At Yorktown, Virginia, the site in 1781 of the last major battle of the American Revolution, Sarah Osborn remembered that she took her stand "just back of the American tents, say about a mile from the town, and busied [herself] washing, mending, and cooking for the soldiers, in which [she] was assisted by the other females; some men washed their own clothing." While her "husband was there throwing up entrenchments . . . [she] cooked and carried in beef, and bread, and coffee (in a gallon pot) to the soldiers in the entrenchment." When General George Washington stopped her on one of these trips and asked her if she "was not afraid of the cannonballs," she replied, "No, the bullets would not cheat the gallows. It would not do for the men to fight and starve too."
Sarah Osborn belonged to the army, but she was not enlisted, and she was no "whore," an undeserved reputation accorded to "camp followers." Premodern armies had commissaries but no quartermaster corps. Instead, they relied on civilians to meet the soldiers' needs. Most often they were the soldiers' wives and daughters, and many times they brought their children, who also provided for the troops. Sometimes they were men too, and civilian men and women served as deputies, clerks, wagoners, conductors, nurses, sutlers, artificers, and laborers, and were paid as designated "retainers to a camp . . . persons . . . serving with the armies of the United States." Color did not matter, nor did social status. Camp followers were black and white, freedpeople and slaves. Many times they were refugees whose lives had been destroyed by the British army and who followed American troops for protection and employment. This tradition of relying on civilians came from European armies, and Americans had used it in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763).
During the course of the Revolution, General Washington recognized the indispensability of camp followers and issued rations at the rate of one retainer for every fifteen soldiers. The rest of the retainers would have to provide for themselves by contracting their services directly to soldiers. Women and some men in this position most often served a "mess" of three to four troops. Male and female, adult and child, these retainers formed a community with their soldiers, and together they fought and won the American Revolution.