Volume 4, Chapter 8, Washington Transforms the Army
Washington's first task was to assume direct command of the Continental Army before Boston, which he did upon reaching his Cambridge headquarters on July 2.
Although he took up his tasks energetically, Washington accomplished nothing militarily for the remainder of the year, and more, nor did he try.
His only campaign in 1775 was internal rather than external.
It was directed against the American army as he found it, and was designed to extirpate
the spirit of liberty pervading this unusually individualistic and democratic army of militiamen.
In short, Washington set out to transform a people's army uniquely suited for a libertarian
revolution into another orthodox and despotically ruled statist force after the familiar European
model.
His primary aim was to crush the individualistic and democratic spirit of the American forces.
For one thing, the officers of the militia were elected by their own men, and the discipline
of repeated elections kept the officers from forming an aristocratic ruling caste, typical
of European armies of the period.
The officers often drew little more pay than their men, and there were no hierarchical
distinctions of rank imposed between officers and men.
As a consequence, officers could not enforce their wills coercively on the soldiery.
This New England equality horrified Washington's conservative and highly aristocratic soul.
To introduce a hierarchy of ruling caste, Washington insisted on distinctive decorations
of dress in accordance with minute gradations of rank.
As one observer phrased it, new lords, new laws, the strictest government is taking place,
and great distinction is made between officers and soldier. Everyone is made to know his
place and keep it. Despite the great expense involved, he also tried to stamp out individuality
in the army by forcing uniforms upon them, but the scarcity of cloth made this plan unfeasible.
At least as important as distinctions and decoration was the introduction of extensive inequality
in pay.
Led by Washington and other aristocratic southern delegates and over the objections of Massachusetts,
the Congress insisted on fixing a pay scale for generals and other officers considerably
higher than that of the rank and file.
In addition to imposing a web of hierarchy on the Continental Army, Washington crushed
liberty within by replacing individual responsibility by iron despotism and coercion. Severe and
brutal punishments were imposed upon soldiers whose sense of altruism failed to override
their instinct for self-preservation. Furloughs were curtailed and girlfriends of soldiers
Washington was expelled from camp. Above all, lengthy floggings were introduced for all practices
which Washington considered aesthetically or morally offensive. He even had the temerity
to urge Congress to raise the maximum number of strikes of the lash from 39 to the enormous
number of 500. Fortunately, Congress refused. In a few short months, Washington had succeeded
in extirpating a zealous, happy, individualistic people's army and transforming it into yet
another statist army, filled with bored, resentful and even mutinous soldiery.
The only thing he could not do was force the troops to continue in camp after the terms
of their enlistment were up at the end of the year, and by now the soldiers were longing
for home.
In addition to all other factors, Americans were not geared, nor should they have been,
for lengthy conflict of position and attrition. They were not professional soldiers, and they
were needed at their homes and jobs and on their farms. Had they been a frankly guerilla
army, there would have been no conflict between these roles.
As the end of 1775 drew near, then Washington's main preoccupation was in forging a new army
to replace the 17,000 men whose terms of enlistment were about to expire. His problems were aggravated
by Congress's refusal to pay the bounties for enlistment New Englanders were used to
receiving. Instead, caste distinctions were widened even further by raising officers'
As might have been expected, the wealthy and aristocratic Washington, free from money worries,
had little understanding of the economic plight of his soldiery. In contrast to the legends
about his compassion, Washington railed about the defecting troops as being possessed of
a dirty mercenary spirit and of basely deserting the cause of their country. A particularly
colorful addition to the New England troops in the Continental Army during the summer
In 1775 was a detachment of nine enlisted companies of expert riflemen from the backcountry
frontier of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, five of them from Pennsylvania.
There were over 1,400 of these riflemen in all.
The bulk of them were hardy Ulster-Scott frontiersmen, wearing hunting outfits bearing the motto
It is not surprising that these backwoodsmen proved even more individualistic and less tolerant
of coercion than the New Englanders.
When they terrorized British sentries with their sniping, Washington forbade such seemingly
disorganized practice which spent ammunition.
Whenever a rifleman was imprisoned for infringing one of Washington's arbitrary but cherished
In these rules, his comrades would break into the prison and set him free. On one occasion, virtually an entire Pennsylvania company mutinied to try to free one of their own, and several regiments were needed to disarm and convict the Pennsylvanians, whose penalty consisted of less than a week's pay. The riflemen, however, were not so much unfit for any military service as they were, by nature and by experience, totally unfitted
and General Howe.