The associators’ organization was officered as follows: First Battalion, John Dickinson, colonel; John Chevalier, lieutenant colonel; Jacob Morgan and William Coates, majors. Second Battalion, Daniel Roderdeau, colonel; Joseph Reed, lieutenant colonel; John Cox and John Bayard, majors. Third Battalion, John Cadwallader, colonel; John Nixon, lieutenant colonel; Thomas Mifflin and Samuel Merideth, majors.
Peter Markoe was captain of the light horse, Joseph Cowperthwait of the Quaker Blues, James Biddle, Benjamin Loxley, Thomas Proctor and Joseph Moulder, were officers of the artillery, and Richard Peters, Tench Francis, William Bradford and Lambert Cadwallader were in command of the Greens. John Shee, John Wilcocks, Thomas Willing, Francis Gurney and others were of the staff.
The battalions, mustering 1500 men, all uniformed and equipped, and 500 artillerymen and troops of horse, gave a drill early in June in the presence of the “honorable members of the Continental Congress and several thousand spectators.”
The troops were reviewed by General Washington on June 20 and next day he set out for Boston escorted across New Jersey by the cavalry troop.
On June 23, the associators listened to an eloquent sermon by the Reverend Dr. William Smith.
They petitioned the Assembly, setting forth a full and detailed account of their organization into companies, etc., and asked that they be put into service at once. Neither the Governor nor the Council had the power or funds to comply, and even the Congress had no direct authority as yet to raise an army.
Franklin had returned from England May 5, and the next morning he was elected to Congress. But his work on the Committee of Safety is really the history of the defense of Philadelphia during the first year of the war.
It was late in June before the Committee of Safety was given power to employ the associators, and the city and counties were called upon to provide arms and equipment, the House agreeing to pay for the service of the troops.
A committee was named whose duty it was to call troops into the service as necessity demanded and to provide for the defense of this Province against insurrections and invasion.
The Committee of Safety met July 3. Franklin was unanimously chosen president, and William Govett, clerk. It proceeded to business with energy and dispatch.