8. A predilection to a limited monarchy, as an essential part of a free and safe government, and an attachment to the reigning king of Great-Britain (with a very few exceptions), were universal in every part of the United States.
9. There was at one time a sudden dissolution of civil government in all, and of ecclesiastical establishments in several of the states.
10. The expences of the war were supported by means of a paper currency, which was continually depreciating.
From the action of each of these causes, and frequently from their combination in the same persons, effects might reasonably be expected, both upon the mind and body, which have seldom occurred; or if they have, I believe were never fully recorded in any age or country.
It might afford some useful instruction, to point out the influence of the military and political events of the revolution upon the understandings, passions, and morals of the citizens of the United States; but my business in the present inquiry, is only to take notice of the influence of those events upon the human body, through the medium of the mind.
I shall first mention the effects of the military, and secondly, of the political events of the revolution. The last must be considered in a two-fold view, accordingly as they affected the friends, or the enemies of the revolution.
I. In treating of the effects of the military events, I shall take notice, first, of the influence of actual war, and, secondly, of the influence of the military life.
In the beginning of a battle, I have observed thirst to be a very common sensation among both officers and soldiers. It occurred where no exercise, or action of the body, could have excited it.
Many officers have informed me, that after the first onset in a battle, they felt a glow of heat, so universal as to be perceptible in both their ears. This was the case, in a particular manner, in the battle of Princeton, on the third of January, in the year 1777, on which day the weather was remarkably cold.
A veteran colonel of a New-England regiment, whom I visited at Princeton, and who was wounded in the hand at the battle of Monmouth, on the 28th of June, 1778 (a day in which the mercury stood at 90° of Fahrenheit's thermometer), after describing his situation at the time he received his wound, concluded his story by remarking, that “fighting was hot work on a cold day, but much more so on a warm day.” The many instances which appeared after that memorable battle, of soldiers who were found among the slain without any marks of wounds or violence upon their bodies, were probably occasioned by the heat excited in the body, by the emotions of the mind, being added to that of the atmosphere.