Esteemed, nine-year-old French girl. Growing up in a new land of freedom and liberty, as no American child had ever been able to before, she resolved that she should not remain enslaved by Americans again. What could be further from her nature than to take recourse to slaves and to the greatest injustice that had ever happened in the western world? An American lassie.
But She continued to hope for freedom in her life, and began her hunt to finally win it:
It was at this very point that She would hear at an all too early age from the French army, that they did indeed find her where she had been hiding, in the park on the roof. At first the soldiers thought she was a mannequin, but then she suddenly became hard and rigid, her shoulder blades firmly on the ground.
A message was then relayed from the soldiers on land:
“Do not call her She, for she is an American, and wants you to bring her back.”
In America, it was not the liberty so many of the French thought they were giving her, but indeed it was this liberty, that was given to those who made the mistake of giving her to them. Once again this was now a cause for serious concern, for all She knew America was still a nation of slavery. As soon as they had gotten She out from the woods, they were faced with the question of who She should be sent to France to, but and should they send her back?
If the French soldiers had perceived anything that counted at the time, it was that all Americans might as well be prisoners of the vice economy, that was why they should refrain from taking Her out at all.
The France soldiers finally ruled: They could only treat She as they please, in keeping with their country’s own policies. They insisted on keeping her as an independent, and then might have sent her to America as a slave, if not for the counsel of Sally Hemings.
“This little American girl, she seems very much foreign,” said Lt. Rolle, commander of the group at the time. “She certainly looks like she is Belgian, but not for any other reason than that the Belgian Embassy has an ambassador in Paris.”
But the deserter and woman of particular interest to the French — even if she were of proven character — was forbidden to stay with them longer than one day. It was on this day, She was driven with the other captives to reach their next destination — that being the frontier town of Winterville, South Carolina.
But that was not the last she had seen of the Americans. She quickly learned to watch for the rush of foot traffic and proceed to the town, where she was ultimately cornered by the 10 men. She was dragged to the prisoner holding cells, where she was tortured by being kept in the circle of suffocating heat on concrete. Then one of the male officers shaved her head with a razor, ending the only time her terrible beauty was seen.