Saturday morning, 3 November, our panel discussion “
In the Army and at Home: Women and Children of the Revolution” was well
attended. (From left to right: Dr. Christine Swager, Sheila Ingle, and me.) This
was my first opportunity to moderate a panel. Our discussion of the challenges
faced by women and children during the war was framed by three questions.

What challenges were faced by women and children who stayed
at home after their soldiers went to war? We think of frontier work as “sunup
to sundown,” but the impact of no electricity was that residents of the
frontier worked from before sunup to after sundown to accomplish tasks such as
livestock slaughter and food preservation. Women and children had the greatest
responsibility for those tasks. Chris’s fiction (Black Crows and White Cockades
and If Ever Your Country Needs You) delves into duties of women and children at
home during the war, as does Sheila’s Courageous Kate. Women and children often
acted as spies and messengers, and Chris and Sheila’s books show them in these
capacities, too. Vicious clan warfare characterized the Southern theater. Anyone who
stayed behind could be brutalized or murdered by a rival clan that passed the
action off as general warfare. In my second book, The Blacksmith’s Daughter, a
scene with two rival clans ends in their extermination of each other. The
bottom line was that staying at home didn’t guarantee inaction or safety.

What challenges were faced by women and children who
followed their soldiers, as opposed to those who stayed at home? Although the
term “camp follower” has become synonymous with “prostitute,” most camp
followers were relatives or servants of soldiers, or they were merchants or
artisans, all acting in a supportive capacity for the combatants. Camp
followers were subject to army rules and discipline. For example, a woman or
child who stole could be flogged or forced to leave camp. Family members in
some units drew partial rations, but most who weren’t of nobility had to work
for meager wages to supplement their rations. Women assisted at the hospital,
laundered, cooked, and mended. Children fetched water and firewood and ran
other errands. Women and children were also engaged on the battlefield, sometimes
as combatants who faced the same dangers as soldiers. And camp followers
endured the same conditions as soldiers: starvation, extremes of weather,
rugged terrain, disease, predators. In the third book of my series, Camp
Follower, scheduled for a Fall 2008 release, I depict the harsh life of those
who followed the army.

How did the women and children who followed the army attempt
to keep the family unit together? Women from the nobility and upper class
journaled about bringing their children along and joining their husbands at an
army’s winter camp. They left us charming stories about feasts, dances,
socials, and teas. But for camp followers from the middle and lower classes,
life was harsh. These people struggled to redefine “normalcy” in a constantly changing
environment, with little privacy, in the midst of disease and hunger. The
emotional stress on families must have been incredible, particularly when a
family member died. Widows, for example, were given a brief window of time to
grieve before they were expected to find another husband. If they did not, they
had to leave camp, because armies had no means of dealing with the liability of
unattached women and their children.

The audience developed the topic further with excellent
questions such as the following:

How young were boys recruited into the army? This
depended upon the unit. In the British Army, boys entered around age eleven or
twelve and were used in the capacities of musicians and messengers until they
were older teens. (The lad pictured to the left is my unit's musician.) One responsibility of a musician was to flog
disobedient soldiers. A trained regular was an investment, so the army didn’t
want to kill a disobedient soldier — just discourage him from repeating his
crime. Soldiers often received penalties of several hundred lashes, and since
boys didn’t have the upper body strength of men, they flogged the men. In
contrast, militia units recruited boys as young as eight years old and allowed
them to fire muskets. Many of these boys were from the backcountry and could
shoot game animals. Throughout history, boys have joined adults on the front
line. Even today in countries like Iraq and Burma, we find boys on the
battlefield.

Were women actually soldiers on the battlefield?
Traditionally, Deborah Samson was the only woman during the Revolutionary War
who successfully disguised herself as a man and fought in battles. But Leslie
Sackrison, author of Awesome Women (published earlier this year), has
discovered records of several other women who disguised themselves as men and
fought on the battlefield. Numerous stories exist of women, dressed as women,
who fought beside men. Sometimes these women picked up the weapons of their
dead or dying husbands, continued fighting, and received injuries.

All in all, this was a fun, informative panel. We look
forward to working with Joanna Craig at Camden again.

Due to
commitments on Sunday back at home, we left Camden right after the battle
reenactment and were unable to participate in the Guy Fawkes festivities that
night. Since I was on site a scant six hours, I spent my time outside the panel
and battle strolling the site and talking with other reenactors — something
I’ve not had enough time to do while promoting my books.

Reenactors are
some of the most hospitable folks I’ve ever met. The ladies of the Grenadier
Companie, Infantrie Regiment von Bose had made huge pots of split pea soup and
lentil stew for their unit’s lunch. When my family and I visited their site,
they pulled out extra bowls and spoons and fed us lunch, too.

Two shots of
the von Bose company in action at Saturday’s battle reenactment. The unit is
dedicated to the accurate portrayal of the typical German soldier as he
appeared during the American War of Independence.

To the left, a picture of my unit, the
33^rd Light Company of Foot, preparing for battle. In the background, the Kershaw-Cornwallis house, rebuilt to its original 18th-century specifications after it was destroyed in a fire decades ago. During the British occupation of Camden prior to the famous battle, the patriot owner, Joseph Kershaw, was forced to give up his house. Charles Lord Cornwallis stayed there for awhile when he was in the area.

A big Huzzah! for the ladies of von Bose (delicious lunch!), and also for Joanna Craig for allowing me the
opportunity to participate on the panel and sell more copies of my books.

Next up: luncheon (guest of honor) with the Page Turners’
book club in Raleigh, NC on 15 November, and a presentation at the public
library in Chapel Hill, NC on 16 November.