In 1777, so anxious was the mother for news of her husband, that John Quincy became post-rider for her between Braintree and Boston, eleven miles,—­not a light or easy task for the nine-year-old boy, with the unsettled roads and unsettled times.  Even the President’s wife was for weeks at a time in imminent peril; for the British could have desired nothing better than to capture and hold as a hostage the wife of the chief rebel.  Washington himself was exceedingly anxious about her, and made frequent inquiry as to her welfare.  She, however, went about her daily duties with the utmost calmness and in the hours of gravest danger showed almost a stubborn disregard of the perils about her.  Washington’s friend, Mason, wrote to him:  “I sent my family many miles back in the country, and advised Mrs. Washington to do likewise, as a prudential movement.  At first she said ‘No; I will not desert my post’; but she finally did so with reluctance, rode only a few miles, and, plucky little woman as she is, stayed away only one night."[306]

During the first years of the war nervous dread may have composed the greater part of the suffering of American women, but during the later years genuine hardships, lack of food and clothing, physical catastrophes befell these brave but silent helpers of the patriots.  Especially was this true in the South, where the British overran the country, destroyed homes, seized food, cattle, and horses, and left devastation to mark the trail.  In 1779 Mrs. Pinckney’s son wrote her that Provost, the British leader, had destroyed the plantation home where the family treasure had been stored, and that everything had been burned or stolen; but her reply had no wail of despair in it:  “My Dear Tomm:  I have just received your letter with the account of my losses, and your almost ruined fortunes by the enemy.  A severe blow! but I feel not for myself, but for you....  Your Brother’s timely generous offer, to divide what little remains to him among us, is worthy of him...."[307]

The financial distress of Mrs. Pinckney might be cited as typical of the fate of many aristocratic and wealthy families of Virginia and South Carolina.  Owner of many thousands of acres and a multitude of slaves, she was reduced to such straits that she could not meet ordinary debts.  Shortly after the Revolution she wrote in reply to a request for payment of such a bill:  “I am sorry I am under a necessity to send this unaccompanied with the amount of my account due to you.  It may seem strange that a single woman, accused of no crime, who had a fortune to live genteely in any part of the world, that fortune too in different kinds of property, and in four or five different parts of the country, should be in so short a time so entirely deprived of it as not to be able to pay a debt under 60 pound sterling, but such is my singular case.  After the many losses I have met with for the last three or four desolating years from fire and plunder, both in country and town, I still had some thing to subsist upon, but alas the hand of power has deprived me of the greatest part of that, and accident of the rest."[308]