Joseph Plumb Martin

Joseph Plumb Martin

Of course his “Ordinary Courage: The Revolutionary War Adventures of Joseph Plumb Martin” would be on the reading list. At the Trefry library where I work the search for ‘ordinary courage’ got his book and the following: “Theft and Counter-Theft: Joseph Plumb Martin’s Revolutionary War” which, in a brief overview of it, kind of condemns Martin’s almost plaintive explanation of what the soldier did for the cause. The way Martin pleads with the reader to understand the misery of the war is countermanded by Catherine Kaplan in her article with such snark as, “Despite long years of service, Martin only once mentions firing a gun.” The tone she sets, for as little that I have read, is disdain for the, in my view, legitimate and reserved criticism that Martin has for both the people who were made to relieve the soldiers’ hunger, fatigue, and cold, and for the Congress who routinely let the soldiers of the Continental Army down with promises of pay, rations, clothing, and other supplies with which to fight the war. This is unconscionable to me, but I have not read the entire thing, and am woefully deficient in what she refers to as “Martin’s 1830 Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers, and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier.” So, more of this later. When I can complete finding out if the title above is the same thing as the book “Ordinary Courage.”

4/30/19. David Whitehouse