The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Streep shared a fascinating history lesson at the DNC
Meryl Streep was among the celebrities in Philadelphia this week to support Hillary Clinton, who made history as the first woman nominated by a major party for a White House run.
But first, Streep saluted Deborah Sampson, who made history more than 200 years ago, fighting during the Revolutionary War disguised as a male soldier.
“What does it take to be the first female anything? It takes grit and it takes grace,” Streep said. “Deborah Sampson was the first woman to take a bullet for our country. She served, disguised as a man, in George Washington’s Continental Army. She fought to defend a document that didn’t fully defend her. ‘All men are created equal,’ it read. No mention of women. When she took a blast in battle to her leg, she was afraid to reveal her secret. So she took a pen knife, she dug out the musket ball, and she sewed herself back up again.”
According to the National Women’s History Museum, Sampson was born in 1760 near Plymouth, Mass. She and her siblings were farmed out to other households after their father died at sea and her mother could not afford to raise seven kids.
As a girl, Sampson worked for the family she was sent to live with, then worked as a teacher and weaver until a hitch in the armed forces started to appeal. In 1781, disguised as one Robert Shurtlieff, she arrived at West Point and joined Capt. George Webb’s Company of Light Infantry.
“Deborah endured the incessant cannonade from the enemy, got blisters digging trenches, and was part of a detachment that stormed a British redoubt,” the museum’s page on her reads. In June 1782, she was wounded by a sword slash to the forehead and, more seriously, a shot to her left leg.
“She was able to conceal this wound from the doctor and extracted the pistol ball herself,” the museum’s history reads. “She took care of this injury as best she could, but before it was completely healed, she was pronounced fit enough to rejoin the army.”
She kept her gender a secret for two years, until a military doctor discovered the truth.
Sampson was honorably discharged in 1783. Two years later, she married Benjamin Gannet and they had three children. Sampson returned to a more conventional vocation for the time period, as a mother and homemaker, but she was the first woman in the country to go on a lecture tour. After she died in 1827, Benjamin was awarded pay as the spouse of a soldier after a committee saluted his wife’s “female heroism, fidelity and courage.”
Streep linked Sampson’s singular place in history with Clinton’s after the nomination became official: “More than 200 years after Deborah Sampson fought and nearly 100 years after women got the vote, you people have made history.”