America Goes to War: A Social History of the Continental Army

1. Few Had the Appearance of Soldiers: The Social Origins of the Continental Line

CHAPTER ONE Few Had the Appearance ofSoldiers: The Social Origins of the Continental Line I n [776, Captain Alexander Graydon was sent into the Pennsylvania hinterlands on a recruiting trip for the Continental army. Finding no one willing to sign the terms of enlistment, he slipped across the Maryland border, hoping, he stated, "that [he] might find some seamen or longshoremen there, out of employ." I His efforts yielded only one recruit, a man deemed so valueless by his community that a local wag informed Graydon that the recruit "would do to stop a bullet as well as a better man, as he was truly a worthless dog." 2 Graydon later wrote that his problems with recruitment served "in some degree to correct the error of those who seem to conceive the year [776 to have been a season of almost universal patriotic enthusiasm." Louis Duportail,a French volunteer and chief engineer of the Continental army, noticed the same trend. "There is a hundred times more enthusiasm for this Revolution in any Paris cafe than in all the colonies together." 3 While both officers probably exaggerated the extent of patriotic decline, their assertions run counter to traditional historical accounts concerning the Continental army and those who comprised it. While patriotism and political activism as motivating forces cannot be rejected in all cases, huge amounts of evidence point to an American army closely akin to its European cousins. That meant those who served long terms as soldiers were usually not those best connected to the communities that recruited them. Soldiers were obtained by any means 8 Few Had the Appearance ofSoldiers • 9 available; their officers certainly did not consider their men to be avenging killer-angels hell-bent on defending liberty for all. What inspired the Whiggish elite was not always the same as what motivated the average enlisted man. Thus officers like Anthony Wayne sometimes referred to their men as "Food for Worms ... , miserable sharp looking Caitiffs, hungry lean fac'd Villains." Other officers lamented that their men were "the sweepings of the York streets," or "a wretched motley Crew."4 Senior officers, including George Washington, feared their own men. Washington was especially wary of foreigners who were attracted (as many were) to the large state and congressional bounties offered for service. He demanded that only natives form his headquarters guard. Joseph Galloway, General William Howe's intelligence chief, once estimated that three-fourths of the Continental deserters who came into British-occupied Philadelphia were foreigners. Henry Lee went so far as to label the Pennsylvania battalions "the Line of Ireland." Southern states used convicts as soldiers and were happy to get them. Prisoners of war were courted by both sides, and Washington unsuccessfully admonished his recruiters to stop accepting them. Nathanael Greene thought that the Carolina militia that opposed Cornwallis "were the worst in the world" and questioned whether the few who did not desert were not more interested in plunder than in what he deemed to be their patriotic duty.5 These observations were certainly not indicative of a patriot or classical "republican army." Why were these officers so vehement in their condemnation of the men they commanded? If service connoted an implicit patriotism, why were Continental army recruits feared by their own officers? To answer these crucial questions, we must examine the colonial military tradition and the social origins of the American Continental soldier. The Colonial Military Tradition Long before the Revolution, the Virginia Assembly used to require that every male who was fit to carry a weapon to bring it to Sunday services so that he could participate afterward in militia drill. This law made sense since a sudden attack from Indians was considered a plausible occurrence. It appeared with the passage of time, however, that growing economic demands and a recession of an active Indian threat caused a distinction to develop between those who served long terms as soldiers and those 10 • Few Had the Appearance ofSoldiers engaged in commercial and economic enterprise. The comments of Lieutenant Governor William Bull of South Carolina to the British Board of Trade underscored the dilemma of propertied citizens rather well. Bull reported that although he thought the local militia was an effective force, their participation in extended military activities was "Inconsistent with a Domestick or Country Life." 6 Struggles between European powers in North America forced the English colonial militias out of their principal role of...