





The Blue Anchor Inn, Philadelphia, Pa., 1776 Bettman/Corbis

America in 1776 was also a diverse nation. The first census, taken in 1790, revealed that only about 60% of the people came from England. The rest were German, Irish, Dutch, Scottish, Swedish and African.


Molly Tilghman of Chestertown, Md., summed up the prevailing opinion when she told her cousin Polly Pearce: "Wisdom says beauty is a fading flower but it attracts more admiration than wit, goodness or anything else in this world."

Another American tradition beginning to take root was female independence. The wife of Sueton Grant ran her husband's shipping business in Newport, R.I., for more than 30 years after his death in 1744. As a teenager, Eliza Lucas began experimenting with various plants on her father's Wappoo Creek Plantation, near Charleston, S.C. Soon she was raising indigo, which became one of the most profitable crops in the South.

Philadelphia's Lydia Darragh, America's first female undertaker, operated her business for almost a decade before the Revolutionary War began. During the war she was one of George Washington's most successful spies.

"Domestic felicity" was considered vital to everyone's peace of mind, and although divorce was legal, it was also rare. Although money played a part in marriages among the more affluent, family life was often full of affection. The love letters Col. Thomas Jones of Virginia wrote to his wife began "My Dearest Life."

Not everyone achieved this level of bliss. One notoriously unhappy marriage involved Col. John Custis of Arlington, Va., and his wife, Frances Parke. According to local accounts, they would go for weeks without speaking. One day, on a carriage ride, Mrs. Custis realized he was driving their "equipage" straight into Chesapeake Bay.

"Where are you going, Mr. Custis?" she asked. "To hell, Madam," the colonel replied. "Drive on," she said. "Any place is better than Arlington."

The colonel—or his horses—apparently changed their minds.


As eight years of war engulfed the continent, not a few of the rebels saw that the Revolution was a spiritual enterprise that would never really end. Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Pennsylvanian who signed the Declaration of Independence, wrote that the war was only the first step in the Revolution's destiny to transform America and the world.

History confirmed his intuition. In the next hundred years, other nations and peoples would issue 200 similar declarations.
