Author’s Note: Courage rarely announces itself. It forms through risk, resistance, and consequence long before history chooses names to remember. The Courage They Didn’t Teach moves decade by decade from the mid-1700s onward, setting aside hero worship to focus on moments when retreat looked safer but resolve demanded sacrifice. Please note that, since these people weren't readily celebrated, historical information may be light at times.
Each entry follows one life that faced danger, opposition, or erasure and stood firm without promise of reward. Some endured violence in the open. Others absorbed pressure in silence. Together, these stories show courage as a skill shaped by straining to and refined long before applause, if applause comes at all.
A man can spend years laying track through rough ground, only to watch another man drive the first train across it and take the cheers.
John Fitch: 1743 - 1798
John Fitch didn't wait for approval; he built a steam-powered boat and ran it on the Delaware River in the late 1780s. It moved, not smoothly or reliably, but it moved under its own power against the current, a fact that settled the question many kept arguing.
In 1785, Fitch, who suffered from rheumatism, began designing a steam engine to make it easier for people to travel. Once he realized a steam engine had already been invented in England, Fitch sought to improve his engine and attach it to passenger boats. Despite difficulty acquiring investors, Fitch managed to build his steamboat and test it on the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers.
On August 22, 1787, Fitch demonstrated his invention to members of the Constitutional Convention on the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Trenton. Although many people were impressed by the steamboat, Fitch continued to struggle with finding investors. Fitch’s steamboat carried passengers between Philadelphia and Trenton until 1791. Unable to compete financially with stagecoaches, Fitch was forced to end his passenger steamboat service.
Investors hesitated, skeptics remained loud, but Fitch kept pushing, often using borrowed money and wearing down whatever goodwill he had left. He secured patents and tried to protect his work, even as others chased the same goal with different designs.
Rivalry without relief
James Rumsey worked the same problem from another angle, building his own steam-driven vessel and demonstrating it on the Potomac River. His design differed, yet he shared Fitch's goal: to prove that steam could move a boat in American waters and do so well enough to matter.
People called Rumsey ‘‘crazy Rumsey’’ until the successful demonstration of his engine on the Potomac in a boat built by Joseph Barnes. Gen. Horatio Gates famously cried, ‘‘My God, she moves,’’ as the boat achieved four knots traveling upstream. Washington and others urged Rumsey to seek further support for his invention, and he went first to Philadelphia, where he enlisted the aid of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin and other supporters founded the Rumseian Society to help advance Rumsey’s steamboat and other inventions. While seeking a patent for his steamboat in England, Rumsey died. Friends carried out a scheduled steamboat demonstration on the Thames shortly after his death.
An oft-repeated tale: two rivals' paths colliding, tense patent disputes, leaving supporters to pick sides. Neither man had a safety net; no stable funding waited behind them. Every test carried a risk that reached into their homes and futures.
Rumsey's demonstration in 1787 showed mechanical propulsion could succeed, yet success didn't translate into lasting backing or wide acceptance.
Refinement takes the stage
Years later, Robert Fulton entered a field already cleared by struggle; he improved the design, secured financial backing, and launched a more dependable commercial vessel. His boat ran with enough consistency to earn trust and revenue.
How did he get started with his interest in steamships? At Berkeley Springs in today's West Virginia in 1786, Robert Fulton met John Rumsey, an inventor of a steam pump to propel boats. Yes, the same John Rumsey whom George Washington and Thomas Jefferson preferred to John Fitch, an early pioneer in steamboats. Rumsey had been testing his boats on the Potomac River. Fulton was intrigued, but still considered himself a painter. The next year, with an introduction by Benjamin Franklin, Fulton studied under Benjamin West at the London Royal Academy of Arts. However, his main goal was to attain wealth, and over time, it did not seem that painting would bring that. So, in 1787, Fulton, recalling his days with Rumsey, went to France to study canals and dabble in making machines. He designed a submarine for Napolean, but after two failed trials, it was abandoned.
Fulton's moment not only drew attention, but it also received deserved recognition. Yet the earlier work made such a moment possible. Fitch and Rumsey carried the burden of the first concept, testing weak engines, unreliable parts, and public doubt that bordered on ridicule.
Fitch died in debt, worn down by years of effort that never repaid him. Rumsey also failed to secure a lasting reward. Their ideas didn't vanish; they moved forward with better technology and others refined who stepped onto ground they had already broken open refined them.
Next up in the series: Dolley Madison
During the War of 1812, when British troops marched into Washington and set the capital ablaze, Dolley Madison refused to abandon the President's House without first securing the nation's important symbols. She oversaw the rescue of state papers and insisted that Gilbert Stuart's full-length portrait of George Washington be removed before the flames reached it.
Madison's resolve preserved more than canvas and ink; it protected continuity when federal authority looked fragile and exposed.
Our next entry turns to a First Lady who understood that symbols anchor a young republic when walls and roofs fall.
Other columns in this series
- Franklin Before the Break
- The Woman Who Printed the Names
- The Man Who Refused to Stay Quiet
- Measured by the Stars
- Courage Measured in Seconds
- Margaret Corbin’s Stand Under Fire
- Hidden in Plain Sight—Deborah Sampson
- The Man Who Listened
- A 16-Year-Old Against an Army
- The Shot That Steadied a Revolution
- Mum Bett and the Law
- Phillis Wheatley and the Cost of Freedom
- Ona Judge Chose Freedom Over Comfort
- Richard Allen, A Faith That Wouldn’t Sit in the Balcony
