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After the Battle of Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, Britain knew it could no longer hold on to its American colonies.
Fighting continued in some areas, but the war was over. Soldiers returned to their farms and businesses. Women went back to their traditional roles. Women’s lives had not changed greatly as a result of the war. But it had given many women different views of their abilities. Their new confidence laid the groundwork for the equal rights fight that lay many years in the future.
▲ Most Native Americans supported the British. Many went to Canada. But more and more settlers moved west. Even the tribes that had backed the Patriots lost much of their land after the war. Within 50 years of the Revolution, the U.S. government began moving all Native Americans in the East to lands west of the Mississippi. During the winter of 1838–1839, 16,000 Cherokee men, women, and children were forced to travel the “Trail of Tears.” It took them from their eastern homes to what was called Indian Territory. Now it is called Oklahoma.
◀ In the new United States, the Declaration of Independence was an inspiration to some enslaved persons. They went to court to get their freedom. The best known was Mum Bett, later called Elizabeth Freeman. She was granted freedom by a Massachusetts court order in 1781. Two years later, Massachusetts outlawed slavery. By 1804, most northern states had taken steps to free their enslaved persons.
Many male soldiers were given a pension (regular payment) for their war service. In 1792, Deborah Sampson asked the state of Massachusetts for a pension. It was finally granted in 1804. In the meantime, she and her husband struggled to pay their bills. To earn money, Sampson gave speeches about her war experiences. At the end of each speech, she dressed in her old uniform, marched around the stage, and fired her musket. She told audiences: “My achievements are a breach [break in custom] in the decorum [behavior] of my sex.... I must frankly confess I recollect them with a kind of satisfaction....” ▶
◀ By 1785, some 100,000 Loyalists had left the U.S. Some of them went to Britain, where people called them quitters. Others took their enslaved persons with them and went to the British West Indies in the Caribbean. However, most Loyalists moved to eastern Canada, where their lives were not always easy, especially at the beginning. One girl recalled living in a tent until her family could build a home. Still, most were proud of their Loyalist heritage. Eventually, they made this known by writing U.E.L. (United Empire Loyalist) after their names. Some of their descendants still do this.
▲ During the Revolution, New Jersey gave women who owned property the right to vote. But the New Jersey legislature took away this right in 1807. It was assumed that married women, who had no property in their own names, would be represented by their husband’s vote. So only single women could vote in New Jersey. All women would not get the vote until 1920.
▲ The new nation understood that women had an important role to play in raising good citizens. To do this, women needed education. After the Revolution, teaching girls became more important. A 1789 Massachusetts law said every town had to provide public education for boys and girls. But the law was mostly ignored. In all the states, private academies offered teenage girls from wealthy families a secondary education. This emphasis on education contributed to the women’s rights movement. This movement officially began with a convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 and is still going on.
