She corresponded with the Adamses, Jefferson, Generals Gerry and Knox, Lee and Gates, and others who sought her advice. She entertained General and Mrs. Washington, supplied political parties with their arguments, and was the first woman to teach political leaders their duties in matters of state. She kept a faithful record of events during the Revolutionary War, drew her own conclusions as a philosopher and politician, and at the close of the struggle published a history of the war, which can be found in some of the New England libraries, and which contains faithful portraits of the most eminent men of the day. Rochefoucauld, in his “Tour of the United States,” says of her, “Seldom has a woman in any age acquired such ascendancy by the mere force of a powerful intellect, and her influence continued through life.” So grand a leader had plenty of followers, and while there appears to have been no other woman of the time whose influence was as powerful, there were not a few who almost reached the altitude of her rare development. The _morale_ of these women penetrated the men of the time with a sinewy courage that neither weakened nor flagged. They enforced their words of cheer by relinquishing prospects of advantage for themselves, renouncing tea and all other imported luxuries, and pledged themselves to card, spin, and weave the clothing of their households, and as far as possible of the army. They gave their own property for the purchase of arms and ammunition for the soldiers, and melted their wealth of pewter ware, in which many of the colonial households were rich, and ran it into bullets for the army. They raised grain, gathered it, and caused it to be ground for bread, that the poor and feeble might be fed. They visited the hospitals with proper diet for the sick and wounded, sought out the dungeons of the provost and the crowded holds of the prison-ships, with food and medicine in their hands and heroic words on their lips. They unsparingly condemned coldness or backwardness in the nation’s cause, and young girls refused the suits of lovers till they had obeyed the call of their country for military service. They received their beloved dead, slain in battle, and forbore to weep, although their hearts were breaking. They even hushed the bitter resentment of their souls, which had been aroused by British invasion, and gave Christian burial to their enemies, who, but for them, at times would not have received it. They trained their little children to the same uncomplaining patience, the same steely endurance, and the same heroic love of liberty which fired their own hearts, until boys and girls gloried in danger and privation. What wonder that the heroes of the Revolutionary War proved invincible!