OF ARMS AND MEN

1 R O F A R M S A N D M E N J O S E P H J . E L L I S Although American independence was still not o≈cially declared by the late spring of 1776, it already had a martyr and a hero. The martyr was Joseph Warren, a local physician who was marked as a rising star in Boston politics and who also just happened to be the doctor for the Adams family. Warren had bravely stood his ground at Bunker Hill until the redcoats overwhelmed his redoubt; he had been shot in the back of the head as he turned to escape, and then his dead body had been bayoneted by several British soldiers caught up in the heat of the battle. The next day, an execution squad that was finishing o√ the American wounded made a point of decapitating Warren and displaying his head on a spit, thereby ensuring his martyrdom. The hero was George Washington, the commander in chief of the haphazard collection of militia units now being referred to as the Continental Army. Over six feet tall and just over two hundred pounds, Washington was a physical specimen produced by some eighteenth-century version of central casting. (There is an ongoing scholarly debate about Washington’s height. In his instructions to his tailor, he described himself as six feet tall. Fellow o≈cers in the French and Indian War described him as six foot 2 E L L I S Y two. Measurements of his corpse for his co≈n list him at six foot three and a half.) John Adams had been the one to nominate him as American military commander in June 1775, later explaining that Washington was the obvious choice, in part because he was a Virginian and Virginia’s support for the still-undeclared war was critical, and in part because he was a full head taller than anyone else in the room. Although the Boston siege was really less a battle than a prolonged tactical minuet in which the Americans enjoyed a three-toone superiority in manpower, the fact that the British Army eventually sailed away to fight another day was regarded in the American press as a major victory. And the obvious symbol of this triumph was Washington. Not only did Harvard grant him an honorary degree, but the Massachusetts General Court issued a statement predicting that monuments would be constructed in his name. And the Continental Congress ordered a gold medal cast to commemorate his triumph. John Hancock, the president of the congress, explained what the medal was intended to celebrate: ‘‘Those Pages in the Annals of America, will record your Title to a conspicuous Place in the Temple of Fame, which shall inform Posterity that under your Directions, an undisciplined Band of Husband men, in the Course of a few Months, became Soldiers [and then defeated] an Army of Veterans, commanded by the most experienced Generals.’’ So there it was. The widespread apprehension that the British Army was invincible had just been disproved. Not only was the British fleet sailing away in defeat and disgrace, but the formula for American military success had now been discovered. Rank amateurs who believed in the cause they were fighting for could defeat British veterans who were fighting for pay – that is, if the Americans were commanded by a natural leader who proved himself capable of tapping the bottomless well of patriotism in his citizen-soldiers. Washington was obviously that man, now the oneman embodiment of ‘‘the Cause.’’ As he headed south from Boston with slightly less than ten thousand troops to oppose the presumed British attack at New York, Washington was greeted with parades, multiple toasts to ‘‘His Excellency,’’ and the kind of spontaneous public adulation that would become commonplace throughout the rest of his life. If all successful revolutions require heroes, and they do, the Ameri- O F A R M S A N D M E N 3 R can Revolution had discovered its larger-than-life personality around whom to rally. Washington not only fit the bill physically, he was also almost perfect psychologically, so comfortable with his superiority that he...