A History of the American People

English-speaking country. So if Britain lost America it gained Canada, a point reinforced in the
war of 1812.
The overwhelming majority of loyalists remained in the United States, but not necessarily in
their old localities. Large numbers moved from Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia
to more northerly states, especially Pennsylvania and New York. Others moved west, into and
across the Appalachians, into Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Ohio Valley. The war, then, diluted
the pure English stock of the American population somewhat but, more importantly, it mixed
everyone up more, dissolving old patterns and forming new ones, and so adding heat to the
melting-pot process which was already at work transforming people from innumerable ethnic
and religious backgrounds into full-blooded American citizens.
The war, indeed, was a transforming drama, which left deep psychological and physical scars
on a much tried people, as well as enobling ones. The women were the big sufferers in this long,
divisive, bitter conflict, bearing the brunt of the poverty to which hundreds of thousands were
reduced, at least for some years. We hear of Betsy Ross stitching her flag, Abigail Adams
writing to her husband in Philadelphia in 1776, remember the ladies,' and the clever black girl Phyllis Wheatley writing her poetry. Modern feminist historians pick on certain highlights of the women's struggle to aid the patriots, such as the pro-Revolutionary statement signed by all the women of Edenton, North Carolina, which declared:We the ladys of Edenton do hereby
Solemnly Engage not to Conform to that Pernicious Custom of Drinking tea, or that we the
aforesaid Ladys will not promote the wear of any Manufacture from England until such times as
all Acts which tend to Enslave this our Native Country shall be Repealed.'
But that was window-dressing. Most women had a hard, tragic war, losing brothers and sons
and fathers and homes and sometimes seeing their families bitterly divided for ever. A more
typical story, one suspects, than that of the non-tea-drinking ladies of Edenton was Mrs Elizabeth
Jackson's of Waxhaw Settlement, South Carolina. She was from Carrickfergus and her husband
Andrew from Castlereagh, both part of a big Ulster immigration of 1765. She had three sons, the
last, Andrew, being posthumous, for her husband died soon after they settled. She raised them in
grim poverty and stern, English-hating rectitude. Andrew, aged six, remembered crying. Stop that, Andrew,' Mrs Jackson admonished him.Do not let me see you cry again. Girls were made
to cry, not boys.' What were boys made to do, Mother?'To fight.' All three sons were
encouraged by their mother to serve in the Revolutionary War, Andrew being only twelve when
he enlisted in 1779. The eldest son, Hugh, died on active service, aged sixteen. Andrew and his
second brother, Robert, were both flung into a prisoner-of-war camp and slashed with the sword
of a British officer: The sword reached my head, and has left a mark there as durable as the skull, as well as on the fingers'-all this for refusing to clean the officer's boots. Andrew Jackson carried these scars to his dying day as a reminder of English brutality. His brother was more seriously wounded and died soon after being released. Finally, in 1782, Mrs Elizabeth Jackson, who had been nursing the American wounded in an improvised hospital, contracted an infection and died too, leaving young Andrew an orphan of the war. He remembered every word of the dying advice of this grim woman:Avoid quarrels as long as you can without yielding to
imposition. But sustain your manhood always. Never bring a suit in law for assault or battery or
defamation. The law affords no remedies for such outrages that can satisfy the feelings of a true
man [but] if you ever have to vindicate your honor, do it calmly.'
This kind of suffering, and the bitterness it engendered, makes us thankful for the French
intervention, which helped to bring the war to an end. Without it, the civil war-guerrilla war
phase might have dragged on for many years, further envenomed by British-inspired servile