I shall first describe its effects upon the former class of citizens of the United States.
Many persons, of infirm and delicate habits, were restored to perfect health, by the change of place, or occupation, to which the war exposed them. This was the case in a more especial manner with hysterical women, who were much interested in the successful issue of the contest. The same effects of a civil war upon the hysteria, were observed by Doctor Cullen in Scotland, in the years 1745 and 1746. It may perhaps help to extend our ideas of the influence of the passions upon diseases, to add, that when either love, jealousy, grief, or even devotion, wholly engross the female mind, they seldom fail, in like manner, to cure or to suspend hysterical complaints.
An uncommon cheerfulness prevailed every where, among the friends of the revolution. Defeats, and even the loss of relations and property, were soon forgotten in the great objects of the war.
The population in the United States was more rapid from births during the war, than it had ever been in the same number of years since the settlement of the country.
I am disposed to ascribe this increase of births chiefly to the quantity and extensive circulation of money, and to the facility of procuring the means of subsistence during the war, which favoured marriages among the labouring part of the people[54]. But I have sufficient documents to prove, that marriages were more fruitful than in former years, and that a considerable number of unfruitful marriages became fruitful during the war. In 1783, the year of the peace, there were several children born of parents who had lived many years together without issue.
Mr. Hume informs us, in his History of England, that some old people, upon hearing the news of the restoration of Charles II, died suddenly of joy. There was a time when I doubted the truth of this assertion; but I am now disposed to believe it, from having heard of a similar effect from an agreeable political event, in the course of the American revolution. The door-keeper of congress, an aged man, died suddenly, immediately after hearing of the capture of Lord Cornwallis' army. His death was universally ascribed to a violent emotion of political joy. This species of joy appears to be one of the strongest emotions that can agitate the human mind.
Perhaps the influence of that ardour in trade and speculation, which seized many of the friends of the revolution, and which was excited by the fallacious nominal amount of the paper money, should rather be considered as a disease, than as a passion. It unhinged the judgment, deposed the moral faculty, and filled the imagination, in many people, with airy and impracticable schemes of wealth and grandeur. Desultory manners, and a peculiar species of extempore conduct, were among its characteristic symptoms. It produced insensibility to cold, hunger, and danger. The trading towns, and in some instances the extremities of the United States, were frequently visited in a few hours or days by persons affected by this disease; and hence “to travel with the speed of a speculator,” became a common saying in many parts of the country. This species of insanity (if I may be allowed to call it by that name) did not require the confinement of a bedlam to cure it, like the South-Sea madness described by Doctor Mead. Its remedies were the depreciation of the paper money, and the events of the peace.
The political events of the revolution produced upon its enemies very different effects from those which have been mentioned.
The hypochondriasis of Doctor Cullen occurred, in many instances, in persons of this description. In some of them, the terror and distress of the revolution brought on a true melancholia[55]. The causes which produced these diseases may be reduced to four heads. 1. The loss of former power or influence in government. 2. The destruction of the hierarchy of the English church in America. 3. The change in the habits of diet, and company, and manners, produced by the annihilation of just debts by means of depreciated paper money. And 4. The neglect, insults, and oppression, to which the loyalists were exposed, from individuals, and, in several instances, from the laws of some of the states.