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Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier. By Alfred F. Young. (New York: Knopf, 2004. x, 417 pp. $26.95, ISBN 0-679-44165-4.)
With his thoughtful analysis of the life of Deborah Sampson, Alfred F. Young continues his work illuminating the lives of ordinary people. Sampson was the only woman we know to have successfully masqueraded as a man in the Continental Army, serving eighteen months before she was discovered. After the war, she resumed her female identity and married. Yet she resisted the confinement of the role of wife and mother and lobbied aggressively for a pension and publicized her wartime accomplishments in what was probably the first lecture tour by a woman in the United States.
With this subject, Young faced a...