Some accounts describe Binney as moved by admiration for her service or by sympathy for her situation. The accounts that describe his motivations in these terms are largely drawing on sources that have the general reliability problems of the Mann biography and its successors — the attribution of motives to historical figures in the absence of primary documentation is exactly the kind of embellishment that the historical record should be cautious about.
What the record does establish is his behavior: he protected her secret, provided her with care, and managed the disclosure in a way that led to an honorable discharge rather than a court martial. Whatever his motivations, the practical effect of his choices was favorable to her.
Binney is not a figure about whom extensive independent documentation has survived in the scholarship that has been synthesized here. He appears primarily as an actor in the events surrounding her discovery and recovery, and the limits of the documentary record mean that he remains somewhat shadowy as a historical figure despite the significance of his role.
His family’s role in her recovery — she was cared for at his household, and the New England Historical Society account describes the involvement of family members in her nursing — suggests a domestic context that was more informal than a medical institution and that depended on family cooperation to maintain the discretion that his choices required.
## The Pension System and What It Could Not Repair
The $4 monthly pension that Congress finally approved for Deborah Sampson Gannett in 1805 was the federal government’s acknowledgment that she was owed something for her service. The acknowledgment was important in principle. In practice, it did not resolve the underlying situation.