About fifteen hundred men, mostly farmers like the Boers, suddenly seized an important hill or kopje dangerously close to the British lines. They fortified themselves with breast works made of fence rails and hay in such a bucolic manner that all the regulars in Boston laughed. They could have been defeated very easily by sending a force on their flank and rear. But General Gage thought that would be ridiculous and unnecessary. A force of three thousand regulars could easily by a front attack sweep off these farmers, show them the uselessness of their methods, and possibly end the rebellion at once.
You know the rest. But it must be very shocking to a person of your views to remember that the old Queen Anne muskets, shot guns and duck guns which your forefathers in such bad taste and contrary to all military science, levelled over those fence rails and hay at your friends the British in beautiful uniforms, were loaded with buckshot, slugs, old nails, and bits of iron from the blacksmith shops. That was our Majuba Hill, our Spion Kop.
Let us move along still farther. The New England farmers for all the rest of the summer, autumn and following winter formed themselves into a most vulgar and absurd army and surrounded Boston, shutting in the British. The minds of those farmers were full almost to fanaticism of the principle of equality and the rights of man, "the levelling principles" as they were then called which now form the foundation of our American life. The officers among them were merely leaders and persuaders. It was not an uncommon sight to see a colonel shaving one of his own men. The men served a few weeks and then went home to get in the hay or see how their wives were getting on, and others came from the farms to take their places. In this way the army was kept up. Those who went home were very apt to take their powder and musket with them to shoot squirrels on the farm.
A year later at New York our army was the same guerilla force and I shall let Captain Graydon describe it:
"The appearance of things was not much calculated to excite sanguine expectations in the mind of a sober observer. Great numbers of people were indeed to be seen and those who are not accustomed to the sight of bodies under arms are always prone to exaggerate them. But the propensity to swell the mass, has not an equal tendency to convert it into soldiery; and the irregularity, want of discipline, bad arms, and defective equipment in all respects, of this multitudinous assemblage, gave no favorable impression of its prowess. The materials of which the eastern battalions were composed, were apparently the same as those of which I had seen so unpromising a specimen at Lake George. I speak particularly of the officers who were in no single respect distinguishable from the men, other than in the colored cockades, which for this very purpose had been prescribed in general orders; a different color being assigned to the officers of each grade. So far from aiming at a deportment which might raise them above their privates and thence prompt them to due respect and obedience to their commands, the object was, by humility, to preserve the existing blessing of equality, an illustrious instance of which was given by Colonel Putnam, the chief engineer of the army, and no less a personage than the nephew of the major-general of that name. 'What,' says a person meeting him one day with a piece of meat in his hand, 'carrying home your rations yourself, colonel! 'Yes,' says he, 'and I do it to set the officers a good example.'"
(Graydon's Memoirs, edition of 1846, p. 147.)
We have grown into a habit of depicting all our revolutionary forefathers, both privates and officers, in beautiful buff and blue uniform as if we were from the start a regularly organized, independent nation, fighting regular battles with another independent nation. There were, I believe, at times a select few, more usually officers, who succeeded in having such a uniform. But the great mass of our rebel troops had no uniforms at all. They wore a hunting shirt or smock frock which was merely a cheap cotton shirt belted round the waist and with the ends hanging outside over the hips instead of being tucked into the trousers. Into the loose bosom of this garment above the belt could be stuffed bread, pork, and all sorts of articles including a frying pan.
We of course do not like to have a picture of one of our ancestors painted in such a garment. It would not look well. It is better to have some theoretical uniform, the uniform that our fathers would have had if they had had the money and time to get one, painted on top of a picture of our ancestor.
Lafayette has described in his memoirs the rebel army he found in this country on his arrival in the summer of 1777:
"Eleven thousand men, but tolerably armed and still worse clad, presented a singular spectacle in their parti-colored and often naked state; the best dresses were hunting shirts of brown linen. Their tactics were equally irregular. They were arranged without regard to size except that the smallest men were the front rank."