Chapter V: Foreword (4)

That was enough to make John Hays, now completely recovered from his prostration, the proudest man in the army; but added to that he had the satisfaction of seeing Molly given a tremendous ovation by the soldiers, who cheered her to the echo when they first saw her after that fateful night. To cap the climax, the great French General Lafayette showed his appreciation of her courage by asking Washington if his men "might have the pleasure of giving Madame a trifle."

Then those French officers who were among the American regiments formed in two long lines, between which Captain Molly passed in her artilleryman's coat, cocked hat in hand, and while lusty cheers rang out, the hat was filled to overflowing with gold crowns.

And so it was that Molly Pitcher, a country girl of New Jersey, played a prominent part in the battle of Monmouth and won for herself an enviable place in American history.

It is of little importance to us that when the war was over, Molly with her husband and child lived quietly in Carlisle, John Hays going back to his trade, Molly doing washing and enjoying her annuity of forty dollars a year from the government.

After John Hays's death Molly married again, an Irishman named McCauley, and it would have been far better for her to have remained a widow, for her life was unhappy from that time until her death in 1833, at the age of seventy-nine.

But that does not interest us. Ours it is to admire the heroic deeds of Molly Pitcher on the battle-field, to thrill that there was one woman of our country whose achievements have inspired poets and sculptors in the long years since she was seen

loading, firing that six-pounder,--

when, as a poet has said,

Tho' like tigers fierce they fought us, to such zeal had Molly brought
us
That tho' struck with heat and thirsting, yet of drink we felt no lack;
There she stood amid the clamor, swiftly handling sponge and rammer
While we swept with wrath condign, on their line.[1]

At Freehold, New Jersey, at the base of the great Monmouth battle monument are five bronze tablets, each five feet high by six in width, commemorating scenes of that memorable battle. One of these shafts is called the "Molly Pitcher," and shows Mary Hays using that six-pounder; her husband lies exhausted at her feet, and General Knox is seen directing the artillery. Also forty-three years after her death, on July 4, 1876, the citizens of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, placed a handsome slab of Italian marble over her grave, inscribed with the date of her death and stating that she was the heroine of Monmouth.

In this, our day, we stand at the place where the old and the new in civilization and in humanity stand face to face. Shall the young woman of to-day, with new inspiration, fresh courage, and desire to better the world by her existence, face backward or forward in the spirit of patriotism which animated Molly Pitcher on the battle-field of Monmouth? Ours "not to reason why," ours "but to do and die," not as women, simply, but as citizen-soldiers on a battle-field where democracy is the golden reward, where in standing by our guns we stand shoulder to shoulder with the inspired spirits of the world.

Molly Pitcher stood by her gun in 1778--our chance has come in 1917. Let us not falter or fail in expressing the best in achievement and in womanhood.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Thomas Dunn English.

ELIZABETH VAN LEW: THE GIRL WHO RISKED ALL THAT SLAVERY MIGHT BE ABOLISHED AND THE UNION PRESERVED