WEBVTT NOTE 8. Washington Transforms the Army 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Volume 4, Chapter 8, Washington Transforms the Army 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:16.000 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. 3 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:27.000 Although he took up his tasks energetically, Washington accomplished nothing militarily for the remainder of the year, and more, nor did he try. 4 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:34.680 His only campaign in 1775 was internal rather than external. 5 00:00:34.680 --> 00:00:41.920 It was directed against the American army as he found it, and was designed to extirpate 6 00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:50.860 the spirit of liberty pervading this unusually individualistic and democratic army of militiamen. 7 00:00:50.860 --> 00:00:57.420 In short, Washington set out to transform a people's army uniquely suited for a libertarian 8 00:00:57.420 --> 00:01:07.420 revolution into another orthodox and despotically ruled statist force after the familiar European 9 00:01:07.420 --> 00:01:09.060 model. 10 00:01:09.060 --> 00:01:16.260 His primary aim was to crush the individualistic and democratic spirit of the American forces. 11 00:01:16.260 --> 00:01:21.820 For one thing, the officers of the militia were elected by their own men, and the discipline 12 00:01:21.820 --> 00:01:29.100 of repeated elections kept the officers from forming an aristocratic ruling caste, typical 13 00:01:29.100 --> 00:01:32.260 of European armies of the period. 14 00:01:32.260 --> 00:01:37.620 The officers often drew little more pay than their men, and there were no hierarchical 15 00:01:37.620 --> 00:01:43.220 distinctions of rank imposed between officers and men. 16 00:01:43.220 --> 00:01:51.140 As a consequence, officers could not enforce their wills coercively on the soldiery. 17 00:01:51.140 --> 00:01:59.220 This New England equality horrified Washington's conservative and highly aristocratic soul. 18 00:01:59.220 --> 00:02:05.540 To introduce a hierarchy of ruling caste, Washington insisted on distinctive decorations 19 00:02:05.540 --> 00:02:10.300 of dress in accordance with minute gradations of rank. 20 00:02:10.300 --> 00:02:16.980 As one observer phrased it, new lords, new laws, the strictest government is taking place, 21 00:02:16.980 --> 00:02:22.940 and great distinction is made between officers and soldier. Everyone is made to know his 22 00:02:22.940 --> 00:02:30.060 place and keep it. Despite the great expense involved, he also tried to stamp out individuality 23 00:02:30.060 --> 00:02:38.260 in the army by forcing uniforms upon them, but the scarcity of cloth made this plan unfeasible. 24 00:02:38.260 --> 00:02:45.140 At least as important as distinctions and decoration was the introduction of extensive inequality 25 00:02:45.140 --> 00:02:46.860 in pay. 26 00:02:46.860 --> 00:02:54.160 Led by Washington and other aristocratic southern delegates and over the objections of Massachusetts, 27 00:02:54.160 --> 00:03:00.600 the Congress insisted on fixing a pay scale for generals and other officers considerably 28 00:03:00.600 --> 00:03:03.860 higher than that of the rank and file. 29 00:03:03.860 --> 00:03:10.460 In addition to imposing a web of hierarchy on the Continental Army, Washington crushed 30 00:03:10.460 --> 00:03:20.460 liberty within by replacing individual responsibility by iron despotism and coercion. Severe and 31 00:03:20.460 --> 00:03:26.800 brutal punishments were imposed upon soldiers whose sense of altruism failed to override 32 00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:33.100 their instinct for self-preservation. Furloughs were curtailed and girlfriends of soldiers 33 00:03:33.100 --> 00:03:39.740 Washington was expelled from camp. Above all, lengthy floggings were introduced for all practices 34 00:03:39.740 --> 00:03:46.900 which Washington considered aesthetically or morally offensive. He even had the temerity 35 00:03:46.900 --> 00:03:53.580 to urge Congress to raise the maximum number of strikes of the lash from 39 to the enormous 36 00:03:53.580 --> 00:04:01.420 number of 500. Fortunately, Congress refused. In a few short months, Washington had succeeded 37 00:04:01.420 --> 00:04:08.660 in extirpating a zealous, happy, individualistic people's army and transforming it into yet 38 00:04:08.660 --> 00:04:16.040 another statist army, filled with bored, resentful and even mutinous soldiery. 39 00:04:16.040 --> 00:04:21.100 The only thing he could not do was force the troops to continue in camp after the terms 40 00:04:21.100 --> 00:04:26.580 of their enlistment were up at the end of the year, and by now the soldiers were longing 41 00:04:26.580 --> 00:04:28.020 for home. 42 00:04:28.020 --> 00:04:34.000 In addition to all other factors, Americans were not geared, nor should they have been, 43 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:40.720 for lengthy conflict of position and attrition. They were not professional soldiers, and they 44 00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:46.800 were needed at their homes and jobs and on their farms. Had they been a frankly guerilla 45 00:04:46.800 --> 00:04:51.980 army, there would have been no conflict between these roles. 46 00:04:51.980 --> 00:04:58.980 As the end of 1775 drew near, then Washington's main preoccupation was in forging a new army 47 00:04:59.580 --> 00:05:06.580 to replace the 17,000 men whose terms of enlistment were about to expire. His problems were aggravated 48 00:05:07.220 --> 00:05:12.500 by Congress's refusal to pay the bounties for enlistment New Englanders were used to 49 00:05:12.500 --> 00:05:18.820 receiving. Instead, caste distinctions were widened even further by raising officers' 50 00:05:18.820 --> 00:05:45.180 As might have been expected, the wealthy and aristocratic Washington, free from money worries, 51 00:05:45.180 --> 00:05:51.940 had little understanding of the economic plight of his soldiery. In contrast to the legends 52 00:05:51.940 --> 00:05:58.940 about his compassion, Washington railed about the defecting troops as being possessed of 53 00:05:59.060 --> 00:06:06.060 a dirty mercenary spirit and of basely deserting the cause of their country. A particularly 54 00:06:06.820 --> 00:06:11.340 colorful addition to the New England troops in the Continental Army during the summer 55 00:06:11.340 --> 00:06:19.340 In 1775 was a detachment of nine enlisted companies of expert riflemen from the backcountry 56 00:06:19.340 --> 00:06:26.940 frontier of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, five of them from Pennsylvania. 57 00:06:26.940 --> 00:06:30.580 There were over 1,400 of these riflemen in all. 58 00:06:30.580 --> 00:06:37.020 The bulk of them were hardy Ulster-Scott frontiersmen, wearing hunting outfits bearing the motto 59 00:07:07.020 --> 00:07:14.340 It is not surprising that these backwoodsmen proved even more individualistic and less tolerant 60 00:07:14.340 --> 00:07:18.020 of coercion than the New Englanders. 61 00:07:18.020 --> 00:07:24.460 When they terrorized British sentries with their sniping, Washington forbade such seemingly 62 00:07:24.460 --> 00:07:28.700 disorganized practice which spent ammunition. 63 00:07:28.700 --> 00:07:34.220 Whenever a rifleman was imprisoned for infringing one of Washington's arbitrary but cherished 64 00:07:34.220 --> 00:08:04.220 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 65 00:08:34.220 --> 00:08:35.220 and General Howe.