This study focuses on the rhetoric about, rather than the rhetoric of, two Revolutionary War heroines, Mary Hayes and Deborah Sampson Gannet. The rhetoric about these women is divided into three areas: the rhetoric of neglect, as practiced by conventional historians; the rhetoric of praise, as given by patriotic societies such as the Daughters of the American Revolution and some popular historians; and the rhetoric of expectation, in which popular historians and journalists have judged the appropriateness of these women's behavior. The bulk of the paper is concerned with documenting the facts through records left from this historical period and with disproving some of the saccharine pieces written by various historians. (RB)