His Excellency General Washington
In the wake of the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia resolved that the New Englanders converging upon the chastened and beleaguered redcoat garrison of Boston should form the basis of a truly pan-colonial army. It was momentous decision, and it posed another: who should command it?
Contenders included Artemas Ward, commander in chief of the Massachusetts troops and already leading the thousands of amateur soldiers laying siege to Gage’s army. Like Washington, Ward was a veteran of the French and Indian War; as a local man, he also enjoyed the backing of influential Yankees. Other delegates championed Charles Lee, the veteran British Army officer who had recently settled in Virginia and who boasted impressive credentials as a professional soldier.
Then there was George Washington. Not only was he still widely esteemed for the military and personal reputation that he had established during the 1750s, but his election was urged by some, especially the Massachusetts lawyer John Adams, for hard political reasons. If his own recollection is to be credited, Adams’s oratory was instrumental in swaying his fellow congressmen toward Washington by arguing that the selection of a Virginian would help to dispel a common notion that New England was attempting to dominate the rest of the colonies, thus overcoming traditional provincial rivalries and forging a unified war effort against Britain. As Adams remembered putting it, Washington was:
a gentleman whose skill and experience as an officer, whose independent fortune, great talents and excellent universal character, would command the approbation of all America, and unite the cordial exertions of all the colonies better than any other person in the union.1
According to the interpretation widely accepted by his biographers, Washington was surprised to be nominated: tormented by doubts of his ability to undertake the job, he accepted only with extreme reluctance and because his sense of duty outweighed his misgivings. In fact, there is considerable evidence that Washington was always a strong candidate and that he exploited opportunities in Philadelphia to bolster his chances, capitalizing upon his enduring reputation to take a prominent role as Congress planned its response to the outbreak of open warfare with Great Britain.2
Just five days into the session, on May 15, Washington was appointed to chair a committee to advise New Yorkers on how to respond if anticipated British reinforcements landed among them. The committee’s recommendations—that they should only resist if attacked—prompted broader discussion within Congress about the respective merits of war and peace, of vigorous resistance versus reconciliation. Divisions between moderate and militant factions led to a compromise on May 25–26: congressional advice that New York should enlist 3,000 men to serve until December 31 was balanced by a further appeal to King George III. Known as the “Olive Branch Petition” and couched in restrained and respectful language, this voiced the delegates’ hopes for a restoration of “harmony” between Crown and colonies. Yet for all its professions of loyalty and devotion, the petition included no hint of concessions by Congress, instead appealing to the king to prevent further bloodshed and repeal the legislation that had sparked trouble in the first place.3
In coming weeks, as such initiatives appeared increasingly futile, momentum gathered behind the concept of a truly “American Army,” to be controlled by Congress. When a second committee was formed, to draft plans to distribute ammunition and military stores throughout the colonies, it was once again headed by Washington. On June 3, Congress voted to borrow £6,000 to purchase gunpowder for what was now being styled “the Continental Army.” Another committee was appointed to estimate the cost of a year-long military campaign, with Washington once more called upon to chair it. Congress finally took the plunge on June 14, when it gave orders for the recruitment of ten companies of riflemen—six from Pennsylvania and two each from Virginia and Maryland—to reinforce the “American continental army” at Boston. A fourth committee was responsible for drafting the rules and regulations to govern these riflemen and all other troops to be raised by Congress: as before, Washington took the helm.
By chairing these key military committees at the very time when Congress was recognizing the need for a Continental Army and considering who should command it, Washington highlighted his qualifications for that job. His decision to attend Congress dressed in full military uniform underlined the same point in striking visual fashion.4
Working alongside key delegates from almost every colony, Washington impressed them at first hand not only with his military expertise, but with the other essential prerequisite for the post—his credentials as an officer and a gentleman of unimpeachable character. In addition, Washington looked and acted the part: according to Congressman Benjamin Rush, he had “so much martial dignity in his deportment that you would distinguish him to be a general and a soldier from among ten thousand people.” Rush added proudly: “There is not a king in Europe that would not look like a valet de chambre by his side.” Anticipating that Washington would make a favorable impression upon her, Abigail Adams discovered that the reality far exceeded expectations, informing her husband John that “the one half was not told me.” Struck by Washington’s dignity and modesty, she observed that “the gentleman and soldier look agreeably blended in him.”5 By contrast, Artemas Ward had a distinctly lackluster military reputation and a homely appearance, prompting Charles Lee to dub him “the churchwarden.” As for Lee himself, despite a sharp intelligence and unrivaled experience of soldiering in both America and Europe, he had an odd, even eccentric character: scrawny, beaky, and disheveled, he preferred the company of dogs to that of his fellow men. Crucially, Lee lacked a critical qualification for the top command: he was not a native-born American.
Whatever the reality of his role in swaying delegates in Washington’s favor, on June 14 it was John Adams who nominated him, and the next day he was unanimously elected “to command all the Continental forces raised or to be raised for the defense of American liberty.” On June 16, 1775 Washington formally accepted the post. In his address to Congress he acknowledged himself “truly sensible” of the “high honor” done to him but expressed “great distress from a consciousness that my abilities and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important trust.” However, as Congress desired it, he would exert all his powers “in their service and for the support of the glorious cause.”6
Washington’s personal correspondence reveals conflicting feelings virtually identical to those he had experienced twenty years before when contemplating command of Virginia’s forces. In 1775, as in 1755, there’s little doubt that Washington actually wanted the job, but that rather than thrusting himself forward with unseemly eagerness, he needed to be asked. As before, when the invitation came, Washington’s determination to pursue his personal quest for honor, as expressed through public duty, left him no option but to accept.
A variety of evidence nonetheless shows that Washington’s abiding hunger for recognition battled a genuine sense of trepidation at the magnitude of the task ahead. Soon after accepting the command, Washington tearfully informed his fellow Virginian Patrick Henry: “From the day I enter upon the command of the American armies, I date my fall, and the ruin of my reputation.” In a letter to his wife, Martha—one of just three to have survived—Washington solemnly assured her that he had done all in his power to avoid the appointment, “But, as it has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking of it, is designed to answer some good purpose.” He added that it was beyond his power to refuse “without exposing my character to such censures as would have reflected dishonor upon myself, and given pain to my friends.”7
Before leaving Philadelphia for Boston, Washington received “instructions” from Congress for his “better direction.” These authorized him to recruit an army as large as he thought fit, although it must be no more than double the enemy’s force; this limitation was dictated by cost and the old suspicion of standing armies. Washington was subject to the wishes of Congress, but, as the man on the spot, had discretion to exercise his own initiative: as events unfolded, many decisions must inevitably be left to his “prudent and discreet management.” Using his “best circumspection” and consulting with his council of war when appropriate, General Washington would discharge the “great trust” committed into his hands and thereby ensure “that the liberties of America receive no detriment.”8
By emphasizing the importance of advisory councils, Washington’s instructions reflected a tried and trusted feature of eighteenth-century warfare, one that he had already encountered while serving under British generals Braddock and Forbes and regularly employed during his own time in command of Virginia’s frontier defenders. Washington’s willingness to adopt this “collegiate” approach and to heed his subordinates’ views would prove crucial for the survival of the revolutionaries’ armed struggle by putting a brake on his own natural aggressiveness. Yet the council of war was a double-edged sword: too much reliance upon it could breed indecision in a commander, particularly as it had become customary to heed a majority vote. It was a rare general who overturned the consensus of his officers: when James Wolfe rejected his brigadiers’ advice at Quebec in 1759 and went ahead with his own plan for a last-ditch attack on the city, he was very much the exception to the rule. Washington apparently interpreted his “instructions” as an obligation to comply with a council’s prevailing opinion: it was only in early 1777, after receiving clarification from Congress, that he realized that a majority vote was not binding and that he had the right to overrule it.9
Heading north via New Jersey, Washington and his escort reached New York City on the afternoon of June 25. There he received an enthusiastic welcome from prominent local patriots accompanied by nine companies of smartly uniformed militia. The next day, the New York Provincial Congress delivered an address that left no doubt of how it interpreted Washington’s role: while hailing him and his generals as champions of “the glorious struggle for American liberty,” its members felt sure that, once the contest had been decided, “by that fondest wish of each American soul, an accommodation with our Mother Country,” Washington would “cheerfully resign” his command “and reassume the character of our worthiest citizen.”10
In his response, Washington sought to allay fears—implied, if not committed to paper—that he might be tempted to abuse his trust, using his powers to become a military dictator in the mold of a Caesar or Cromwell: “When we assumed the soldier,” he declared, “we did not lay aside the citizen, and we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in that happy hour, when the establishment of American liberty on the most firm, and solid foundations, shall enable us to return to our private situations in the bosom of a free, peaceful, and happy country.”11
Washington echoed the New Yorkers’ hopes for the reestablishment of “peace and harmony between the Mother Country and the Colonies,” but even as he wrote, the prospects for rapprochement were dwindling. On June 17—the day after he accepted command of the Continental Army—the conflict had escalated with a ferocious battle outside Boston.
Since the fighting at Lexington and Concord, the town’s British garrison had been hemmed in by swarming New England militia. Starved of fresh provisions and dominated by high ground within comfortable artillery range, the redcoats were in an increasingly precarious position. Never an aggressive commander, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage initially refused to sally out and seize the crucial heights on the Charlestown Peninsula and Dorchester Neck. Spurred on by the arrival of a trio of more combative major generals—William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne—Gage finally decided to act. Warned of Gage’s intention to break out on June 18, General Ward forestalled him during the night of June 16–17 by constructing a redoubt on Breed’s Hill on the Charlestown Peninsula.
Now facing bombardment, the British lashed out. The combat-hardened Howe was given 2,200 men and ordered to eject the rebels from their fresh earthworks. William Howe had missed the garrison’s costly jaunt to Lexington and back, an experience that had led Hugh, Lord Percy, the intelligent and highly professional commander of the 5th Foot, to concede that whoever looked upon the rebels as “an irregular mob” would be “much mistaken.” Indeed, his Lordship continued, they had “men among them who know very well what they are about,” having served as rangers against the Indians and Canadians during the previous war.12
Underestimating the willingness of the Yankee militia to face regulars in a formal engagement, Howe launched most of his command in an unsubtle frontal assault up Breed’s Hill. The first attack was repelled by devastating close-range musketry, obliging the shocked Howe to regroup and try again. Reinforced by another 400 troops from Boston, he led his shattered battalions back up the hill, sustaining further heavy casualties before the defenders ran out of ammunition and the surviving redcoats stormed in with the bayonet. The British had “won” the battle, but at crippling cost: a staggering 40 percent of them were killed or wounded; spattered with the blood of his men, Howe was miraculously unscathed. The physical damage of this “Battle of Bunker Hill” (as it was misnamed after an adjoining height), was real enough, its psychological impact greater still. The rebels had proved their mettle once again, making it clear to British generals that they were far from despicable and that future attacks on fortified positions were likely to incur equally prohibitive losses.
The creditable performance of the New England militia in April and June 1775 reflected intensive drilling for a year or more prior to the first shots. For example, Jonathan Brigham, of Marlborough, Massachusetts, who fought at Lexington and Bunker Hill, joined his local company of minutemen in April 1774. This rapid-reaction force “met punctually through the year two days a week for the purpose of military exercise and improvement.” Another Lexington veteran, Sylvanus Wood of Woburn, Massachusetts, had spent fifteen months training with his minuteman company before hostilities commenced, being “disciplined with activity” by a former British regular “who was in the fight on Abrahams Plains with the brave General Wolfe.”13 Not surprisingly, if somewhat ironically, this training regime followed official British Army drill: the published 1764 Regulations prompted no fewer than twenty-six North American imprints between 1766 and 1780, with demand ominously peaking in 1774–75.14 The Massachusetts minutemen of 1775 were therefore far better trained and motivated than most colonial militia, and their sterling performance surprised British officers accustomed to the unenthusiastic and inefficient New England provincials of the previous war.
But amid all the talk of British casualties another hard lesson of Bunker Hill was overlooked. The redcoats, many of them raw recruits, had marched over the riddled bodies of their comrades to seize their objective. These were not the feeble parade-ground soldiers so recently derided by Charles Lee. British regiments that fought at Bunker Hill took an enduring pride in having done so. Ten years later, the officers of the 43rd Foot presented a gold medal to Thomas Loftus, a humble private on June 17, 1775, “to perpetuate the memory” of his distinguished conduct on that day of carnage.15 Often depicted by patriot propaganda as hapless minions of a tyrannical ministry, men like Loftus were no less determined to hazard their lives than the defenders of American liberty. It would be a bitter and bloody contest.
Washington arrived at Cambridge, outside Boston, on July 2, 1775, and established his headquarters there. The following day, he assumed command from Artemas Ward, who became the army’s senior major general. The third-ranking general, appointed with Washington’s blessing, was the maverick Englishman Charles Lee. There were two other major generals: Connecticut’s Israel Putnam was a burly survivor of hair-raising exploits as a ranger during the French and Indian War who had garnered fresh fame for his leadership at Bunker Hill; Philip Schuyler of New York hailed from an old and wealthy Dutch family and was another veteran of the previous American war. Horatio Gates, Washington’s fellow survivor of the Monongahela, was appointed to the staff post of adjutant general, with the rank of brigadier. Another eight brigadier generals were appointed for field service: they included Richard Montgomery of New York, yet another former British Army officer who’d helped to conquer New France; Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island, whose Quaker upbringing had done nothing to discourage a passion for soldiering; and John Sullivan, a lawyer from New Hampshire.
Washington’s army was weaker than expected, at about 16,000 men. Rumor reckoned the British at 12,000; their real strength was barely half that, but they were solidly fortified and controlled the sea. It was unclear to Washington whether the redcoats would attempt to break out, staging another Bunker Hill–style assault on the besiegers’ lines, or use their fleet to “carry their arms . . . to some other part of the continent.” A third option—to “relinquish the dispute”—would never be accepted by the ministry in London “unless compelled” by force of arms.16
As commander in chief, Washington immediately set about the task of forging a viable and genuinely “American” army from the “mixed multitude of people . . . under very little discipline, order or government” that he had inherited. His General Orders issued on July 4 emphasized the need for unity among this motley crowd:
They are now the troops of the United Provinces of North America; and it is hoped that all distinctions of colonies will be laid aside; so that one and the same spirit may animate the whole, and the only contest be, who shall render, on this great and trying occasion, the most essential service to the great and common cause in which we are all engaged.
The army’s ability to uphold that cause would hinge upon two qualities that Washington had demanded of his Virginia Regiment: “exact discipline” and “due subordination.” Failure to address these “most essential points” would inevitably cause “hazard, disorder and confusion,” leading to “shameful disappointment and disgrace.”17
In his official report to John Hancock, the president of Congress, Washington delivered a positive verdict on the manpower he must work with. Despite the presence of too many “boys, deserters and negroes” among the troops of Massachusetts, he was pleased to find “materials for a good army,” with “a great number of able-bodied men, active [and] zealous in the cause and of unquestionable courage.” Writing more candidly to fellow Virginians, Washington was less flattering, characterizing the New Englanders as “an exceedingly dirty and nasty people.” For all that, he felt the men would “fight very well”—provided they were led by good officers. Here was the real problem in Washington’s opinion: contrary to newspaper reports, in general the Yankee officers were “the most indifferent kind of people” he had ever seen. Too many of them shared the “unaccountable kind of stupidity” shown by the ordinary soldiers. Plainly, they were not gentlemen. Because the officers were virtually “of the same kidney with the privates,” they were reluctant to exercise their authority, preferring to “curry favor with the men” who had chosen them, and upon “whose smiles possibly they may think they may again rely.” In consequence, Washington had “made a pretty good slam” among those officers who fell short of his own exacting standards and shown themselves unworthy of their commissions.18
This cull began within a week of Washington’s arrival in camp. Confirming the verdict of a general court-martial on July 7, which sentenced Captain John Callender to be cashiered for cowardice, the commander in chief took the opportunity to warn of the “fatal consequences of such conduct,” both to the army and to the cause it was defending. Officers must show a courageous example to their men. Those who did their duty “as brave and good officers” would earn “every mark of distinction and regard.” Shirkers, by contrast, could expect punishment “with the utmost martial severity,” irrespective of “connections, interest or intercessions.” Callender had been accused of failing to bring forward his artillery piece at Bunker Hill by none other than General Putnam. Yet in his case at least, the judgment was dubious, the resulting opprobrium unjust. At his trial, Callender plausibly maintained that he had lacked ammunition of the correct caliber for his cannon; he subsequently cleared his name by reenlisting as a volunteer cadet in the artillery, fighting so bravely that he was reinstated as an officer within the year.19
While those considered unsuitable officer material were cashiered in disgrace, other men who had shown leadership potential received recognition. For example, William Lee, an orderly sergeant in the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment, had not only fought bravely at Bunker Hill but given “good advice to the men, to place themselves in right order and stand their ground well.” No fewer than forty-one members of Lee’s company, including his captain, Levi Spaulding, had testified to his “conduct and undaunted courage” and recommended him for a vacant ensign’s commission. He was duly promoted.20
Washington was also keen to exploit the talents of proven fighters from the previous war. When a vacancy for a brigadier arose in August, he felt obliged to mention two veterans to Congress. Both Joseph Frye of Massachusetts and John Armstrong of Pennsylvania had served as colonels of their colonies’ provincials during the French and Indian War. While quick to emphasize that he would accept either man “with the utmost deference and respect,” Washington left no doubt of his own preference: while Frye enjoyed “the character of a good officer,” he was not “distinguished by any peculiar service”; Armstrong, by contrast, had not only exhibited a conduct and spirit that won the approval of “all who served with him”—including Washington himself—but he had also led the 1756 attack against the Ohio Indians at Kittanning, an enterprise “which he planned with great judgment, and executed with equal courage and success.” Frye was a solid, respectable officer, but Armstrong had the warrior’s dash and fire that were central to Washington’s concept of leadership.21
Washington knew from hard personal experience that disease—particularly dysentery—posed a greater threat than enemy action. General Orders issued at Cambridge on July 14 emphasized the importance of “cleanliness,” upon which “the health of an army principally depends.” To that end, the privies were to be filled in weekly and new ones dug; the streets of the encampments were to be swept daily; “offal and carrion” were to be buried and all “filth and dirt” removed. Perseverance in such sanitation would, it was hoped, “remove that odious reputation, which (with but too much reason) has stigmatized the character of American troops.” Further orders warned against drinking “new cider”: as nothing was “more pernicious to the health of soldiers, nor more certainly productive of the bloody-flux,” locals hoping to peddle the beverage were warned that their casks would be stove in.22
The first weeks of Washington’s command also saw efforts to instill traditional military protocol. As guards were tardy in turning out to salute Washington and his generals, orders were issued for the correct honors to be observed: for example, the commander in chief himself, who was now referred to as “His Excellency,” was to be received by the guard with their muskets “rested” while the officer in charge saluted and the drummers beat a march. And as neither sentries, nor even their officers, yet recognized their commanders, they were “to make themselves acquainted with the persons of all the officers in the general command.” To avoid confusion, high-ranking officers would wear different-colored ribbons across their breast, between the coat and waistcoat: Washington’s was light blue, while the major generals and brigadier generals wore pink and aides green. As the Continental Army lacked uniforms, further “badges of distinction” were ordered to indicate rank: field officers were permitted to wear red or pink cockades in their hats, captains yellow or buff, and junior officers green. Sergeants could wear an epaulette, or stripe of red cloth, on the right shoulder, with corporals designated by green.23
As always, Washington took great pains with his personal appearance. Soon after he arrived at Boston, Dr. James Thacher, a local man who had volunteered his medical skills to the patriot cause, was “gratified with a view of General Washington” on horseback and accompanied by several other officers. Young Thacher was impressed by Washington’s demeanor, presence, and immaculate uniform, noting: “It was not difficult to distinguish him from all others. His personal appearance is truly noble and majestic, being tall and well proportioned. His dress is a blue coat with buff-colored facings, a rich epaulette on each shoulder, buff under-dress, and an elegant small sword; a black cockade in his hat.”24
The dearth of uniforms for the rank and file prompted Washington to suggest that Congress issue them with simple, cheap, and utilitarian “hunting shirts” rather than traditional woolen regimental coats. Made of cloth or linen, either left “natural” or dyed, these loose, smock-like garments were popular on the Appalachian frontier, and Washington’s proposal recalled his 1758 initiative to clothe part of his own Virginia Regiment in “Indian dress.” In July 1775, however, Washington was not merely interested in practicality; indeed, he argued, this seemingly “trivial” step, by establishing a universal costume, “would have a happier tendency to unite the men, and abolish those provincial distinctions which lead to jealousy and dissatisfaction.”25 While Congress approved of the plan, it was shelved because not enough of the necessary “tow-cloth” could be found locally. In coming years, the “hunting shirt,” or “rifle shirt,” nonetheless became a popular “field” uniform for many members of the Continental Army—but not before it sparked the very provincial rivalries that Washington had hoped to surmount.
The original army gathered to besiege Boston in 1775 had been drawn exclusively from New England. During late summer, its homogeneous character slowly began to change as reinforcements trickled in from elsewhere. The riflemen sent by Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, now reinforced from ten to twelve companies, made a strong impression upon Yankees like James Thacher, who regarded them with wonder: “They are remarkably stout and hardy men,” he wrote, “many of them exceeding six feet in height. They are dressed in white frocks, or rifle-shirts, and round hats. These men are remarkable for the accuracy of their aim, striking a mark with great certainty at two hundred yards distance.” According to Thacher, these marksmen soon proved their worth, picking off redcoats rash enough to expose themselves, “even at more than double the distance of common musket-shot.”26
The tough backwoods rifleman, clad in his fringed “hunting shirt” and dealing death from afar, was destined to provide one of the most enduring and popular images of the Revolutionary War and to become a cornerstone of its military mythology. Washington, who was already thoroughly familiar with rifles from his service on the Virginian frontier and had carried one himself during the 1754 Fort Necessity campaign, was less easily impressed than Dr. Thacher. Writing to Samuel Washington in late September, he grumbled that the riflemen had so far enjoyed little opportunity to demonstrate their skill, or indeed their ignorance, “for some of them, especially from Pennsylvania, know no more of a rifle than my horse, being new imported Irish, many of whom have deserted to the enemy.”27
Washington’s jaundiced perspective no doubt reflected an incident, just weeks earlier, when he was obliged to quell mutinous Pennsylvanians of Colonel Thompson’s rifle battalion who had objected after comrades were confined in the guardhouse for minor crimes. About thirty of them, with loaded rifles, had marched for the main guard at Cambridge, vowing to free their friends or die trying. Already warned by Brigadier General Greene that “the rifflers” were “very sulky” and threatened to “rescue their mates,” Washington reacted swiftly by turning out 500 men with fixed bayonets and loaded muskets. When he confronted the irate riflemen and ordered them to ground their arms, they meekly obeyed. Thoroughly cowed, all were marched off under guard. According to one eyewitness, Washington was “extremely displeased” and vented his anger in an impassioned speech, declaring “that the rifle men were the men he depended on.” Indeed, “to be so much disappointed seemed very much to affect him.”28
This worrying episode underlined the ineffectiveness of the “Rules and Articles” governing discipline in the Continental Army that had been approved by Congress in June. Mutiny was a serious crime that struck at the very heart of military efficiency. It was accordingly punishable by death under the British Articles of War that American provincials had encountered during the previous conflict when serving alongside the redcoats. Yet in 1775, the Continental Army had no such sanction, with the capital sentence restricted to cowardice in the face of the enemy. Officers were not subject to corporal punishment, while the maximum sentence for other ranks was limited to the biblical thirty-nine lashes typical of provincial units in the last war. This was mild indeed compared with the five hundred or more lashes routinely inflicted in the British Army and which Washington had authorized during his drive to discipline the Virginia Regiment.
As it turned out, Thompson’s riflemen suffered nothing more painful than their tongue-lashing from Washington: court-martialed for “disobedient and mutinous behavior,” thirty-three were fined twenty shillings, while a ringleader also received six days in jail; previously excused fatigue and guard details, they had also forfeited their privileged status, sharing such irksome duties with the musket-toting soldiers in the rest of their brigade. The same episode was apparently responsible for a ruling by Congress, part of a general tightening of the Articles of War following a conference with Washington at his headquarters in October, which extended the death penalty to cover mutiny and sedition.29
The troubling unrest among Thompson’s Pennsylvanians is not mentioned in Washington’s own correspondence, but neither is another affray involving riflemen, in which his intervention allegedly took a far more physical turn. The evidence for this rests entirely on the testimony of Israel Trask, aged just ten years old in 1775, who recalled it seventy years later, when applying for a Revolutionary War pension. During the siege of Boston, young Israel acted as a cook and messenger to the Massachusetts regiment in which his father served. Sometime that winter, a party of Virginian riflemen attracted the attention of the Marblehead Regiment, which was recruited from local sailors and fishermen. As the mariners’ curiosity at the riflemen’s distinctive “ruffled and fringed” shirts turned to scorn and jeering, an opening exchange of snowballs escalated into a full-scale brawl. Inside five minutes, so Trask maintained, “more than a thousand combatants” were locked in a fierce struggle, biting, gouging, and knocking each other down. At that very moment Washington rode up, accompanied by only his black servant, the slave Billy Lee. The commander in chief’s response to the crisis was swift and direct. “With the spring of a deer,” Trask remembered, Washington “leaped from his saddle, threw the reins of his bridle into the hands of his servant,” then plunged “into the thickest of the melee,” where “with an iron grip, he seized two tall, brawny, athletic, savage-looking riflemen by the throat, keeping them at arms length, alternately shaking and talking to them.” As the other brawlers became aware of Washington’s presence, they scattered, leaving him alone with his two captives. And so, without recourse to courts-martial, and by sheer dint of physical and mental power, Washington extinguished “hostile feelings between the different corps of the army.” It is tempting to dismiss this incredible story as the product of an old man’s jumbled memory, heavily influenced by Washington’s towering posthumous reputation. Yet, while perhaps conflating distinct episodes, including the earlier mutiny of Thompson’s men, it likely preserves at least some semblance of truth.30
By early August, the fledgling American army faced a critical shortfall in munitions—both lead for casting bullets and the gunpowder to propel them—with just nine rounds per man. Reporting to Congress, Washington was desperate enough to contemplate any scheme to bolster supplies, however far-fetched. Hearing of a sizable powder magazine in a remote part of the far-off island of Bermuda, Washington hoped to send a privateer vessel to impound it. His justification for the venture reveals his attitude toward risk taking in general:
Enterprises which appear chimerical often prove successful from that very circumstance. Common sense and prudence will suggest vigilance and care where the danger is plain and obvious, but where little danger is apprehended the more the enemy is found unprepared and consequently there is the fairer prospect of success.31
It was a creed that Washington would put to the test soon enough.
Given the gunpowder crisis, it was fortunate for Washington that his opponent Thomas Gage stayed on the defensive, with military operations amounting to no more than bickering between outposts. This skirmishing had nonetheless yielded prisoners on both sides, raising the sensitive issue of their treatment. Washington and Gage had remained on friendly terms until the very eve of the rupture between Crown and colonies. Indeed, when Gage returned to England on leave in spring 1773, Washington had attended the farewell dinner given for him by the citizens of New York. Now things were different. Hearing that “officers engaged in the cause of Liberty” had been unceremoniously thrown into a “common gaol” in Boston, Washington warned his old friend that if such harsh treatment persisted, he would be reluctantly obliged to serve British prisoners the same way. He added: “But if kindness and humanity are shown to ours, I shall with pleasure consider those in our hands, only as unfortunate, and they shall receive the treatment to which the unfortunate are ever entitled.”32
Replying to Washington’s letter, Gage strongly denied allegations that prisoners had been mistreated. Indeed, he declared, “Britons, ever preeminent in mercy, have out-gone common examples, and overlooked the criminal in the captive.” Although Gage did not use the word, such men were rebels “whose lives by the laws of the land are destined to the cord.” Yet far from being hanged as traitors, as they could have been, prisoners had “hitherto been treated with care and kindness,” he added. It was true that officers had fared no differently than others, but that was because Gage acknowledged “no rank that is not derived from the King.”33
Gage’s moderate stance would be followed by succeeding British commanders in America. Although a Royal Proclamation of Rebellion was issued in London on August 23, 1775, entreating all Crown officers to suppress the insurrection and “to bring the traitors to justice,” the full awful force of the law was never unleashed against the American rebels;34 there would be no executions like those that followed the Jacobite rebellion of 1745–46, which Gage himself had helped to suppress, or the draconian, drum-head justice administered to Irish rebels in 1798.
As the standoff at Boston continued, Washington became reacquainted with the frustrations of command, although these now dwarfed those he had encountered as colonel of the Virginia Regiment. At headquarters, he was immediately swamped by paper. The experienced Horatio Gates oversaw staff work, but the commander in chief was still obliged to handle a copious correspondence. Simply reading through this today is daunting enough: composing outgoing letters, digesting incoming reports, and acting upon them all amounted to a colossal and mind-numbing task.
Some of this paperwork was exasperatingly trivial. For example, Washington became snared in an ongoing correspondence with a captive British officer on a touchy issue of protocol. Major Christopher French of the 22nd Foot—the same officer who had served on James Grant’s expedition against the Cherokees in 1761—had been captured after he disembarked in New Jersey, unaware that war had already erupted. While accepting French’s word of honor not to escape from Hartford, Connecticut, where he was being held, the local committee of safety had ruled that the major must not strut around town wearing his sword, “as the lower class of townspeople took umbrage” at such provocative behavior. Major French appealed to Washington as one officer to another, trusting that the Virginian’s “long service and intimate acquaintance with military rules and customs” would prompt him to intervene in his favor. It was soon clear, however, that Major French had talked himself into trouble, announcing that if he were able to join his regiment, he “should act vigorously against the country, and do every thing in his power to reduce it,” sentiments that had caused the patriots of Hartford to regard him “as a most determined foe.” Replying from headquarters, Washington was surprised at French’s insistence upon “points of mere punctilo,” particularly given the rough treatment endured by “those brave American officers who were taken fighting gallantly in defense of the liberties of their country.” As French enjoyed “all the essential comforts of life,” Washington hoped he would have the “prudence and good sense” to abide by the wishes of the Hartford folk. After all, he added wryly, the major’s stay among them might be longer than anticipated.35
Major French’s keen sense of honor was just one among many distractions as Washington grappled with an overriding problem destined to dog him to despair: an army composed of amateur part-timers must inevitably melt away as the men’s stipulated periods of enlistment expired. Writing to John Hancock on September 21, he warned that, as the Connecticut troops were only engaged until December 1, and none of the others for longer than January 1, the “dissolution” of the army was therefore unavoidable, “unless some early provision is made against such an event.” Washington’s generals believed that, if the men were appeased with a spell of leave, it should be possible to reenlist them to serve the coming winter, but there was no guarantee.36
Using tactful and restrained language, which contrasted with his often intemperate rants to Governor Dinwiddie twenty years before, Washington warned Hancock and his colleagues of an impending crisis. “It gives me great pain,” he wrote, “to be obliged to solicit the attention of the honorable Congress, to the state of this army, in terms which imply the slightest apprehension of being neglected.” But he had no choice. With winter fast approaching upon poorly clad “naked” men whose time of service would expire within a few weeks and with military funds “totally exhausted,” his situation was “inexpressibly distressing.” Someone was to blame, although Washington diplomatically hesitated to point the finger against Congress: “I know not to whom I am to impute this failure,” he continued, “but I am of the opinion, if the evil is not immediately remedied and more punctuality observed in future, the army must absolutely break up.”
This firm but respectful stance, in which Washington acknowledged the primacy of the Revolution’s civilian leadership while simultaneously emphasizing the genuine needs of the men fighting to uphold American liberty, would characterize his relations with Congress while commander of the Continental Army. By instinct Washington was a soldier rather than a politician, yet he had gradually learned to combine the roles of both to achieve his ends. His long and nuanced letter to Hancock is evidence of maturing political skills, acquired in Virginia’s House of Burgesses since his first military retirement in 1759 and polished during the Continental Conventions of 1774–75. It had the desired effect: a committee of Congress was soon on its way to Cambridge to address the key issues.
Meanwhile, Washington was keen to attack Boston while he still had troops to command. In the same letter in which he informed Hancock of the Continental Army’s dire situation, Washington emphasized his own wish “by some decisive stroke to relieve my country from the heavy expense, its subsistence must create.” Indeed, no man in America hoped more earnestly for “such a termination of the campaign, as to make the army no longer necessary.”
To that end, in early September Washington had sent a circular to his generals, priming them for a council of war to discuss his proposal for a surprise assault upon Boston. This would involve coordinated strikes: across the harbor using whaleboats and by land against the British fortifications at Roxbury, which defended the port’s narrow “neck.” Washington argued that dwindling powder supplies and rumors of British reinforcements both justified such a bold attempt. But, above all, with winter approaching, men already homesick would be still quicker to decamp; and even if an army could be kept together, it would be difficult and costly to maintain. These factors, among many others, inclined Washington to “wish a speedy finish of the dispute”: with one knockout blow the war could be decided, and they could all go home. Despite his strong personal preference for decisive and aggressive action Washington was not blind to the hazards involved or “the probable consequences of a failure.” After weighing the pros and cons, the council of war considered Washington’s plan too risky, unanimously agreeing “that it was not expedient to make the attempt at present at least.” The commander in chief abided by their judgment.37
Washington’s hopes for an all-out offensive against Boston were soon revived, however, and this time with the blessing of the politicians in Philadelphia. On October 18, he summoned another council of war, “in consequence of an intimation from the Congress, that an attack upon Boston if practicable was much desired.” Provided Washington considered the attempt “likely to defeat the enemy and gain possession of the town,” he was to strike “upon the first favorable occasion”—and before the arrival of expected British reinforcements. If manpower was lacking, Washington was authorized to make up his numbers by mobilizing local minutemen. This was not the last occasion upon which Congress would encourage Washington to seek a swift, decisive victory—despite the risks. Given his temperament, such prompting was scarcely necessary. Once again, his generals reined him in: maintaining their previous position, they swiftly rejected the latest plan as unrealistic under the circumstances.38
In both instances, Washington had followed his original congressional instructions and sought the guidance of his senior officers. Faced with the uncompromising rejection of his own initiatives, he had accepted their overwhelming verdicts without caviling or seeking to overrule them. Despite his own hunger for action, Washington was undoubtedly right to do so: sending raw troops against regulars ensconced behind entrenchments would have played directly into his enemy’s hands, likely destroying the young Continental Army.
But there remained another outlet for Washington’s urge to do more than simply sit watching the British in Boston. In early summer, Congress had resolved to invade Canada, assembling a distinct “northern” army at Albany under General Schuyler and ordering it up the Champlain Valley. To support that advance and distract Britain’s commander in Canada, Sir Guy Carleton, Washington authorized a bold strike against Quebec, using men from his own army. The city was believed to be virtually undefended and therefore “an easy prey.” A detachment of more than 1,000 was to penetrate to the St. Lawrence Valley via the rugged course of Maine’s Kennebec River. The force consisted of some 800 volunteers from the Continental regiments at Cambridge; given the wilderness terrain to be surmounted, all were to be “active woodsmen, and well acquainted with bateaus”—sturdy, flat-bottomed boats capable of carrying about twenty men and their provisions. There were also three companies of the feisty riflemen, one of them commanded by Captain Daniel Morgan. As a teamster during the French and Indian War, Morgan had received a severe flogging after striking a British officer and had never forgotten the pain and humiliation. Command of the expedition was entrusted to a zealous Connecticut colonel, the thirty-four-year-old Benedict Arnold.39
To Lord North’s ministry back in London, which had received the shocking news of Bunker Hill on July 25, it was clear that Britain’s commander in chief in North America lacked the stomach for suppressing an escalating rebellion. Orders were dispatched for Gage’s recall, and on October 10 he was superseded by General Howe. Confronted with the reality of full-scale rebellion, the ministry agreed to give Howe a reinforced army of at least 20,000 men and to make New York, not Boston, its operational base for a campaign of reconquest.
Initially, there had been widespread political and military support for curbing the rebellion through a naval blockade, targeting American trade. But compared with what was expected to be a short, sharp land war, a blockade might prove a protracted business. With the Royal Navy run down in the years of peace since 1763, there was also the question of safeguarding home waters, particularly as it was notorious that the French were itching for a chance to exact vengeance for their crushing defeat in the previous war. On the other hand, mobilizing the fleet to a war footing could provoke the French to intervene from fear for their vulnerable Caribbean possessions. In addition, a purely naval response to the revolt would ignore those Americans—perhaps one-fifth of the white population—who were loyal to the Crown, failing either to protect them or to exploit their potential as auxiliaries for the British Army.* In August 1775, the ousted royal governors of North and South Carolina were both adamant that with minimal support from British regulars, large concentrations of Loyalists in the interior “Back Country” would willingly take arms and rise up to throw off the rebels. Such reports chimed with a common view that the American rebellion was a “conspiracy” involving a minority of agitators, rather than a more widespread movement. The notion that the majority of colonists were fundamentally loyal held particular appeal for Lord George Germain, who became American Secretary in late 1775, and would oversee Britain’s strategy in coming years.40
Although Congress’s “Olive Branch Petition” was ignored in London, to the delight of American radicals who favored outright independence rather than reconciliation, Lord North and his cabinet hadn’t abandoned all hopes of a negotiated settlement. While gearing up for war, they gradually warmed to the notion of a Peace Commission; its basis for negotiation would be the so-called Conciliatory Proposition that North had announced back in February 1775. Regarded by even some of his own supporters as conceding far too much, this dangled a deal that the prime minister hoped would solve the crisis: where any colony agreed to pay for its civil government and its share of defense costs, Parliament would not attempt to impose revenue-yielding taxes. Since then, however, attitudes had hardened. By seeking to open negotiations with individual colonies, the proposed Peace Commission would ignore the very existence of Congress. Colonies that refused to talk would be obliged to do so—by force, if necessary.
A shortage of shipping prevented Howe from shifting his troops to New York by sea that autumn. And despite his well-earned reputation as an aggressive officer, he proved no keener than Gage to break the deadlock by storming the rebel siege lines. Although Washington chafed at the continuing inactivity, the lull provided a vital breathing space in which to reorganize the Continental Army—as Captain James Wilkinson of Maryland explained, “to make a selection of officers, to levy a new army, to organize his corps, to assimilate, partially, their modes of duty and exercise, to cherish the confidence of his troops, and to infuse among them some sense of the esprit de corps.”41
On October 8, in forwarding their recommendations to Congress, Washington’s generals had agreed unanimously that the new army, “sufficient for both offensive and defensive measures” over the coming winter, should consist of not fewer than 20,372 men. There would be twenty-six regiments of “battalion men,” each mustering 728 of all ranks organized into eight companies, plus 1,444 riflemen and artillerymen. The proposed regiments were almost twice the strength of British battalions, which were lucky to field 400 men, officers included. On paper these were powerful formations, but there remained the question of filling them with flesh-and-blood recruits. It was initially agreed to seek enlistments to December 1, 1776, but in the following month, when the officers of the new regiments actually set about finding their men, that period was extended by thirty days. Recruiting officers were urged to observe ideological, physical, and racial criteria, being “careful not to enlist any person, suspected of being unfriendly to the liberties of America, or any abandoned vagabond to whom all causes and countries are equal and alike indifferent.” Neither should they enlist “negroes, boys unable to bear arms, nor old men unfit to endure the fatigues of the campaign.”42 Before long, recruiters would learn to be less discriminating.
While there were no clashes between the rival armies at Boston, British warships based at the port began prowling the neighboring New England coastline, prompting cries for help from vulnerable communities. On October 18, two warships bombarded Falmouth, in what would become Maine, starting fires that consumed most of the town.43 While deploring the “desolation, and misery” resulting from this calculated act of “ministerial vengeance,” Washington was powerless to send either men or munitions to assist the townsfolk. However, he had fitted out several armed vessels as privateers, and they were soon preying upon British merchantmen bound for Boston. On November 28, Captain John Manley of the schooner Lee pounced upon the British ordnance ship Nancy. As Washington enthused to his secretary and friend Joseph Reed, this valuable haul of munitions was an “instance of divine favor; for nothing, surely, ever came more apropos.” The Nancy’s cargo included a fine brass thirteen-inch mortar, assorted shot, and 2,000 muskets and bayonets; disappointingly, there was no gunpowder, a commodity that remained in desperately short supply.44 In early December, Washington pleaded for Congress to do all in its power to remedy “the great want of powder.” Stocks were so low that, far from mounting an offensive, Washington’s army would scarcely have enough to defend its own lines against a sortie.45
On November 16, 1775, Washington had issued orders that would soon make the British occupation of Boston untenable. Keen to augment his artillery, he entrusted an important mission to twenty-five-year-old Henry Knox, a former Boston bookseller who had spent much time perusing his own stock, especially volumes devoted to gunnery and fortifications. Knox’s knowledge and drive would soon gain him the job of Washington’s chief of artillery, but in the meantime he was ordered to gather up the guns and ammunition currently in the province of New York. These included such cannon and mortars as could be fetched from the once-formidable but now run-down Champlain Valley fortresses of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, which had been captured in May by New Englanders under Arnold and Ethan Allen. Washington wrote: “The want of them is so great, that no trouble or expense must be spared to obtain them.”46 Knox, whose substantial girth belied his energy, took him at his word.
Knox’s determination and zeal stood in marked contrast to the stance of many others who’d formed the first patriot army outside Boston. Their enthusiasm for the cause had proved short lived. By late November, Washington was fighting a losing battle to persuade the Connecticut men to extend their enlistments. Writing to Joseph Reed, who had now replaced Gates as adjutant general, he warned that “such a dirty, mercenary spirit pervades the whole that I should not be at all surprised at any disaster that may happen.” To plug the yawning gap in the ranks it would be necessary to summon 5,000 minutemen and militia from Massachusetts and New Hampshire—undisciplined men who Washington feared would contaminate his army, destroying the “little subordination” that he had worked so hard to instill. Just five months after accepting Congress’s offer to command the Continental Army, Washington was already ruing his decision: “Could I have foreseen what I have, and am like to experience, no consideration upon earth should have induced me to accept this command,” he wrote.47
Ironically, what Washington condemned as the New Englanders’ despicable desertion of the cause could also be interpreted as an expression of the very freedom they had been fighting for; such liberty was personal, and not just some high-flown ideological concept. While deploring the early return of men from his state and promising to punish the ringleaders, Connecticut’s governor, Jonathan Trumbull, highlighted the difficulty of maintaining such a revolutionary struggle without simultaneously unleashing “licentious and leveling principles, which many very easily imbibe.” He added: “The pulse of a New England man beats high for liberty.” It followed that his enlistment was “purely voluntary”: when his time was up, he considered himself free to go—unless a fresh engagement was made. As Trumbull correctly noted, this contract principle had prevailed with the New England provincial troops during the French and Indian War. For the present, he greatly feared “its operation among the soldiers of the other colonies, as I am sensible this is the genius and spirit of our people.”48 This was a paradox that Washington, the Virginian gentleman planter for whom strict hierarchy was the natural way of things, would never fully accept.
Since he had arrived at Cambridge, long, rambling letters from his Washington cousin Lund, describing the sometimes comical rhythms of rural life at Mount Vernon, had provided Washington with news of his home and family, offering welcome, if momentary, distractions from the strains of command. For example, Lund was happy to report that “after doing and undoing twenty times” Mount Vernon’s chimney had finally been cured of its inveterate smoking. Regrettably, an attempt to saw short the horns of Washington’s notoriously vicious bull, undertaken in Lund’s absence, had proved less successful. That tricky operation had been supervised by the hapless Thomas Bishop, a soldier servant whom Washington had inherited from General Braddock in 1755; although “every man, woman and child” on the plantation had turned out to lend a hand, as Lund reported, “the bull proved too many for them.”49
On December 11, Washington was cheered by far more tangible links with his old domestic life with the arrival in camp of Martha, her son, Jack, and his young wife, Nelly. The militiamen had also marched in on schedule and were far better troops than Washington had expected. As he informed John Hancock, they were not only “very fine looking men” but “go through their duty with great alacrity”—praise indeed from a soldier of Washington’s antimilitia prejudices and further testimony to the intensive training of the Yankee minutemen in the months before Lexington and Concord.50
And as 1775 drew to an end, there was encouraging news from Canada. There the revolutionaries’ offensive seemed a spectacular success. General Schuyler’s force, spearheaded by his dashing second in command, Brigadier General Montgomery, had forged north up the Champlain Valley, taking the British posts at St. John and Chambly and then pushing on to capture Montreal. The indefatigable Colonel Arnold, meanwhile, had been advancing with incredible hardship through the frozen Maine wilderness to reach Point Lévis, opposite Quebec. Here was a man after Washington’s own heart: brave, tough, dauntless. Offering his heartfelt thanks for Arnold’s “enterprising and persevering spirit,” Washington bestowed the ultimate accolade upon him. Paraphrasing a passage from his favorite play, Addison’s Cato, he added: “It is not in the power of any man to command success, but you have done more—you have deserved it.”51 To General Schuyler, Washington wrote of his satisfaction in learning that Arnold had overcome “almost insuperable difficulties,” despite the fact that nearly a third of his force had forsaken him and turned back. In words that must have returned to haunt him, Washington added: “The merit of this gentleman is certainly great and I heartily wish that Fortune may distinguish him as one of her favorites.”52
At Boston, Washington remained understandably fixated upon the problem of rebuilding and remodeling his army, all the while within cannon-shot of the enemy. Regrettably, as their enlistments terminated, the “same desire of retiring into a chimney-corner seized the troops of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts . . . as had worked upon those of Connecticut.” While Washington’s old army trickled away, as inexorably as sand in an hourglass, frantic efforts were made to recruit a new one. Already, harsh reality was leading to change: General Orders on December 30 now permitted the recruitment of “free negroes” who had already served in the army before Boston and were keen to reenlist.53
On New Year’s Day 1776, Washington issued orders announcing the “commencement” of the new army. To mark this fresh start, he pardoned all offenses committed in the old one and freed all prisoners. In truth, the army needed every man it could get in what remained a crisis situation. Offsetting his continuing anxiety with a touch of pride, Washington reported to his confidant Joseph Reed: “Search the vast volumes of history through, and I much question whether a case similar to ours is to be found,” he wrote, and not without justification. They had held their position against the “flower of the British troops for six months together,” disbanding one army and raising another in the teeth of “a reinforced enemy.”54
As Washington’s General Orders of January 1 underlined, the new army’s bedrock must be “subordination and discipline.” These were “the life and soul of an army”; without them, they would be “no better than a commissioned mob”; with them, the Continental Army would become “formidable to our enemies, honorable in ourselves and respected in the world.” The men were “brave and good” and “addicted to fewer vices than are commonly found in armies,” but forging them into an effective fighting machine would depend, above all, upon the exertions of the officers, from brigadiers down to ensigns.
Washington’s own conception of the officer’s role had not changed since the 1750s. It was outlined in a letter to William Woodford, the newly appointed colonel of the 2nd Virginia Regiment, who had sought guidance on how to proceed.55 “The best general advice I can give,” Washington replied, “is to be strict in your discipline; that is, to require nothing unreasonable of your officers and men, but see that whatever is required be punctually complied with.” Woodford must reward and punish all by merit, “without partiality or prejudice.” Vice must be discouraged “in every shape,” while every man in the regiment, from the highest to lowest, should be impressed with “the importance of the cause, and what it is they are contending for.” When dealing with his officers he should be “easy and condescending . . . but not too familiar, lest you subject yourself to a want of that respect, which is necessary to support a proper command.”
Drawing upon his own combat experience during the French and Indian War, Washington urged Woodford to always be on his guard against surprises, marching with “front, rear, and flank guards” and securing all his encampments. When it came to the business of drill—both the basic “manual exercise” by which the individual soldier learned how to handle his musket and the far trickier “evolutions and maneuvers” for shifting a regiment across a battlefield, the most useful guide, in Washington’s opinion, remained Humphrey Bland’s Treatise of Military Discipline. This was the same text that Washington had recommended to his Virginia Regiment officers back in 1756. “Old Humphrey” was a veteran of Marlborough’s legendary campaigns and had served under the Duke of Cumberland in Flanders and Scotland forty years later. By 1775, Bland’s book was showing its age: the Connecticut militia, which had adopted it in 1743, abandoned it in 1769 as “prolix and encumbered with useless motions.”56 Washington’s penchant for Bland underlines the conservatism of his own approach to warfare and a reliance upon the habits learned during his first military career. Yet, while failing to reflect the latest drill, Bland’s work nonetheless emphasized basic tactical truths that remained as relevant in 1775 as they had done when he was learning his trade under “Corporal John.” For example, Bland stressed the importance of receiving the enemy’s fire first, reserving your own volley until close quarters and briskly following it up with a bayonet charge. That particular lesson had been taken to heart by General James Wolfe and put to good use on the Plains of Abraham in 1759.57
Other books recommended to Colonel Woodford by Washington, which likewise reflected his personal library, included translations of Turpin de Crissé’s Essay on the Art of War—the work used by General Forbes in his 1758 campaign against Fort Duquesne—and Captain Louis Michel de Jeney’s The Partisan, which concerned itself with the business of “Making War in Detachment.” Another of Washington’s suggestions, Major William Young’s Maneuvers, or Practical Observations on the Art of War, incorporated another influential and useful text, General Wolfe’s Instructions to Young Officers: this reprinted the regimental and general orders issued by Wolfe in the decade before his death at Quebec, presenting the thoughts of an unusually diligent and professional officer on everything from tackling drunkenness among the rank and file to rebuffing an attacking column of infantry.
As his recommended reading shows, Washington was well aware of both “regular” and “irregular” warfare. Interestingly, despite his extensive firsthand experience of backwoods campaigning in the 1750s, the American army Washington envisaged in the autumn of 1775 was geared toward waging a “conventional” conflict, not a guerrilla war and still less an “Indian” one. Given the frustrations he had experienced on the frontier, both in fighting Indians and enlisting their aid as allies, it is unsurprising that Washington should endorse Congress’s policy of encouraging the “Indian Nations” to stay out of the fight, seeking nothing more from them than “a strict neutrality.”58
Both the organization and the discipline of the Continental Army sought to emulate the old Virginia Regiment, which had itself imitated the British model; many general orders issued from 1775 onward used phrases identical to those employed by Washington between 1755 and 1758. Rather than embodying some free-spirited force of patriotic but amateur citizen militia, as advocated by the political and military radical Major General Charles Lee, Washington’s military vision was fundamentally conventional, anchored upon a regular army of long-service professionals—the “standing army” that was anathema to so many of his fellow Americans, not least to members of Congress.
In early 1776, whether the Continental Army would survive in any shape at all remained a moot point. The first detailed rolls for the newly reorganized force, compiled on January 9, revealed that instead of the 20,000 considered to be the minimum required for the job, Washington had only 8,200 men: of those, just 5,600 were actually present and fit for duty.59
The gloom was soon compounded by news of a shattering defeat before Quebec. During the last hours of 1775, the combined forces of Montgomery and Arnold launched a desperate assault upon the fortified city under cover of a snowstorm. It was a gallant, but futile, effort. Cut down by a blast of canister, Montgomery provided the revolutionary cause with a high-ranking military martyr, one who would be commemorated in a spirited canvas by the painter John Trumbull. Recklessly brave as ever, Arnold was shot through the left leg; oozing blood and defiance, he limped back with the survivors to maintain a wary siege.
Washington’s spirits received a badly needed boost when Henry Knox returned from Ticonderoga on January 18, followed soon after by his spectacular haul of some sixty guns. Through determination, ingenuity, and sheer backbreaking toil, these priceless field-pieces and mortars had been ferried down Lake George, then dragged on ox-drawn sledges across the frozen New England countryside. Knox’s ordnance constituted the most formidable “train” of artillery that Washington had ever seen, stronger than those assembled by Braddock and Forbes and capable of raining shot and shell on Boston.
Gunpowder was still too scarce for such an intensive bombardment, but Washington resurrected his hopes for a direct offensive, seeking to exploit the solid ice that now stretched between his lines and Howe’s defenses to launch “a bold and resolute assault.” Not surprisingly, on February 16, the customary council of war vetoed the scheme, its members virtually unanimous in their opposition. Reporting this outcome to Hancock, Washington couldn’t conceal his disappointment. Sensitive for his reputation and burning to be seen to be “attempting something against the ministerial troops,” this time he had only bowed to the council’s verdict with the greatest reluctance. Washington assured Hancock: “I was not only ready, but willing and desirous of making the assault; under a firm hope, if the men would have stood by me, of a favorable issue, notwithstanding the enemy’s advantage of ground, artillery, etc.” His frustrations were clear, reflecting an abiding obsession with honor and public reputation: with the “eyes of the whole continent fixed” upon him, with “anxious expectations of hearing of some great event,” it was irksome “to be restrained in every military operation for want of the necessary means of carrying it on.”60
Washington was once again wise to heed his generals’ advice: sending ill-trained troops skittering across the ice against regulars itching to settle the score for Bunker Hill must have ended in a massacre. Even Providence would have been hard pressed to preserve her favored son under such circumstances: eager to prove his personal courage by leading from the front, Washington would likely have shared the fate of Montgomery at Quebec, depriving the Continental Army of its commander and dealing a potentially lethal blow to the Revolution.
There were soon less risky alternatives to an all-out assault. By March, Washington had finally stockpiled enough gunpowder to begin bombarding Boston with Knox’s artillery. As early as February 11, Lieutenant Colonel Rufus Putnam—cousin to Israel “Old Put”—had proposed a plan for securing Dorchester Heights, which dominated Boston from the south and still remained unfortified by either side. Three weeks later, Putnam’s plan was activated, with Knox’s gunners providing a diversionary barrage. They had much to learn: as Washington reported to Joseph Reed, in a matter of days no fewer than five mortars burst, presumably through the “ignorance” of the bombardiers. Those wrecked so regrettably included the formidable mortar taken from the prize Nancy and nicknamed “Congress”: it was one thing to read about artillery in technical treatises, quite another to operate it in action.61
Despite such teething troubles, the bombardment proved effective enough to thoroughly alarm and distract the British. Under its cover, more than 2,000 Americans worked feverishly to fortify Dorchester Heights through the moonlit night of March 4–5. The frozen ground defied pick and shovel, so it was impossible to construct the usual entrenchments, but viable gun batteries were made instead from timber frames known as “chandeliers” stuffed with fascines (long bundles of sticks); Elisha Bostwick of the 7th Connecticut Regiment remembered that they “labored incessantly all the night,” raising breastworks and filling hundreds of barrels with gravel. These were placed at the edge of the defenses, “ready to be set rolling down the steep hill on the approach of the enemy.”62
Waking to the sight of extensive and substantial siegeworks, the redcoats were no less astounded than they had been by the swift fortification of Breed’s Hill the previous June. Howe now contemplated a similarly blunt response. Orders were issued for an attack on the heavily manned Dorchester Heights on March 5: this was the sixth anniversary of the “Boston Massacre”—an emotive date in every American patriot’s calendar—and Washington reported his officers and men to be impatient for the onset, ready to face their enemies with “the most animated sentiments and determined resolution.” According to intelligence provided by escaped prisoners from Boston, that afternoon some 3,000 redcoats were embarked aboard transport ships, glumly anticipating “another Bunker Hill affair”; if their anticipated attack on Dorchester Heights went ahead, Washington intended to launch a counterstrike of his own, sending 4,000 “chosen men” under Generals Putnam, Sullivan, and Greene to attack Boston itself.63
The redcoats were first ferried over to Castle William Island, close to their objective, ready for the final approach by landing craft. Howe’s men were instructed to attack in a more “open order” than the elbow-to-elbow formation they had employed at Bunker Hill, and with unloaded muskets, trusting to cold steel alone: the attack on June 17, 1775 had become bogged down when the redcoats paused to return the rebel fire, losing impetus at a crucial moment.64 This reliance upon looser lines and the bayonet would characterize British tactics throughout the American war but was not tested that day. Mercifully, a falling tide, followed by a “violent storm,” provided Howe with an excuse for canceling the assault.
Secure on Dorchester Heights, Washington’s men swiftly fortified Nooks Hill, even closer to Boston and its harbor. They were checked by British gunfire, but Howe’s position was now clearly untenable and evacuation only a matter of time. In return for being allowed to leave without interference, Howe agreed to spare the town from burning. On March 19, Washington reported the outcome of the long and troublesome siege to Congress. Two days earlier, “the ministerial army” had evacuated Boston, which was now in the possession of the “forces of the United Colonies.” Happily, President Hancock’s own handsome townhouse had survived British occupation and American bombardment virtually unscathed, with his furniture in “tolerable order” and the cherished “family pictures” all “entire and untouched.” Elsewhere, everything indicated that the redcoats had retired “with the greatest precipitation.” They had left their barracks and fortifications standing, along with several cannon—“spiked” with nails in their touch holes, but capable of being drilled out and reused—and a large iron mortar, along with quantities of stores.65
The British flotilla hovered in Boston’s outer harbor until March 27, raising fears that Howe would counter attack after all. Then the fleet made sail, where to, nobody knew for sure. Rumor suggested the British naval base at Halifax, Nova Scotia, but New York was the obvious destination, and Washington had already sent a brigade marching there. On April 4, once the British ships had hove out of sight, Washington, too, headed south with the bulk of his army. Command of the Boston sector returned to its original guardian, Major General Ward.
For all his misgivings and the myriad difficulties he’d faced, Washington had won the first round of the contest, and in fine style. The recapture of Boston, so long the hub of resistance against British tyranny, was both a symbolic and a concrete triumph, and a cause for widespread patriot jubilation. Washington, whose own education had been so perfunctory, now received an honorary degree from Harvard College, while Congress voted him a gold commemorative medal. Here was a taste of the public recognition that fueled him. It was Washington’s first major victory and a moment to savor. Yet he was under no illusion that one success, however remarkable, would end the war. The redcoats were gone from Boston, never to return. But they had not left America. William Howe would be back, his likeliest target New York.
In the nine months since he had assumed command of the Continental Army, Washington had tried repeatedly to bring on a decisive engagement with the British, only to be disappointed. He left Boston still spoiling for a stand-up fight. At New York he’d get one.
* While a significant minority of North America’s population opposed the revolutionary cause, for simplicity’s sake the term “American” is henceforth used here to denote its supporters. Pro-British Americans are referred to as “Loyalist.”