The+Ways+of+the+Women

** Boston, MA ** ** By: Carly Conley **
 * The Ways of the Women **

As I look around, I see all these women rushing around to help their husbands in the war. You may think, “how can they help their husbands?”. Well, they can do many things to help…they’re just underestimated. If you look closely, the men of war wouldn’t be able to survive without their wives. With the women doing things like being writers, manufacturers, messengers, camp followers, the head of households, and even soldiers is a huge task to take…but they do it. And they do it without a problem. Considering women are inferior to men, they don’t really do much, beside caring for their children and cleaning their houses. But looking at women like Margaret Corbin, Nancy Hart, Mary Hays, Deborah Sampson, and many more, it was like they were made to fight in this war. Yes, they have to disguise themselves as men, but they fight better than some of the guys out here, maybe even their husbands! There’s one woman out of these that really stands out, though. Her name is Deborah Sampson. She was actually the first women enlisted into the army. She still fights, but she really didn’t have a reason to enter the army. The rest of the women enlisted into the army, because their husbands have died or have gotten severely injured. Once, I interviewed Deborah and she said that she enlisted in the army as “Robert Shurtleff”, because women aren’t allowed in the army. She has already been injured once, but she continues to fight for freedom. I find it very interesting that these women are brave enough to do these things. Sometimes, I wonder why they don’t have the same rights as men. Another thing women do is follow their husband while he fights in case he needs anything, or in case any of the soldiers need anything. I’ve seen many men of war need something as simple as a glass of water. Guess what? Here comes Mary Hays. Mary is also known as “Molly Pitcher”. The guys nicknamed her that, because every time they ran out of water, Molly saved the day with a pitcher of water! Another big thing women do these days to help is carry messages back and forth, from place to place. We don’t really have any other way to get messages to each other, besides traveling by foot or traveling by horseback. But seeing as though these men are always busy fighting for our freedom, the women try to help out by being messengers. By doing this, the women could be saving our army from being attacked. After many women became manufacturers, they recently formed a group called “The Daughters of Liberty”. These women come together every day to weave cloth for uniform, knit socks, and collect support funds. Some women, like Catherine Smith and Elizabeth Hager, learned how to repair their husband’s guns. They also volunteer to aid the troops in other ways. There aren’t many times that women’s thoughts and opinions were acknowledged, but if you’re a woman writer, most people know what you think, by now. There are many ways women help in the Revolutionary War, but these are just some of the obvious ones I see.