Continental Army Archives - 250 and Counting

By the time Charles Lee returned to duty, the Continental Army in New York was in a sad state of affairs. Many men had been injured or deserted. Supplies were low. Ammunition was low. Morale was low. And the British were up in the Bronx, gearing up for…something, who knows what.

Lee had, of course, missed all the action in Brooklyn and Manhattan, so he brought a new perspective to the table. And it was fortunate that Lee felt free to say what he thought of the situation, namely that it was untenable.

Fortunately, Washington was of a similar mind and apparently Lee’s comments were what he needed to take appropriate action. He immediately summoned a council of war.

Down in Staten Island, Nathanael Greene and Hugh Mercer were in Staten Island, encountering far less resistance than they expected. They got word of the war council and Greene departed while Mercer continued on…at least until he learned the status of his intended target.

The post In And Around New York–October 15, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Using the input of George Washington from just a few days earlier, the Second Continental Congress wasted little time putting together some Continental Army protocols to ensure that this relatively ragtag group of men would adhere to some kind of formalized behavior.

But the Continental Army protocols they worked on also helped to establish better pay for some personnel, or set up protocol ranks for some otherwise non-officer personnel.

And, of course, getting everyone paid was important so they talked about that as well.

And as we creep closer to a formal declaration announcing the break with Britain, more Congressional delegates are convinced that reconciliation was always on the table, at least until quite recently. Robert Morris wrote as much to Silas Deane of Connecticut, and likewise Oliver Wolcott wrote to Roger Newberry, a Connecticut military officer, that he was of the opinion that the army is undertaking a Mighty Cause, and that as far as he could tell, the people support it.

The post Congress Does Some War Business–June 5, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

John Thomas was a doctor and a soldier from Massachusetts who was in Quebec during the attempted invasion and was in charge of the withdrawal until he got smallpox and died on this day in 1776.

Thomas discovered he liked military service about as much as he liked being a surgeon, so in 1747 he became a lieutenant in the British army. A few years later he served as a surgeon for a different regiment.

In the early days of the Revolution, Thomas nearly quit the Continental Army because he wasn’t named as a major general. At the time, Congress was trying to avoid having all its generals come from the same place, and Artemis Ward got the nod instead. It was only because both George Washington and Charles Lee both talked him into staying that he remained in the army and returned to service. Shortly thereafter he was assured that he would get top priority for advancement.

It was that which led directly to his being assigned to command in Canada when Richard Montgomery was killed. Unfortunately for him, what he found when he arrived in Quebec was a mess: the army was far outnumbered (plus the city had walls), about a third of the Continental soldiers were due—or overdue—for discharge, and smallpox was making its way through the camp.

Also unfortunately, as the smallpox moved through the camp, it made a stop at Roberts’ tent, and he died just a few weeks after arriving in Canada.

The post RIP John Thomas–June 2, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

While preparing to depart Boston for New York, George Washington appointed Nathaniel Greene to run things for awhile until everything was back in order.

Fortunately for both Greene and Washington, matters straightened out rather quickly, because Greene was called to join Washington just a few weeks later.

Nathaniel Greene was tasked with fortifying Brooklyn while Washington prepared to defend Manhattan. As a military leader, Greene had a bit of a mixed record, but more often than not it appears that he was the victim of poor timing when things didn’t go well for him.

Later on in the war, he took on the position of Quartermaster General, which on its surface looks like a demotion, but Washington still considered him “inner circle” and Greene would sit in on War Council meetings, even though he was considered a staff officer.

Later on, when things started looking gloomy in South Carolina and Georgia, Nathaniel Greene was put in charge of the Southern Department of the Continental Army, where he embarked on a campaign of guerilla warfare rather than pitched battles. His unconventional approach wasn’t always successful, but if the British won a battle it was at a much greater cost than it should have been.

The post Meet The New Boss–March 20, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

Letters from John Hancock to George Washington weren’t especially scarce, nor were letters going the other way. However, today’s letter takes on a few important topics for Washington that one hopes came greatly appreciated.

There was commendation that Washington had the foresight to send troops to New York, there was some good financial news, there was also good news in the realm of troop recruitment, and there was a warning about likely military action coming fairly soon.

All in all, it was a letter packed with information, and if we had to guess (because we don’t know), it was likely conveyed by courier rather than the postal system, which was still prone to interception by the British.

The post From John To George–January 29, 1776 appeared first on 250 and Counting.

American forces began to move on Fort St. Jean in Canada. Unfortunately they ran into a couple of unexpected obstacles on the way, so they had to adjust their approach. This led to a six-week siege of the fort.

The post September 5, 1775: Setback in Canada appeared first on 250 and Counting.

There’s an episode of The West Wing in which Leo McGarry explains how, several years earlier, the President wanted to meet the Dalai Lama. The problem was that China was strongly opposed to such a meeting, so they arranged for an “accidental” meeting between the two:

Set up a low-level meeting with someone else and leave the door open. The President wanders by, “Hey, how ya doing, Dalai Lama?”

The point is, diplomacy can be weird. And when the Continental Army, needed gunpowder from Bermuda, it was arranged to have the gunpowder be “stolen” from their armory and somehow make its way into American hands.

Who knew!

The post August 14, 1775: “Stolen” Goods From Bermuda appeared first on 250 and Counting.

While today is perhaps the earliest documented instance of George Washington expressing concern for his captured troops, it certainly wouldn’t be the last. For years he worried about this, largely because the British didn’t always consider the Continental Army to be a genuine army, nor did they consider themselves to be “at war” with America; instead this was some kind of petty grievance that needed to be put down.

As a result, Washington was in frequent communication with his counterparts on the British side, and several people on the Colonial side, expressing his worry that his men were being treated poorly…or worse.

The post August 11, 1775: Washington Gets Serious About POWs appeared first on 250 and Counting.

As mentioned yesterday, when George Washington came to Cambridge, he found a bit of a mess there: several disorganized groups of men, with more on the way, along with supplies still in transit.

The first thing he needed to do was to get the fighting force organized, so he began a log book of his official orders. His first set, which came out on this day in 1775, took up about five pages of manuscript. But Washington wasn’t done, not by a long shot. Every few days he’d come up with something new, but it was all reasonable and made sense in the bigger picture. It’s not as though Washington had grabbed power with no intention of relinquishing it later on; he just wasn’t wired that way.

Eventually his book of orders grew to over 500 pages over the next couple of years.

P.S. Happy Independence Day! Our 250th anniversary is exactly one year away, but there’s a lot of stuff before, and after, that date that we’ll need to look at in order to get the entire story.

The post July 4, 1775: Washington’s First Orders appeared first on 250 and Counting.