The war was on, the Lexington and Concord fray was over, Paul Revere had made his memorable ride, and the young patriots with enthusiasm at white heat were swarming from village and countryside leaving their work and homes. Where they were going they did not know, they were going to fight with little thought of where they were to live or what they were to eat and wear. There was a continental congress but it had little authority and the fact was that very few members of that mushroom growth army even felt that they were fighting for a confederation for in their minds they were for the various states, and it was to the various states they looked for support and it was to those states that the honors were to go. It was not until the day before the battle of Bunker Hill that congress had appointed a commander-in-chief and it was almost a month later when Washington took command in Boston. There was an army of sixteen thousand men mostly from the New England States strengthened by about three thousand from the more southern states during the next month[2]. It was more nearly a mob than an army. There was no directing force, no one to superintend the building of barracks, no one to distribute food or to take charge of the supplies.
The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts on hearing of Washington's appointment ordered on June 26, 1775 "the President's (of the college) house in Cambridge, excepting one room, reserved for the President for his own use, be taken, cleared, prepared, and furnished for the reception of General Washington and General Lee"[3]. It seems as though the General only occupied that house for a short time and then moved to what was called the "Craige House" for on July 8, 1775, the committee of safety directed that the house of John Vassel, a refugee loyalist, should be put in condition for the reception of the commander-in-chief and later that his welfare should be looked after, by providing him with a steward, a housekeeper, and such articles of furniture as he might ask for.[4]
Such were the headquarters of the first camp of the Revolution but the story of the privates' quarters is quite a different thing. The troops were not quartered at one place, they were scattered about the surrounding territory some at Roxbury, some at Winter Hill, others at Prospect Hill and Sewall's Farm and at various small towns along the coast.[5] Some of them were living in houses and churches, others were occupying barns[6] and still others were constructing their own places of shelter using sail cloth, logs, stones, mud, sod, rails or anything else which would lend itself to the purpose.[7] A good description of this motley host is given us by Rev. Wm. Emerson of Concord, "the sight is very diverting to walk among the camps. They are as different in their form as the owners are in their dress and every tent is a portraiture of the temper and taste of the persons who encamp in it. Some are made of boards, some of sail cloth, again others are made of stone and turf brick or brush. Some are thrown up in a hurry, others curiously wrought with doors and windows done with wreaths and withes in the manner of a basket".[8] Washington wrote from Cambridge to congress on July 10, 1775 about a month after taking command and said, "we labor under great Disadvantages for want of tents for tho' they have been help'd out by a collection of now useless sails from the Sea Port Towns, the number is yet far short of our Necessities"[9].
When tents were used for shelter at Cambridge or at other places it was very seldom that any thing more than "Mother Earth" served as floors and sometimes that was so wet and miry that the soldiers during the rainy seasons were forced to raise the ground with "Rushes, Barks, and Flags in the dry"[10] and at other times the tents were taken down during the day for the ground to dry and then put up again at night.
It would be difficult to get any where more frank reactions to housing conditions than those which were given by Dr. Waldo[11] in a poem written while in camp describing the general conditions but particularly the tents and huts. The part quoted below describes a stormy day and the hardships endured when the army was encamped in tents.
"Though huts in Winter shelter give,
Yet the thin tents in which we live,
Through a long summer's hard campaign,
Are slender coverts from the rain,
And oft no friendly barn is nigh