Revere’s reference to her having “quitted the male habit” for the dress of her own sex is a phrase that speaks to the cultural complexities of her situation: her supporters in the pension fight were making an argument that her gender-transgressive military service had been followed by a return to conventional femininity, and that this conventionality was itself an argument in her favor. Whether this reflects Revere’s own views or a strategic choice about how to frame the petition for maximum effect in the political context of 1804 is difficult to determine from the letter alone.
The Revere letter is preserved and accessible through the Paul Revere House, which has reproduced and analyzed it. The analysis at the Paul Revere House makes the point that Revere’s framing reveals as much about the early republic’s expectations of women as it does about Deborah Sampson Gannett specifically.
## The Federal Pension: 1805
In 1805, Congress placed Deborah Sampson Gannett on the federal pension rolls. She received four dollars a month.
The pension had taken more than twenty years from her discharge to achieve. The Massachusetts Legislature had recognized her service and awarded back pay in 1792. The federal government had taken more than a decade additional to follow.
The pension resolution that Congress approved included language describing her service as an example for which “the whole history of the American Revolution furnishes no similar example of female heroism, fidelity, and courage.” This was rhetorical tribute; the four dollars a month was the practical outcome.