Washington the Soldier

by Henry B. Carrington

The troops had hardly been dismissed, after their first formal parade for inspection, before a set repugnance to all proper instruction in the details of a soldier’s duty became manifest. The old method of fighting Indians singly, through thickets, and in small detachments, each man for himself, was clung to stubbornly, as if the army were composed of individual hunters, who must each “bag his own game.” Guard duty was odious. Superiority by virtue of rank was questioned, denied, or ignored. The abuses of places of trust, especially in the quartermaster and commissary departments, and the prostitution of these responsibilities to private ends were constant. “Profanity, vulgarity, and all the vices of an undisciplined mass became frightful,” as Washington himself described the condition, “so soon as any immediate danger passed by.” To sum up the demoralization of the army, he could only add, “They have been trained to have their own way too long.”

But the good, the faithful, and the pure were hardly less restive under the new restraint, and few appreciated the vital value of some absolutely supreme control. The public moneys and public property were held to belong to everybody, because Congress represented everybody. Commands were considered despotic orders, and exact details were but another system of slavery.

Nor was this the whole truth. Even officers of high position, whether graded above or below their own expectations, found time to indulge in petty neglect of plain instructions, and in turn to usurp authority, in defiance of discipline and the paramount interests of the people at large.

The inspection of the Commander-in-Chief had been made. Immediately, the troops were put to work perfecting earthworks, building redoubts, and policing camp. “Observance of the Sabbath” was enforced. Officers were court-martialed, and soldiers were tried, for “swearing, gambling, fraud, and lewdness.” A thorough system of guard and picket duty was established, and the nights were made subservient to rest, in the place of dissipation and revelry. Discipline was the first indication that a Soldier was in command.

These statements, which are brief extracts from his published Orders, fall far below a just review of the situation as given by Washington himself. From some of his reports to Congress it would seem as if, for a moment, he almost despaired of bringing the army to a condition when he might confidently take it into an open field, and place it, face to face, against any well-appointed force of even inferior numbers. That he was enabled so to discipline an army that, as at Brandywine, they willingly marched to meet a British and Hessian force one-half greater than his own in numbers, became a complete justification of the patience and wise persistence with which he handled the raw troops in camp about Cambridge, in the year 1775.

His next care was “the practical art of bringing the army fully equipped to the battlefield,” known as the “Logistics of War.” The army was deficient in every element of supply. The men, who still held their Colonial obligation to be supreme, came and went just as their engagements would permit and the comfort of their families required. Desertion was regarded as nothing, or at the worst but a venial offence, and there were times when the American army about Boston, through nine miles of investment, was less in number than the British garrison within the city.

But the deficiency in the number of the men was not so conspicuous and disappointing as the want of powder, lead, tools, arms, tents, horses, carts, and medical supplies. Ordinary provisions had become abundant. The adjacent country fed them liberally and supplied many home-made luxuries, not always the best nourishment for a soldier’s life; but it was difficult to persuade the same men that all provisions must enter into a general commissariat, and be issued to all alike; and that such stores must be accumulated, and neither expended lavishly nor sold at a bargain so soon as a surplus remained unexpended. Such articles as cordage, iron, horseshoes, lumber, fire-wood, and every possible thing which might be required for field, garrison, or frontier service, were included in his inventory of essential supplies.

In his personal expenditures of the most trivial item of public property, Washington kept a minute and exact account. Of the single article of powder, he once stated that his chief supply was furnished by the enemy, for, during one period, the armed vessels with which he patrolled the coast captured more powder than Congress had been able to furnish him in several months.

Delay in securing such essential supplies increased the difficulty of bringing the troops themselves to a full recognition of their military needs and responsibilities, so that the grumbling query, “What’s the use of copying the red-coats’ fuss and training?” still pervaded camp. Plain men from the country who had watched the martinet exactness of British drills in the city, where there was so much of ornament and “style,” had no taste for like subjection to control over their personal bearing and wardrobe. A single order of General Howe to the Boston garrison illustrates what the Yankees termed the “red-coats’ fuss.” He issued an order, reprimanding soldiers “whose hair was not smooth but badly powdered; who had no frills to their shirts; whose leggings hung in a slovenly manner about their knees, and other soldierly neglects, which must be immediately remedied.” This seemed to the American soldier more like some “nursing process;” and while right, on general principles, was not the chief requirement for good fighting zeal.

For many weeks it had been the chief concern of the American Commander-in-Chief how to make a fair show of military preparation, while all things were in such extreme confusion. Washington, as well as Howe, had his fixed ideas of military discipline, and he, also, issued orders respecting the habits, personal bearing, and neatness of the men; closing on one occasion, thus emphatically: “Cards and games of chance are prohibited. At this time of public distress, men may find enough to do in the service of their God and country, without abandoning themselves to vice and immorality.” In anticipation of active service, and to rebuke the freedom with which individuals inclined to follow their own bent of purpose, he promulgated the following ringing caution: