patriotic woman. She was
called Sgt. McCauly, and was wounded at some battle, supposed to be the Brandywine, where her sex was discovered. It was a common practice for her to swing her sable over her head, and huzza for ‘Mad Anthony' as she termed Anthony Wayne. It was an unusual circumstance to find women in the ranks disguised as men, such was their order for independence. Elizabeth Canning was at a gun at Fort Washington when her husband was killed and she took his place immediately, loaded, primed and fired the cannon with which he was entrusted. She was wounded in the breast by a grapeshot.” (
National Advocate
, March 7, 1822, quoted in Thompson and Schaumann, “Goodbye, Molly Pitcher,” 20–21.) This account, offered during her lifetime but of dubious reliability, differed in almost every respect from the Molly Pitcher legend we know today.

34
.
  
Carlisle Herald
, May 18, 1876, quoted in Linda Grant De Pauw,
Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 128.

35
.
  
The
Cumberland Valley Chronicle:
Writings About Colonial Times and People
, in a packet of information put out by the Cumberland County Historical Society, states that the spelling on this headstone was actually “McCauly.”

36
.
  
Klaver, “Legend of Molly Pitcher,” 49.

37
.
  
Landis,
Short History of Molly Pitcher
, 24–25; Thompson and Schaumann, “Goodbye, Molly Pitcher,” 24; Klaver, “Legend of Molly Pitcher,” 42.

38
.
  
Landis,
Short History of Molly Pitcher
, 15.

39
.
  
Landis, “Investigation into Molly Pitcher,” 83–96.

40
.
  
This was not necessarily “the very same pitcher carried by Molly Pitcher at the battle of Monmouth,” the descendent admitted, but she claimed before a notary that the pitcher had belonged to her great-great-grandmother. A picture of the pitcher, along with a newspaper article announcing the gift to the Hamilton Library and the Cumberland County Historical Association, is included in the packet on Molly Pitcher available through the Cumberland County Historical Society.

41
.
  
Klaver, “Legend of Molly Pitcher,” 49.

42
.
  
Stryker,
Battle of Monmouth
, 192. Amid all the fanfare, one man wasn't buying it. Jeremiah Zeamer, himself a resident of Carlisle, did not think it appropriate to honor a woman who had been described as vulgar and profane, while many “Revolutionary heroes who lived useful and respected lives” remained obscure. “Molly McCauley is neither the historical nor moral character to hold up to young Americans for emulation,” he argued. Using careful genealogical research, he went on to shoot holes in the Molly-Pitcher-equals-Mary-Hays-McCauley equation. (Jeremiah Zeamer, “Molly McCauley Monument,”
Carlisle Herald
, April 5, 1905, and “Molly Pitcher Story Analyzed,”
Carlisle Volunteer
, February 20, 1907. The first is included in the Cumberland County Historical Society's Molly Pitcher packet; the second is cited in Klaver, “Legend of Molly Pitcher,” 41–42.) But the public showed no concern for Jeremiah Zeamer's quibbles. Rather than scrap the legend, those who believed in their local heroine chose to change her image. Just as the vulgar Captain Molly had been transformed into a more genteel Molly Pitcher, so did Mary Hays McCauley take on a more gracious persona. The new monument placed by her grave in 1916 referred to her as an “army nurse” who became
known for “her many acts of kindness.” Years later, a newspaper article described “Pennsylvania's Number One Revolutionary Heroine” as a “cheerful” person. (Molly Pitcher packet, Cumberland County Historical Society.) Mary was now fit to become a respectable heroine, an appropriate model for impressionable young girls.

43
.
  
Hall,
Margaret Corbin
, 38–43.

44
.
  
Dumas Malone, ed.,
Dictionary of American Biography
(New York: Scribner's, 1948), 11: 574. Mary's alleged maiden name, Ludwig, has also been questioned, as has her date of birth, posited alternately as 1744 and 1754, but these issues do not relate directly to the Molly Pitcher story.

45
.
  
Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris,
The Spirit of 'Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by the Participants
(Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), 710, 714–715.

46
.
  
Klaver, “Legend of Molly Pitcher,” 49.

47
.
  
John Todd White, “The Truth About Molly Pitcher,” in
The American Revolution: Whose Revolution?
James Kirby Martin and Karen R. Stubaus, eds. (Huntington, NY: Krieger, 1977), 99–105; Linda Grant De Pauw and Conover Hunt,
Remember the Ladies: Women in America, 1750–1815
(New York: Viking, 1976), 90. De Pauw elaborated in “Women in Combat: The Revolutionary Experience,”
Armed Forces and Society 7
(198): 215, and
Battle Cries and Lullabies
, 126–131.

48
.
  
John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds.,
American National Biography
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 17: 564–565; the author of the piece is John K. Alexander. All deeds ever attributed to “Molly Pitcher” are now attributed to Mary Hays as well. Benson Bobrick, in his 1997
Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), follows folkloric accounts picked up in the mid–nineteenth century when he writes, without citation, that “Mary Ludwig Hayes . . . had done equally brave service at Fort Clinton, where, in October 1777, she had actually fired the last shot before the fortress fell” (346).

49
.
  
“Supposedly”:
About.com
Women's History,
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/waramrevolution/a/Molly-Pitcher.htm
. “May have” and “according to legend”: Joyce Appleby, Alan Brinkley, Albert S. Broussard, James M. McPherson, and Donald A. Ritchie,
The American Journey
(New York: Macmillan/McGraw-Hill Glencoe, 2012), 164. “Legend says”: Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner, Peter B. Levy, Randy Roberts, and Alan Taylor,
United States History
, Survey Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2013), 164, 119. “Is said to have”: Jacqueline Jones, Peter H. Wood, Thomas Borstelmann, Elaine Tyrler May, and Vicki L. Ruiz,
Created Equal: A History of the United States
, vol. 1 (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Longman, 2009), 221.

50
.
  
“Legendary”: James West Davidson, Michael B. Scott,
America: A History of Our Nation
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2014), 188. “Earning folk-legend status”: Jones et al.,
Created Equal
, 221.

51
.
  
Appleby et al.,
American Journey
, 155.

52
.
  
Michael J. Berson, Tyrone C. Howard, and Cinthia Salinas,
Harcourt Social Studies—United States: Making a New Nation
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 357.

53
.
  
Gerald A. Danzer, J. Jorge Klor de Alva, Larry S. Krieger, Louis E. Wilson, and Nancy Woloch,
The Americans
(Evanston, IL: Holt McDougal, 2012), 117.

54
.
  
Wikipedia, accessed April 7, 2013:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Pitcher
. The article further quotes
They Called Her Molly Pitcher
: “At one point, a British musket ball or cannon ball flew between her legs and tore off the bottom of her skirt. Mary supposedly said, ‘Well, that could have been worse,' and went back to loading the cannon”—an age-appropriate translation of Joseph Plumb Martin's ribald tale. (See note 15.)

55
.
  
Stryker,
Battle of Monmouth
, 192.

56
.
  
For a discussion of women in the wagons, and Washington's general distaste for women in the army, see Ray Raphael,
A People's History of the American Revolution
(New York: The New Press, 2001, 121–123; reprinted by HarperCollins, 2002, 153–155).

4: The Shot Heard 'Round the World

  
1
.
  
David Hackett Fischer,
Paul Revere's Ride
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press 1994), 327.

  
2
.
  
A.J. Langguth,
Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 240.

  
3
.
  
Joy Hakim,
A History of US
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 3: 73.

  
4
.
  
Alan Brinkley,
The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People, Volume 1
, Seventh Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014), 102. Emphases added.

  
5
.
  
Americans didn't call this controversial act of vandalism a “Tea Party” at the time. (Alfred F. Young,
The Shoemaker and the Tea Party
[Boston: Beacon Press, 1999], 108–113.) Public reception, even among those who opposed British policies, was divided. Washington, although he believed “the cause of America . . . ever will be the cause of America,” chided Bostonians for “their conduct in destroying the tea.” (Washington to George William Fairfax, June 10, 1774,
The Papers of George Washington
, W.W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig, eds. [Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1983; Colonial Series 10: 94–101].) Franklin and many others believed the East India Company should be compensated for the ruined merchandise.

  
6
.
  
David M. Kennedy and Lizabeth Cohen,
The American Pageant
, Volume 1, Fifteenth Edition (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2014), 118.

  
7
.
  
James West Davidson and Michael B. Scott,
America: History of Our Nation
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2014), 152.

  
8
.
  
William Deverell and Deborah Gray White,
Holt McDougal United States History: Beginnings to 1877
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 112.

  
9
.
  
Much is made in many narratives about the “Day of Prayer and Fasting” held in Virginia, the most populous colony, on June 1, 1774. Supposedly, this revealed how devoted the Virginians were to the people of Massachusetts, since it caused the British to disband the Virginia House of Burgesses. In fact, many Virginians were acting in self-interest, not charity, when they decided on this course. The previous year, growers of tobacco (the basis of Virginia's economy) had announced that by 1775 they would withhold their
crops from the market. They hoped that British merchants would then buy tobacco at higher prices, anticipating the shortage to come. Since many tobacco planters were in debt, however, they feared that creditors would take them to court in retaliation, and if their scheme failed, the courts could seize their property. Supporting Boston with a “Day of Prayer and Fasting” and a pledge to boycott British trade solved all their problems. Not only did these actions give their market manipulation a patriotic cover, but they also caused the British government to dissolve the legislature—and since the legislature had not yet authorized the court fees, that meant the courts would have to close as well. The planters' plan worked: tobacco prices soared in anticipation of future shortages while growers sold out their crops before nonexportation was scheduled to take effect. Meanwhile, no British merchants could take any Virginians to court for unpaid bills.

                
Boston had asked other colonies to withdraw trade from both Britain and the West Indies. For the reasons just mentioned, Virginia planters were more than willing to comply with respect to Britain, but they refused to end their lucrative trade with the Indies. Similarly, South Carolina went along with much of the boycott but insisted on an exemption for rice, its main moneymaker. These actions, traditionally touted as sympathetic gestures of support, had decidedly self-serving overtones. (Woody Holton,
Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia
[Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999], 115–129.)