Many Americans had remained loyal because they feared that independence would bring chaos, and that there was no guarantee that the government they were going to get would be any better—if indeed as good—as the one they were giving up. (One famous Loyalist motto went, "I would rather have one tyrant 3000 miles away than 3000 tyrants one mile away.") The loyalists thought that independence would threaten the liberties for which other Americans were fighting. They were poorly treated on both sides. T he English did not trust them, and the Americans confiscated their property and even imprisoned, punished, or executed them. By the time the war was over, more than 100,000 loyalists had left the United States, many for Canada and some back to England, bitter at their treatment. Most of them were never reimbursed for their losses despite agreements made in the Treaty, and most of them never returned.
Women and the Revolution. Beginning with the policy of nonimportation and the wearing of homespun clothing as a patriotic gesture, many American women had entered the political arena as contributors if not actual participants. Women in the 18th century had no reason to expect that they might become more politically liberated, for with the exception of mon-archs such as Elizabeth the Great and Queen Anne, not to mention Catherine the Great of Russia, who reigned at that time, women had generally been excluded from European politics for centuries. But American women, who were often fairly well read and literate, were conscious of ideas of republicanism and democracy and began to develop the hope that those enlightened ideas might alter their state.
Abigail Adams famously pleaded with her husband to "remember the ladies" as the men of the Second Continental Congress plotted their Revolution. Although Adams, who loved and admired his wife as his most faithful counselor, treated her remarks lightly, he was probably sympathetic; but one revolution at a time was more than plenty to handle.
The Revolution did not directly address the issue of women's rights in any specific way (nor did it take note of the institution of slavery beyond the fact that the British offered freedom to slaves who would fight against the Americans, a promise they kept). The growth of republican ideas offered the possibility of substantial change once the American nation found its proper form of government. We will discuss the idea of republican motherhood in the women's rights movement in due course, but it should be noted that women did participate in significant ways during the war itself.
The famous "Molly Pitcher," so called because of her carrying water for the soldiers, helped man the guns in time of need. Women accompanying the army carried out various logistics functions, from assisting with preparation of food, to caring for clothing and uniforms, to tending to the wounded. Following the war, Washington himself recognized the many contributions of women to the Patriot cause, symbolized to an extent by the presence of Martha Washington in the American camp during the difficult winter at Valley Forge.
It is also worth noting that the first full history of the American Revolution was written by a woman, Mercy Otis Warren, the sister of James Otis, who had protested the Writs of Assistance in 1761. Mercy Warren was a good friend of Abigail Adams, and both women and many others were fully tuned to the political realities, not only of the Revolution but also of the challenges facing the nation once the war was over. Warren's History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution The National Period: 1783-1789 was published in 1805 and is still available in paper and hardcover editions.
World History
