| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1 | The History Cooperative

Alfred F. Young. Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2004. Pp. x, 417. $26.95.
Alfred F. Young's new book is the first full-scale scholarly biography of Deborah Sampson, the Massachusetts woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in the American Revolution. Over the last generation Sampson has become not only her state's "official heroine" but perhaps the war's best-known common soldier. Yet the specifics of her life have remained obscure. This account moves Sampson out of the realm of myth into history, offering a finely detailed portrait that is the fullest and most sophisticated examination of Sampson yet.	1
Young generally extends rather than dramatically upends the accepted understanding of Sampson's life. He adds new specificity to her early experiences, noting particularly the difficulties of being both poor and relatively (although informally) well educated. Young also explores more fully Sampson's decision to join the Baptist church with its close-knit community, its struggle for religious liberty, and its strict discipline—a careful attention to women's behavior that she experienced directly when she was expelled in 1782 for trying to enlist in the army as a man. She succeeded only upon her second attempt, serving in the Continental Army for seventeen months until the end of the war.	. . .

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