Unsung Courage

In the fog of Civil War cannon fire and broken fields, “Franklin Thompson” moved with precision, treating the wounded, delivering dispatches, and narrowly avoiding Confederate detection. He was tireless, brave, and… a woman.

Sarah Emma Edmonds, a Canadian by birth, joined the Union Army disguised as a man. She fought for two years before a bout of malaria forced her to desert rather than be found out. Her story, rediscovered decades later, earned her a government pension and induction into military halls of honor.

Her tale is remarkable—but she wasn’t the first American woman to cut her hair, hide her name, and fight in a man’s war. Nearly a century earlier, someone else made the same bold choice… and died without the world ever really knowing who she was.

It’s 1779 in Spanish-controlled Louisiana. The American Revolution is underway, though much of the fighting has yet to reach the Deep South. Spain, sensing opportunity, sides with the colonists and declares war on Britain. In New Orleans, Governor Bernardo de Gálvez gathers a ragtag army of Spanish regulars, free men of color, native tribes, and colonial volunteers to march against British outposts along the Mississippi River.

Among the volunteers is a soldier who registers under a false name—a man’s name. This soldier is tall, capable, and seemingly tireless, drilling with the troops, enduring the brutal Louisiana heat, and carrying supplies alongside men who never question her presence. She is, to them, simply another fighter for liberty.

But this wasn’t just any soldier. She was Sally St. Clair—a woman from South Carolina with little surviving backstory, and even fewer surviving details.

What we do know is this: Sally traveled to New Orleans and enlisted in disguise. Her reasons are lost to time. Was she following a lover? Escaping her past? Driven by principle? Whatever her motivation, she kept her secret even as she marched to war under the blazing sun, through disease-infested swamps and mosquito-ridden nights.

In 1782, during the ill-fated Spanish campaign to capture British-held Mobile (in present-day Alabama), Sally St. Clair fell in battle. She was killed by British musket fire in the skirmish leading up to the Siege of Mobile.

It wasn’t until her body was recovered that her fellow soldiers learned the truth: Sally had been a woman all along.

There was no monument, no pension for a grieving family, no mention in the letters of generals or the war records of Congress. Sally vanished from history almost as quickly as she had entered it.

And yet… for over a century, her story persisted through whispers and word-of-mouth in Louisiana and South Carolina. A woman who fought and died in America’s first war—never for glory, never for recognition, but simply because she believed she belonged there.

In 1898, a local historian and poet, Grace King, resurrected her tale in a short historical account. But by then, her name had already begun to blur around the edges. Some said it was “Santos Clara.” Others thought she was French. Even her name—Sally St. Clair—may have been an alias layered atop another.

She became, in essence, a ghost. A revolutionary spirit who gave everything and left nothing behind but questions.

But one thing is hard to miss: her choice was deliberate. This wasn’t someone caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. She marched. She fought. She died. She chose.

And in that choice, she forced a simple question into uncomfortable territory—what makes someone worthy of being remembered?

Sally St. Clair never got her parade, her pension, or even her name carved properly in stone. But her quiet determination mattered—just not in the ways the world measures. Her effort was anonymous, invisible, but essential. That’s true in life… and it’s true in finance.

Most of the real work in building a secure financial future doesn’t feel heroic in the moment. It’s not the market’s biggest day or a flashy investment pick that defines success—it’s the quiet, consistent decisions that stack up over time. It’s saving the extra percent when no one’s watching. It’s choosing not to cash out when things look shaky. It’s sticking to a plan you believe in, even when nobody’s cheering you on.

Sally’s story reminds us that legacy isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it’s built quietly in the background, with discipline and purpose. The people who change the trajectory of their lives—financially or otherwise—often do so through countless small, unseen sacrifices.

When the noise fades, what remains are the quiet choices that compounded into something lasting. Sally St. Clair never saw the impact of her decision—but her courage echoed across centuries. The same goes for any long-term effort built with patience and faith in something bigger than the moment.

The world may forget the names. It never forgets the impact.