134 Chapter 4 The American Revolution
because they themselves were citizens, but because of
their role in training the next generation. “You dis-
tribute ‘mental nourishment’ along with physical,”
one orator told the women of America in 1795. “The
reformation of the world is in your power.... The
solidity and stability of your country rest with you.”
The idea of female education began to catch on.
Schools for girls were founded, and the level of
female literacy gradually rose.
Growth of a National Spirit
The growth of American nationalismwas an impor-
tant result of the Revolution. Most modern revolu-
tions have been caused by nationalism and have
resultedin independence. In the case of the American
Revolution, the desire to be free antedated any
intense national feeling. The colonies entered into a
political union not because they felt an overwhelm-
ing desire to bring all Americans under one rule but
because unity offered the only hope of winning a war
against Great Britain. That they remained united
after throwing off British rule reflects the degree to
which nationalism had developed during the conflict.
By the middle of the eighteenth century the
colonists had begun to think of themselves as a separate
society distinct from Europe and even from Britain.
Benjamin Franklin described himself not as a British
subject but as “an American subject of the King,” and in
1750 a Boston newspaper could urge its readers to
drink “American” beer in order to free themselves from
being “beholden to Foreigners” for their alcoholic bev-
erages. Little political nationalism existed before the
Revolution, however, in part because most people knew
little about life outside their own colony. When a dele-
gate to the first Continental Congress mentioned
“Colonel Washington” to John Adams soon after the
Congress met, Adams had to ask him who this
“Colonel Washington” was. He had never heard the
name before.
The new nationalism arose from a number of
sources and expressed itself in different ways.
Common sacrifices in war certainly played a part; the
soldiers of the Continental army fought in the sum-
mer heat of the Carolinas for the same cause that had
led them to brave the ice floes of the Delaware in
order to surprise the Hessians. Such men lost interest
in state boundary lines; they became Americans.
John Marshall of Fauquier County, Virginia, for
example, was a twenty-year-old militiaman in 1775.
The next year he joined the Continental army. He
served in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York
and endured the winter of 1777–1778 at Valley
Forge. “I found myself associated with brave men
from different states who were risking life and every-
thing valuable in a common cause,” he later wrote. “I
was confirmed in the habit of considering America as
my country and Congress as my government.”
Andrew Jackson, child of the Carolina frontier,
was only nine years old when the Revolution broke
out. One brother was killed in battle; another died as
a result of untreated wounds. Young Andrew took up
arms and was captured by the Redcoats. A British
officer ordered Jackson to black his boots and, when
the boy refused, struck him across the face with the
flat of his sword. Jackson bore the scar to his grave
and became an ardent nationalist on the spot. He and
Marshall had very different ideas and came to be bit-
ter enemies later in life. Nevertheless, they were both
American nationalists—and for the same reason.
Civilians as well as soldiers reacted in this way. A
Carolina farmer whose home and barn were protected
against British looters by men who spoke with the harsh
nasal twang of New England adopted a broader outlook
toward politics. When the news came that thousands of
Redcoats had stacked their arms in defeat after
Yorktown, few people cared what state or section had
made the victory possible—it was an American triumph.In 2009, historian Woody Holton described how Abigail Adams
shrewdly invested in the Continental Congress’s war debts; when
the new government decided to pay those debts in full, those who
had invested in the debt made a killing. Because John Adams
himself supported this policy, Holton suggests that she had
engaged in unsavory (but not uncommon) investment practices.