"I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death."
Patrick Henry's words, delivered at the second Virginia convention in 1775, are some of the most famous to emerge from the era of the American Revolution. Liberty, or freedom, was a theme of that war and has remained a theme of the American experience for more than two centuries. If you have visited the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, DC, you may remember seeing this quotation inscribed there: "Freedom of speech...Freedom of worship...Freedom from want...Freedom from fear."
Roosevelt spoke of freedom "of" and freedom "from," but what about freedom "to"?
In 1782, a young American sought to serve in the Continental Army against the British. After enlisting as Robert Shurtleff, this patriot served as a scout, fought in skirmishes, and endured injuries, including a leg wound from a musket ball. It was not until 1783, when the soldier entered a hospital with an illness and became unconscious, that a secret was revealed. "Robert Shurtleff" was actually Deborah Sampson, a woman who had been posing as a man.
As a woman, Sampson, who was fighting for freedom for the American colonies had not had the freedom to fight in the Continental Army without hiding her identity. The fact that she served successfully for more than a year shows that she was able to do the job. Indeed, an article from the National Women's History Museum explains, "She led a raid on a Tory home that resulted in the capture of 15 men." After it became known that she was a woman, she received an honorable discharge and went on to lecture about her experience.
Over the next two centuries, Sampson's experience would be played out again and again. Countless Americans were free from British tyranny, and many of them had freedom of worship and from want, but not freedom to do things that other Americans could. As we saw in one of last month's Mind Travel columns, for example, as an enslaved black child Frederick Douglass did not have freedom to learn to read, at least not openly from his mistress. Like Sampson, he found a way to achieve his goal through different means.
American history has numerous other stories of individuals who, because of something about them, did not have the freedom to do things that others could do, and we rightly recognize the unfair, even harmful impact on them, but we also should acknowledge the harmful effects on the rest of us. When we deny people the freedom to do things, we deny ourselves the benefits of their contributions.
The loss is obvious in the case of sports. Teams want to win. Players and coaches alike realize that denying someone the freedom to participate may make the team less effective and ultimately less successful. What would the Dodgers of the 1950s have been without Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Don Newcombe?
What is true of sports is true of every other endeavor. The larger the pool of participants, the greater chance of success. That's basic math.
Deborah Sampson did not have the freedom to fight as a woman in the Continental Army, but we have the freedom to recognize her contributions, as a congressional committee did when it decided to award her husband pay after her death, observing that the American Revolution “furnished no other similar example of female heroism, fidelity and courage.”
Freedom of and freedom from are valuable, but let's remember that freedom to is freedom, too.
If you are one of my readers in central Indiana, I invite you to come to Indiana University Kokomo on Monday, March 3, for A Revolution of Her Own!, a one-woman show about Deborah Sampson. It will begin at 10:30 a.m. in Kresge Auditorium. This performance is free and appropriate for children and adults alike. Email me at mark.canada@mindinclined.org for more information.
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