During the War for Independence, many women moved between their homes and military encampments as they joined their husbands in the Continental Army for varying lengths of time. Although they may all be called camp followers, at that time people distinguished between the women who followed the soldiers and those who were the consorts of officers. The consorts, in turn, were further divided by social and military rank. Martha Washington, Catharine Greene, and Lucy Knox, as generals' wives, represent the elite women within early America's civil and military societies. That shared status, however, should not obscure the differences in their cultural origins, economic situations, and postwar circumstances.

Over the course of the Revolution, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (1731–1802) became the new nation's First Lady. Such a position was not even to be imagined...