“We were young men with warm hearts”
Relationships in the Continental Army
Jake Ruddiman
Department of History
Wake Forest University Social Science Research Seminar
January 24, 2013
This piece is part of my manuscript-in-progress, Becoming Men of Some Consequence, which investigates
how the expectations of the male life course and young men’s internal compasses of masculine identity directed
them through military service during the American Revolution. Other sections explore young men’s experiences
joining the army, their fraught relationships with civilians, their decisions to leave military service, and their
postwar lives.
Out at Fort Pitt at the end of May 1781, some Continental officers saw a motley group of
self-styled frontier gentlemen walking their way. “Let us not take any notice of them,” one
captain slyly instructed his comrades, “nor show them any respect, nor even move our hats to
them.” This disdain was too much for Lieutenant John Ward, a Pennsylvanian and son of the
area. He refused to hold his tongue. For his part, “he looked on some of them to be gentlemen
and would treat them as such.” His father was a friend and political ally of those men. The
colonel intervened to halt the bickering, scolding the lieutenant “that he was very wrong and
acted out of character of an officer in taking the part of such rascals or villains… no officer
should be seen associating with or countenancing such damned scoundrels.” Ward refused to
back down – “by God,” he declared, “he had a right to think and speak his thought and he would
do it.” He had only recently been transferred into this regiment, and new peers’ opinions of him
were at stake. The colonel had heard enough, mocking the lieutenant “as a boy, and infant…
[who] did not know his duty or he would not talk so, and told him to go away.” But Ward could
not back down and found himself arrested “for insolence, disobedience of orders, and taking part
2
with the enemies of the commanding officer of this district, and associating with those below the
character of gentlemen.”1
The conflict in this episode is shot through with contending assertions about this young
officer’s status and privilege – characteristics inextricable from his masculine identity and
position in the life course. A man’s quality ultimately lay with the perceptions of his fellow men.
Refusing to hear his father slandered, Ward stood fast a gentleman among equals, proclaiming
the value and independence of his judgment. The colonel, who had been locked in a tiresome
political dispute with these local politicians, demolished Ward’s argument by mocking his
pretentions. What could be further from an officer and a gentleman than a boy or infant – an
inferior incapable of discerning proper behavior and unworthy of debate? To defend his family’s
social station Ward had staked his army peers’ opinion of him as a fellow officer. He
miscalculated and lost. Humiliated and arrested in the street, it remained to be seen whether he
could rehabilitate himself at his court-martial.
For young men who took up arms in the Revolution, specific masculine performances
shaped their experiences and relationships in the military sphere.2 Seeking the regard of their
fellow soldiers helped young men dealt with danger and discomfort, negotiate their place in the
army’s hierarchy of power, and assert their sense of self. Respectable manhood derived from
economic independence, social utility, and fraternal regard. At home, communities and recruiters
had promised youths that soldiering demonstrated a social utility and manliness in advance of
their years and place in their life course. Enlistment bounties and officers’ commissions similarly
1
Proceedings of a Court Martial at Fort Pitt, 29 June 1781, Collection of Court-Martial Proceedings, Peter Force
Collection, LOC. On Ward’s transfer, see Pennsylvania Archives, 5th series, II:850; Francis B. Heitman, Historical
Register of Officers of the Continental Army (Washington, D.C., 1914), 568.
2
On performativity in the construction of gender, see Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York, 1990); cf. Chris Brickell, “Masculinities, Performativity, and Subversion: A Sociological
Reappraisal.” Men and Masculinities 8 (2005), 24-43.
3
spoke to youths’ ambitions, pointing a path to a well-regarded independence after the fighting.
Once in the army, however, young men still had to answer their present need for respect and to
belong. These they would have to earn in the peculiar community of the Continental Army and
in the novel guise of soldiers, shaping their performances of manliness to suit to the military
sphere. As the clash between Lt. Ward and his colonel suggests, these performances were
particularly fraught components of military relationships and could prove tricky to pull off
successfully.
Young Continentals’ behaviors and relationships in the army reveal how their
performances of manliness – particularly to obtain the regard of their peers – shaped their
experience of the Revolutionary effort. The trials of soldiers in this war have long been the stuff
of national legend: bloody footprints in the snow marked the path to Independence; stoic soldiers
suffered hunger and nakedness and faced the horrors of battle; proud officers came to see
themselves as the embodiment of the cause; all drank deeply from springs of liberty. Soldiers’
youth offers a new point of entry into these seemingly well-known stories. The contours of their
experiences and relationships should not simply be explained away as the inevitable product of
war or the universal nature of soldiers. Young soldiers’ relationships and performances unfolded
in specific contexts, beginning with their transition from home to the army, their experience of
battle, their interactions the army camp, with the divide between officer and enlisted, and in their
assertions of soldierly identities and revolutionary ideology.
*
Entering the military sphere
*
*
4
“A Soldier’s Life,” wrote William Weeks to his brother in 1777, “is such that no one can
have a true Idea… without the Trial.”3 New recruits had to navigate a complicated transition
between their civilian homes and the military sphere. Part of Week’s inability to explain the
experience of soldiering in the Revolutionary War was its particular mix of the familiar and
foreign: young men chose to take up arms within the familiar context of their civilian homes, but
the military institution they stepped into and the relationships they formed there were novel.4
When they went to war young soldiers did not cut themselves off from the local and
intimate worlds of revolutionary America – but they did expand their horizons. On one hand,
entering the world of the army alongside friends, relatives, and neighbors eased the transition.
These connections were inescapable: Francis Brooke was only sixteen when he received a
lieutenant’s commission at the end of 1780; “My twin brother,” he recalled, “not liking to part
with me, shortly after got the commission of a first lieutenant in the same regiment.”5 At the
beginning of the war, families, towns, or counties mustered their recruits together, and the lines
of military authority mirrored the lines of civilian social hierarchies. Even after 1777, when
recruiters found they had to range more widely for soldiers and drew poorer and less rooted men
into the ranks, young soldiers still carried civilian relationships into the army. The Carter
brothers, Barnabas and Nicholas, joined the Virginia line in 1777 enlisting in the same regiment
and same company – their story was not uncommon.6 Yet, even when marching off with familiar
faces, young soldiers had dramatically changed their social circumstances. Going to join the
army in Cambridge in July 1775 was likely the first time teenaged volunteers Aaron Burr and
3
Hiram Bingham, ed., Five Straws Gathered From Revolutionary Fields (Cambridge, 1901), 13.
For a parallel inquiry into this mix of familiarity and novelty in army life, see Gregory T. Knouff, The Soldiers’
Revolution: Pennsylvanians in Arms and the Forging of Early American Identity (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2004), 77.
5
Francis J. Brooke, “A Family Narrative: Being the Reminiscences of a Revolutionary Officer.” [1849] Magazine of
History XIX:74 (1921), 83.
6
Barnabas Carter (Rebecca), W.713, BLWt.26302-160-55; Nicholas Carter, S.46431, BLWt. 1704-100; cf. Nicholas
Carter Discharge Certificate, VHS.
4
5
Matthias Ogden stepped beyond the direct observation of their elders.7 As the war continued and
soldiers campaigned far from their homes, the increasingly diverse components of the
Continental Army itself could shock soldiers whose former lives had been profoundly local and
provincial. Joseph Plumb Martin, remembering the army’s baggage train heading south in the
middle of the war, thought “a caravan of wild beasts could bear no comparison with it.” Their
dialects were “as confused as their bodily appearance was odd and disgusting. There was Irish
and scotch brogue, murdered English, flat insipid Dutch, and some lingoes which would puzzle a
philosopher….”8 The army would prove a sphere marked by new people, conditions, and
demands.
Young soldiers had to adjust to these new burdens: “The Soldiers Life begins to sit more
easy upon me than it did at first,” wrote a young officer to a friend. “We had many hardships and
fatigues to undergo which before I knew nothing of.”9 As Washington explained to Congress
“the sudden change in their manner of living” naturally burdened and disheartened raw recruits.10
Their food and lodging were certainly different: “Our men uninured to camp rations made great
complaints at first,” acknowledged one officer.11 Others were less patient: Joseph Plumb Martin
saw an officer toss an ear of burnt Indian corn to a hungry soldier, saying, “eat this and learn to
be a soldier.”12 Even if the outdoor work of the camp was not dissimilar from familiar
agricultural labor, its pace and rhythms were new. They called the labor of maintaining camp and
building defenses “fatigue duty” for good reason. Entrenching, constructing fortifications and
7
Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York, 2007), 61.
Joseph Plumb Martin, Narrative of some of the adventures, dangers, and sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier
[1830] (New York, 1968), 170.
9
Charles Clinton Beatty to Enoch Green, September 10, 1776 “Letters of the Four Beatty Brothers of the
Continental Army, 1774-1794” PMHB 44:3 (1920), 202.
10
Washington to President of Congress, 24 September 1776. GW Writings, VI: 110-111.
11
Ebenezer Elmer, “Journal Kept During an Expedition to Canada in 1776,” Proceedings of the New Jersey
Historical Society, Vol. II, 1846-1847 (Newark, 1848), 100.
12
Martin, Narrative, 38.
8
6
shelters, cutting firewood, carrying water, and cooking were all part of long, tiring days of labor.
One soldier wrote home, the “fall business in Flaxseed time is nothing to be compared with the
Fatigues I undergo Daily.”13 One soldier remembered working “harder in the trenches at
Yorktown than he ever did anywhere else during the same length of time in his life.”14
Interminable marches from region to region added to this burden. In the southern campaign at the
end of the war, one Pennsylvanian calculated he had traveled 2,755 miles in the space of a year.15
Exposure to the elements, scarce food and hunger, hard work and long travel, disease and danger
were the foundation of soldiers’ experience. In addition to learning to bear these burdens,
recalled an enlisted soldier, “There was such a sameness in the duty we had to do,” day after day,
month to month.16
Becoming a soldier required instruction and adaptation. In the Revolutionary War, young
men did not experience a jarring, identity-stripping basic training.17 They mustered at a regional
rendezvous points and walked on to the army. Once in camp, regiments introduced or reinforced
the details of drill and the handling muskets – actions perhaps deceptively familiar from militia
examples. Poor weapons discipline in camp marked the novice soldier, with men banging away
at makeshift targets, flying geese, or campfires. “Seldom a day passes,” lamented Washington in
his general orders, “but some persons are shot by their friends.”18 Youthful enthusiasm and
ignorance had costs. When the revolutionary leadership in Massachusetts introduced Washington
13
Herbert T. Wade and Robert A. Lively, This Glorious Cause: The Adventures of Two Company Officers in
Washington’s Army (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 32.
14
William Chander, S.9159.
15
“Journal of William McDowell of the First Penn’a Regiment, In the Southern Campaign, 1781-1782”
Pennsylvania Archives, second series, XV:334.
16
John C. Dann, ed., Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts of the American Revolution (Chicago, 1980),
127.
17
Christopher H. Hamner, Enduring Battle: American Soldiers in Three Wars, 1776-1945 (Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas, 2011), 99, 101-102.
18
General Orders, 30 August 1776. GW Writings, V:500; Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The
Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783 (Chapel Hill, 1979), 59. Knouff connects recreational
shooting with soldiers’ feeling of empowerment – the ability to fire a gun at will connected citizenship, military
service, and manliness. Knouff, Soldiers’ Revolution, 90.
7
to his command in July 1775 they apologized that “the greatest part of them have not before seen
Service” and had “but little knowledge of divers things most essential to the preservation of
Health and even of life.” The “Youth in the Army” in particular were “not possess’d of the
absolute Necessity of Cleanliness in their Dress, and Lodging, continual Exercise, and strict
Temperance to preserve them from Diseases frequently prevailing in Camps.”19 Poor sanitation
and careless camp hygiene yielded an epidemic of deadly dysentery. Oversight and discipline of
such basic behavior had been the purview of the household. New to camp, these young recruits
had been released from familial control, but crucial military discipline had not yet been imposed.
While this transition was most marked at the outset of the war, the process would repeat with the
arrival of each wave of new recruits. They would have to learn how to be soldiers.
What lay in the hearts and minds of young soldiers was as crucial as the material
conditions they faced. “We were all young, and in a manner unacquainted with human nature,
quite Novices in Military matters,” recalled John Lacey, who had been appointed captain at
twenty-one. “[We] had every thing to learn, and no one to instruct us who new any better than
ourselves.”20 What novice soldiers did not know or misperformed alternately shocked and
amused. On one occasion a general had to remind his sentries “invariably to face outwards”
when on lookout.21 Another officer recalled the folly of a night’s watch for prowling tories –
suggesting the emotional tension created by new risks and obligations. He had placed his
sentinels, “all young fellows,” about a hundred yards apart and instructed they shout “all’s well!”
every half hour to their comrade on their right. The situation quickly devolved into farce. “My
boys, my sentinels… began to cry it every ten minutes, and at last constantly on… [with]
bellowing and a great noise.” Exasperated, he relieved those thirty sentries and repeated his
19
New England Chronicle, 29 June 1775; cf. GW Papers, I:53.
John Lacey, “Memoirs of Brigadier-General John Lacey, of Pennsylvania.” PMHB XXV:1 (1901), 12.
21
Orders, 14 July 1779. William M. Bell Orderly Book, 27 May – 25 July 1779, MHS.
20
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instructions, but to no avail. The new set bawled “all’s well” through the night as before. Not to
be outdone, his soldiers repeated the ridiculous scene the following night. 22 While this might
have been a breakdown of discipline by raw troops fearing enemies lurking in the darkness, their
persistence and the farcical humor of it suggests these young soldiers were spoofing military
procedure to relieve their novice anxiety. Despite danger and military discipline, their audience
was each other.
While Continental commanders tried to educate their green troops through their general
orders and gradually formalized instruction, training remained haphazard.23 This was particularly
the case for officers: several years into the war, newspapers could still assure newly appointed
young officers that they would find “Common sense and the deportment of a gentlemen…
sufficient” – knowledge of military art would follow in due time.24 Nevertheless, young soldiers
and officers worked to prepare themselves. Pamphlets and guide books on the military arts were
very popular among officers across the war – a Hessian inspecting captured American baggage
was astonished “to see how every wretched knapsack… would be filled with such military works
as ‘The Instructions of the King of Prussia to his Generals.’”25 Revolutionaries eagerly sought
the details of military science, but young officers making the transition to military life also read
up on how to be military men. Accordingly, in the flood of military books published during the
war, young officers devoured biographies of the ideal protestant warrior against tyranny,
22
Enoch Anderson, Personal Recollections of Captain Enoch Anderson, an officer of the Delaware Regiments in the
Revolutionary War, in the Papers of the Historical Society of Delaware XVI (Wilmington, 1896), 8, 15.
23
On orders as a vehicle for military training and ideological instruction, see Don Higginbotham, George
Washington and the American Military Tradition (Athens: University of Gerogia Press, 1985,) 71; John A.
Ruddiman, “A Record in the Hands of Thousands,” WMQ 67: 4 (Oct 2010), 747-774; for Steuben’s reform of
training via his “blue book” see Paul Lockhart, The Drillmaster of Valley Forge: The Baron de Steuben and the
Making of the American Army (New York, 2008), 169-196.
24
Pennsylvania Packet, 28 January 1778.
25
Lynn Montross, Rag Tag and Bobtail: The Story of the Continental Army, 1775-1783 (New York, 1952), 271-72.
Particularly popular were the many editions of Humphrey Bland’s, A Treatise of Military Discipline (1702) and
Thomas Simes, Military Guide for Young Officers (London, 1772), Early American Imprints, series 1, no. 15083.
Military autodidact Henry Knox owned an edition of the Simes volume: Henry Knox Collection, Rare Books and
Manuscripts, Boston Athenaeum.
9
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.26 One young officer similarly remembered reading “the History
of Charles XII, King of Sweden” in 1776 – during the campaign “called ‘the times that tried
men’s souls.’” Yet, he admitted, “It was fun then to me…. [and I] often thought of Charles the
Twelfth.” 27 Putting on the soldier was part of the transition to army life – young men had to find
a military persona and identity to help them face the burdens of war.
Unsurprisingly, since military language made young a synonym for inexperienced and
old with veteran, new recruits’ readiest sources for guidance were older veterans. Despite their
books, young men certainly needed all the advice they could get. Enoch Anderson gratefully
remembered how a veteran British captain, retired and standing with the colonial cause, took him
under his wing: “from the attentions… to me and from his tuition, I was considered a tolerable
disciplinarian.”28 John Adlum of Pennsylvania recounted many such interactions with older
veterans in his memoir. He recalled being “under great obligation” to one sergeant “for a great
deal of advice.” He also sought counsel from an “old soldier” named Kilpatrick who had
deserted from the British at Boston and joined the Americans.29 As an ex-British regular,
Kilpatrick was a true expert. Uncertainty and ignorance heavily burdened inexperienced soldiers.
In posing their questions to older men, veterans, and relative strangers, young soldiers got the
information they craved while hiding their ignorance and anxieties from their peers.
Young soldiers’ fears peaked when they faced their first battle. Decades later survivors
remembered the questions they put to older veterans. Marching towards what would be the Battle
of Monmouth, seventeen year old Virginian William Kersey fell in with veterans who had seen
26
Judith L. Van Buskirk, Generous Enemies: Patriots and Loyalists in Revolutionary New York (Philadelphia,
2002), 76.
27
Anderson, Personal Recollections, 29.
28
Ibid., 8. “Old Countrymen” were Englishmen living in colonial America.
29
John Adlum, Memoirs of the Life of John Adlum in the Revolutionary War, edited by Howard H. Peckham
(Chicago, 1968), 24, 37.
10
fighting at Trenton and the Brandywine and peppered them with questions.30 On northern
Manhattan in 1776, young John Adlum found himself a member of the garrison at Fort
Washington awaiting an inevitable British attack. There he came across a “very intelligent
Yankee” – a mariner about forty years old who said he had been at Bunker Hill. Together they
spoke about their military situation. Adlum expressed hope that fort’s entrenchments and earthen
walls would make them formidable to the enemy. The older Yankee disagreed: “Now… I don’t
know what the commanding officers intend to do,” he opined to his young listener, “but I will
tell you what they ought to do” – and proceeded to analyze the weaknesses of the fortifications.
The veteran Yankee also instructed his young listener about the nature of battle. “[A]fter the first
fire,” he reassured Adlum, “you will soon discover the great quantity of firing will be thrown
away without any very serious effect…. their noise is nearly as formidable to young soldiers as
the balls and grapeshot themselves.” Still, he insisted, “if you will attend to what I have said you
will soon despise all firing.” Despite feeling fear, the Yankee insisted, a “real brave man” could
still do his duty “with alacrity and in silence.”31 Fear need not unman. Standing with friends, kin,
and new guides, young soldiers could hope to prove “formidable” and worthy of the burden.
Young soldiers also used these queries to signal their worth to their elders and superiors.
In this vein, while standing guard during an artillery inspection early in the 1776 New York
campaign, Samuel Shaw caught the notice of General Israel Putnam, a legendary veteran, and
“took the freedom to ask him his opinion in regard to the enemy.” Shaw recreated their
conversation for his family:
He replied frankly, that he thought they would endeavour to give
us a brushing here. ‘Then,’ said I, ‘we shall have a little business,
General.’ ‘Not a little, neither,’ replied the old gentleman; ‘for
when they come up with their ships you’ll have your hands full, I
30
31
William Casey (Kersey) (Mary), W.29906 ½
Adlum, Memoirs, 21, 24, 37, 51-52, 55-56.
11
warrant you.’ On this I observed, that a smart fire from eight or ten
ships of the line, well returned by our batteries, would give a
young person some idea of a cannonade. ‘Ay, would it,’ concluded
he, laughing, ‘and of a pretty hot one, too.’”32
In this exchange between young and old, subordinate and commander, Shaw accomplished
several things. He caught the approving attention of a superior and demonstrated his military
knowledge and cool confidence in the face of danger. The general’s approving answer also
offered reassurance. Narrating this scene in a letter to his family added another layer to Shaw’s
performance. Through this exchange with the general Shaw painted himself as militarily savvy,
respected, and popular with his superiors. Shaw delighted in General Putnam’s approval and
sought to win that same regard from the audience at home.
Older commanders were aware of the emotional burdens borne by young soldiers and on
occasion directly addressed them. General Putnam took one such opportunity while reviewing
and addressing his troops in early 1777. As one soldier remembered it, the general approached
him and his equally young comrade, and “observing our youthful appearance, turned to us and
laid his hand on the shoulder of each of us and remarked that he liked to see such young men
turn out.” With their patriotic ardor affirmed, the general was further certain the lads “would
make men when their beards grew.” Putnam, a veteran of the war with the French, then “took off
his hat and showed us his head, which had been scalped by the Indians.”33 He, too, had once
been a youth in arms and survived savage battle and terrifying wounds. He embodied the
promise that the war could make good their expectations for advancement and respect. Just as
young men signaled their readiness and sought their elders’ approval, in this instance Putnam
signaled back to his young soldiers his approval and reassurance.
32
Samuel Shaw to Francis Shaw [father], 3 May 1776, in Josiah Quincy, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw: The
First American Consul at Canton (Boston, 1847), 11-12.
33
Dann, ed., Revolution Remembered, 146.
12
Battle
Tales tell that on the wintry morning before the Battle of Cowpens in 1781, rifleman,
backwoodsman, and general Daniel Morgan walked among his soldiers, joking, encouraging,
and laying out their strategy. When the armies collided, his line of militia were to fire just two
volleys at the British line, then withdrawal quickly, luring the enemy towards an obscured line of
ready and waiting Continentals. This was a deadly serious business – their behavior in combat
might preserve or endanger themselves and their comrades, and risk or advance their cause.
Morgan promised his young men that cool, steady behavior now would matter in the civilian
sphere: “And then when you return to your homes, how the old folks will bless you and the girls
will kiss you, for your gallant conduct.”34 Morgan was a savvy battlefield commander – in these
simple exchanges he drew connections among tactical effectiveness that promised a better
chance of victory and survival, soldiers’ obligations to each other, and their aspirations in the
civilian sphere. Though the experience of battle in the Revolution did not much vary between
older and younger soldiers – like the Almighty, grapeshot and musket balls were no respecter of
persons – the military necessity of performance and unity held particular salience to young men.
Combat was the defining experience for young soldiers. Nothing in civilian life matched
the terrible anticipation and resulting horror of battle. Elisha Stevens was in his mid-twenties
during the fighting at the Brandywine, and his immediate reaction spewed words across the page:
“it Began in the morning and Held til tonight with out much Seasation of arms Cannons Roaring
muskets Cracking Drums Beating Bumbs Flying all Round. men a dying woundeds Horred
34
Joseph Johnson, Traditions and Reminiscences, Chiefly of the American Revolution in the South… (Charleston,
1851), 449-50; cf. Lawrence E. Babits, A Devil of a Whipping: The Battle of Cowpens (Chapel Hill: 1998), 55.
13
Grones which would Greave the Heardist of Hearts to See Such a Dollful Sight as this.”35 Still,
fighting was rare, and with few exceptions a company’s time on the battlefield was better
measured in minutes than hours or days. During a hot campaign, a unit might risk enemy fire in
combat for a half hour every month or two.36 In those intervals the battlefield was a profoundly
intimate space of collective performance. Ideally, soldiers pressed shoulder to shoulder,
“locking” together with a foot pressed to the back leg of the soldier kneeling in the firing line
before them.37 To the modern mind, the eighteenth-century ideal of soldiers advancing without
cover appears bizarre if not suicidal. But it was the unbroken density of the line that concentrated
the firepower of single-shot muskets and created the terrifying momentum behind a bayonet
charge. Whichever line broke first from casualties, disorder, or fear exposed its soldiers to
greater risk, defeat, and death. Rather than endangering an individual soldier, standing firm with
comrades aligned his impulses towards self-preservation, his obligation to his peers, and their
shared goal of victory. 38 When units broke, the tended to fly en masse and suddenly. At the
Battle of Camden in 1780, the militia collapsed when British cannons opened up. “I confess I
was amongst the first that fled,” a veteran admitted decades later. “The cause of that I cannot tell,
except that everyone I saw was about to do the same. It was instantaneous. There was no effort to
35
Elisha Stevens, Fragments of Memoranda Written by him in the War of the Revolution (Meriden, CT, 1922), 2.
Ferling argues the ungrammatical stream of words highlights the soldier’s emotional reaction: John Ferling, Almost
a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence (New York, 2007), 249.
36
Hamner, Enduring Battle, 211. Wayne Lee identifies three main categories of warfare in the Revolution:
unrestricted military violence against Indians; partially restrained violence by militia that was prone to escalation;
and a regular, limited war practiced by the Continental Army in line with Enlightenment ideals and the revolutionary
ideal of virtue. Wayne E. Lee, Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina (Gainesville, 2001), 212.
37
Robert Middlekauf, “Why Men Fought in the American Revolution,” Huntington Library Quarterly 43:3 (1980),
140-41.
38
Hamner, building on John Keegan’s The Face of Battle (New York, 1976) and Anthony Kellett’s Combat
Motivation: The Behavior of Soldiers in Battle (Boston, 1982), argues that the logic of linear combat rested on a
three-legged stool: units were most effective when an individual’s task of self-preservation (stay alive!) aligned the
collective task of the mission (capture those cannon!) and the social force of primary group cohesion (protect
comrades!). Hamner, Enduring Battle, 12-16, 177.
14
rally, no encouragement to fight. Officers and men joined in the flight.”39 Individual signals of
hesitation or fear could cascade and the impetus for self-preservation tipped from stoic advance
to headlong flight.
To hold in the line soldiers had to trust each other to stand firm; as a result, outward signs
of calm, fearlessness, or resolve mattered immensely.40 Units that trusted each other and those
promises proved effective, “behaving well” and fighting “with spirit”.41 Young soldiers facing
imminent combat had to find ways to steel themselves against fear – and demonstrate their
resolve to their comrades. An army surgeon particularly noted how soldiers put on carefree
masks and denied fear: “Death is a Subject not to be attended to by Soldiers.” Irreverent or
blasphemous language also had particular power to convey confidence: “In short they Laugh at
death, mock at Hell and damnation, & even challenge the Deity, to remove them out of this
world by Thunder and Lightning.”42 In the intimate space of the battlefield, visible and audible
displays of resolve were crucial. In the chaotic retreats from New York in 1776, Virginia troops
were “greatly exasperated” that units of Connecticut militia had fled from the British without
firing a shot. Directly contrasting themselves with their feckless comrades, as the Virginians
drew up for battle “it was very discoverable that they were determined to fight to the last for their
Country.” To steel each other they approached the fighting with “every Soldier encouraging and
animating his fellow.”43 These performances blended two emotional imperatives: the behaviors
39
Garrett Watts S.________, Dann, ed., Revolution Remembered, 195; cf. Hamner, Enduring Battle, 78.
Hamner argues that cohesion in battle was not a “vague, brotherly affection” but tangible trust a soldier would not
endanger his comrades. Enduring Battle, 78, 183.
41
Militia companies were more likely to break unless they were the product of a preexisting community. The
Philadelphia militia at Princeton, the New England militias in Saratoga campaign had to protect their honor before
their neighbors. Southern militias – strangers drawn from thinly settled, ethnically diverse counties – were unsuited
for linear combat. there. Middlekauf, “Why Men Fought,” 141-42; Middlekauf, The Glorious Cause: The American
Revolution, 1763-1789, 2nd ed (New York, 2007), 509-10.
42
Frederic R. Kirkland, “Journal of a Physician on the Expedition against Canada, 1776.” PMHB 59:4 (Oct, 1935),
332, 352; cf. Ferling, Wilderness of Miseries, 101.
43
John Chilton to [Martin Pickett], 17 September 1776. Keith Papers, Box 1, Section 1, VHS.
40
15
that marked a good soldier – bravery, stoicism, and energy – were manly qualities that youths
needed to show each other; standing fast demonstrated the disinterested virtue that was the
central ideology of the Revolution. If a youth ran he might save himself, but if chose to stand fast
he helped preserve his comrades, the line, and the cause.44
Commanders and soldiers alike did their best to marshal this performative aspect. James
Collins, a seventeen year old facing combat in North Carolina in 1780 was horrified by the dead
heaped on the battlefield and was ready to desert. In the face of this fear, he recalled, “Each
leader made a short speech in his own way to his men, desiring every coward to be off
immediately.” This address had two effects. “I confess,” Collins later wrote, “I would willingly
have been excused for my feelings were not the most pleasant … but I could not well swallow
the appellation of coward.” He stayed in the line. Equally important, as he made his choice, he
saw others’ calculations about reputation crystalize. “I looked around; every man’s countenance
seemed to change; well, thought I, fate is fate, every man’s fate is before him and he has to run it
out….”45 As this young revolutionary remembered it, following the script of their leaders, he and
his comrades mastered their emotions in part by watching each other’s outward demeanor. With
this shared display of resolve and self-control, soldiers signaled to each other they would not
break and selfishly endanger their fellows.
Young officers particularly felt on display and their military deportment linked to their
manly performance. Ebenezer Denny, a young Pennsylvanian officer, knew the stakes: when he
saw wounded men for the first time he recorded “feelings not very agreeable; [I must] endeavor
to conquer this disposition or weakness; the sight sickened me.” Shortly thereafter he marched
towards the enemy ranks for the first time, and his captain offered a friendly warning: “Now Eb,
44
Middlekauf, “Why Men Fought,” 148; Glorious Cause, 515.
James P. Collins, Autobiography of a Revolutionary Soldier, (1859), 52; cf. Mechal Sobel, Teach Me Dreams: The
Search for Self in the Revolutionary Era (Princeton, 2000), 135-36.
45
16
for the honor of old Carlisle, do not disgrace yourself.” Personal deportment meant more than
tactical brilliance in a low-ranking officer. Then they came to it. “We could not have been
engaged longer than about three or four minutes,” Denny recorded, “but at the distance of sixty
yards only.” Heavy casualties left him standing in command of the company. Denny admitted to
his journal, “young and inexperienced, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, had like to have
disgraced myself… [but] with difficulty kept my place.” Luckily, the men of company were
tested veterans and kept in order as they ran beyond the reach of British fire. The young
lieutenant did not lead so much as follow along. But Ebenezer Denny had done what was
expected of a young officer: to stand calmly with his troops, keep hold of his arms, and keep the
unit together. There were harsh consequences for failing to keep one’s head. In this engagement,
horse blood sprayed across the pants of a young staff officer. Thinking himself wounded, he
fainted and had to be carried from the field. Apparently his fellow officers had envied this
handsome and wealthy young volunteer, but their subsequent mocking was enough “to laugh him
out of the service.”46 Unreasonable reaction to fear unmanned him in his companions’ eyes.
The behavior of Alexander Hamilton at the Battle of Monmouth offers a signal example
of how young officers shaped their behavior – and how their military audience judged these
performances. As an aide-de-camp to General Washington, Hamilton conveyed messages and
orders, but commanded no troops. On that disordered battlefield Hamilton’s displays of
foolhardy heroism and patriotic bluster drew disapproval from his superiors. Delivering
Washington’s orders that General Charles Lee stand fast, Hamilton rode up “in great heat”
flourishing his sword and shouting, “I will stay here with you, my dear general, and die with
you! Let us all die rather than retreat!” Lee later disapprovingly described the Hamilton as
46
Ebenezer Denny, Military Journal of Major Ebenezer Denny, an Officer in the Revolutionary and Indian Wars
(Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1859), 8-9, 36-37.
17
“much flustered [and] in a sort of frenzy of valor.” Later, as Washington tried to stop the
American retreat, Hamilton jumped from his horse, drew his sword and shouted, “We are
betrayed; your excellency and the army are betrayed, and the moment had arrived when every
true friend of America must be ready to die in their defence.” Washington’s response was
disapprovingly terse: “Colonel Hamilton, you will take your horse.” Theatrics of this sort would
not win the battle. Though these displays failed to match the older generals’ expectations,
Hamilton’s emotions rose from deep within the romantic young officer’s sense of himself. His
fearless performance helped master fear. Without troops of his own to command, Hamilton
displayed his patriotic resolve to his superiors – and himself.47
In revolutionary America, where external self-presentation defined character, young men
paired their preparation for battle with their attempts to win the regard of their fellow soldiers
and superiors. Displays of manly resolve, reciprocal trust, and tactical effectiveness proved
mutually reinforcing. Though these performances were necessary to hold the terrors of the
battlefield at bay, in truth nothing could control the vicious randomness of war’s violence. A
youth could fail in his performances of calm resolve and survive; he could do everything right
and die. At the Battle of Princeton, Lieutenant Bartholomew Yates and his captain successfully
rallied their Virginians to dress the line to receive a British volley. A round struck the nineteen
year old lieutenant in the side, knocking him to the frozen ground. While he begged for quarter, a
British soldier stood over him, deliberately reloaded his musket, and then fired into his chest.
The soldier then bayoneted Yates thirteen times with “the poor youth all the while crying for
47
Thomas Flexner, The Young Hamilton: a Biography (Boston, 1978), 231; The Lee Papers in Collections of the
New York Historical Society (1871-73), III:201; and George Washington Parke Custis, Recollections and Private
Memoirs of Washington (Philadelphia, 1859), 219. Court-martialed for his actions at Monmouth, Lee used gossip
about Hamilton’s behavior to undermine the aide’s testimony. On young officers’ irrational and highly symbolic
displays of bravery see Gregory D. Massey, John Laurens and the American Revolution (Columbia: University of
South Carolina Press, 2000), 82.
18
mercy.” Another British soldier found the Virginian somehow still alive and smashed him in the
head. Despite these horrible wounds, Yates lingered for a week.48 Dark humor, steadfast bravery,
or virtuous resolve in the face of the advancing enemy mattered little in the end for youths
brutalized, cut down, or dismembered by the storm of battle. Focusing on outward performance
redirected soldiers away from their inability to control the chaos around them.
Relationships and Performances in Camp
“How hard is the soldier’s lott who’s least danger is the field of action? Fighting happens
seldom, but fatigue, hunger, cold & heat are constantly varying his distress.”49 Young soldiers
not only were burdened by the risks and sufferings of military service, but also with whom they
shared army life. “[W]e get nothing here but water, [and] live but poorly,” a Massachusetts
soldier admitted to his brother – but equally weighty, “[we] have no society, only amongst
ourselves, and no Diversions of any Kinde.”50 The odd demographic makeup of the Continental
Army – profoundly male and overall quite young – created a peculiar sort of community. No
other environment in late colonial America save a college or ship compressed together so many
young men, and the army dwarfed these communities in scale.51 These unmarried youths in their
teens and twenties found unprecedented opportunities for friendship, competition, and conflict
across an unusually large peer group. Separated from civilian homes and communities by
distance, conditions, and demographics, life in the army required a different set of emotions – or
48
Virginia Gazette, 31 January 1777; cf. Samuel Stelle Smith, The Battle of Princeton (Monmouth Beach, NJ,
1967), 23.
49
“Diary of Dr. Jabez Campfield, surgeon in Spencer's Regiment while attached to Sullivan’s expedition against the
Indians, from May 23 to Oct 2 1779” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, 2nd ser., III (1872-74), 119.
50
22 June 1779, U.S. Revolution Collection, box 3, folder 2. AAS; cf. William Baller, “Farm Families and the
American Revolution” Journal of Family History 31:1 (Jan 2006), 31.
51
Leon Jackson, “The Rights of Man and the Rites of Youth: Fraternity and Riot at Eighteenth Century Harvard,”
History of Higher Education Annual, XV (1995), 5-49; Paul A. Gilje, Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime
Culture in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia, 2007).
19
at least different modes for displaying them.52 As a consequence, young soldiers crafted
performances rooted in competition and display to obtain their comrades’ approval and regard,
shaping the behaviors and relationships of camp.
The army was a social space for young men. Soldiers tried to assuage boredom with ball
playing and incessant gambling.53 An order in 1779 noted the typical socializing that followed
this collection of youths, scolding the “custom too prevalent among the Soldiers of going from
one post to the other.”54 Orders issued to a garrison in upstate New York offer glimpses of the
disorderly interactions among young soldiers. Enlisted men repeatedly conspired with guards to
rob the fort’s stores at night. Sentries on watch invariably chose to stand together and chat with
off-duty soldiers. Soldiers in their barracks proved so “Verry Troublesome in fighting and
Making a Noise in the Night” that the colonel ordered sergeants stationed in every room as
chaperones who would be held “accountable for their Conduct.” And after snowstorms, soldiers
found themselves embroiled in snowball fights for the record books. 55 Life for young men in the
Continental Army meant displays of competition or transgression that aimed to win approval
from an audience of peers.
It was a commonplace observation that army life changed young men, but these soldiers
changed themselves to suit their new environment. Daniel Barber was hardly alone recalling how
52
One chaplain described this as “camp feelings,” implying a “kind of tough, heedless pose” soldiers took in camp.
Ebenezer David to Nicholas Brown, 2 August 1777, in Jeannette D. Black and William Greene Roelker, eds., A
Rhode Island Chaplain in the Revolution: Letters of Ebenezer David to Nicholas Brown, 1775-1778 (Providence,
1949), 36.; cf. Royster, Revolutionary People at War, 164
53
On gambling, see for example General Orders, 3 October 1775, Montague Orderly Book, Boston Athenaeum;
General Order 24 October 1778, Bland Family Papers, section 5, VHS. On ball playing, see entries 3, 17 April 1779,
“Journal of Henry Dearborn, from December 5, 1777 to June 16, 1779,” Massachusetts Historical Society
Proceedings, 2nd series, III (1886-87): 110-130; see also 2-4 June 1777, Moses Greenleaf Diary (folder 23.1-26.2),
MHS.
54
General Orders, 17 July 1779 Peeks-kill, NY. 6th Massachusetts Order Book, Early American Orderly Books,
1748-1817, Microfilm reel 9, #92
55
See Orders 9 December 1778, 1 Feb 1779, 5 April 1779, 25 July 1779, Nicholas VanRensselaer’s Orderly Book,
Fort Schuyler, SOC; for additional snowball fights, see Dann, ed., Revolution Remembered, 38; and Isaac Artis,
S.39943, who recalled a gigantic snowball fight in 1778 between the Virginia and Pennsylvania troops.
20
“military discipline and the habits of a soldier, Soon affected a degree of relaxation in most of
us” in morals and manners.56 A newspaper piece “To the Youth in the Army” ostensibly written
by “affectionate parents” spoke to this civilian fear about what young men chose to do in camp.
“Our hearts are made to bleed, and our ears to tingle, with the reports of your wickedness,
cursing, swearing, gaming, and debauchery. What! cannot you make good soldiers, unless you
first commence veterans in sin? Cannot your country be saved but by the loss of your souls?”
Why couldn’t their soldier-sons simply “be of good courage, obedient to your officers, and kind
and friendly to each other”?57 Facing an audience of their fellow youths and sharing anxieties
about status, young soldiers and officers used each other to obtain the regard that would bolster
their sense of themselves as worthy men – even if those behaviors violated the expectations and
norms of their civilian homes.
With swearing, for example, soldiers presented a rough and confident face to the world. It
was a performance that marked them as true soldiers and was as useful in camp as it was before
battle. One member of the revolutionary generation recalled how his mother “reproved” a group
of visiting soldiers who “had learned to swear horribly” in the service. They defended their
behavior, explaining “they had learned it in the army, where they though it was right to swear, to
make the soldiers brave and mind their duty.” Returned home, however, these soldiers did
acknowledge, “it would be as well to dispense with it, unless it was on some extraordinary
occasion.”58 In camp swearing made men soldiers: “Nothing comes more handy, or gives such
power and force to their words as Blasphemous Oaths,” lamented a surgeon.59 Because it
56
Daniel Barber, The History of My Own Times (Washington, 1827-32), I:14,16.
“To the Youth of the Army,” Norwich Packet and the Connecticut, Massachusetts, New-Hampshire, and RhodeIsland Weekly Advertiser, 16 Sept 1776,; cf. John Adams to Nathanael Greene, 9 May 1777. Taylor, et al, eds.,
Papers of John Adams, 5:185.
58
Billy Hibbard, Memoirs of the Life and Travels of B. Hibbard: Minister of the Gospel, Containing an Account of
His Experience of Religion, 2nd ed., (New York, 1843 [original 1825]), 14.
59
Kirkland, ed., “Lewis Beebe: A Physician on the Expedition against Canada,” 352.
57
21
violated propriety, smacked of disorder, and ran counter to ideals of virtue, commanders issued
“many and pointed orders” against swearing, but to little effect.60 Nevertheless, young soldiers
had to carefully adjust these performances to suit circumstances even within the military sphere.
Lieutenant Park Holland recalled how at the end of a formal dinner with George Washington a
young officer “who had long been in the habit of using profane language… forgot where he was,
[and] swore an oath.” Washington silenced the room with a rap on the table, “sat down his
untasted wine, aroase and said, ‘gentlemen, when I invited you here it was my intention to have
invited gentlemen only. I am soory to add I have been mistaken’” After the general abruptly left,
“A dead silence reigned for some time, which was broken by the officer himself calling us all to
witness, the oath he had uttered should be his last, adding he would rather have been shot
through the heart than have deserved the reproof from Washington.”61 The young officer had
poorly shaped his self-presentation; he tried to recover the regard of his fellow men by declaring
his respect for Washington and pledging his honor to future self-control.
Just as swearing meant more than mere words for young men, their drinking in the army
aimed at far more than intoxication. Consumption of alcohol combined social, competitive, and
self-assertive impulses. Admittedly, much drinking in the army bore the hallmarks of addiction –
“left to himself the Soldier as soon as he received his pay flies to the Sutler and lais it out in
grog… tho he may not at the time have a Shirt to his Back, or a Shoe or Stocking to his feet.”62
Alcohol gave the soldiers their main weapon against the cold, damp, boredom, and homesickness
of camp life – but drinking took on particular power in a social context. Sergeant Benjamin
60
Orders, War Office 30 March 1779, Brigade Orders, 1 August 1779. Orderly Book of Col. Thomas Nixon’s 6 th
MA Regiment, Continental Line, in New York and New Jersey , July 10 1779-Sept. 13, 1780, 6th Massachusetts
Order Book, Early American Orderly Books Microfilm Reel 9, #92. .
61
Park Holland Memoir, 11, MHS.
62
General Edward Hand to GW, n.d., Revolutionary War Records, (M859 #111, 31546). Martin and Lender argue
this was more than alcoholism – the army was supposed to provide clothes; soldiers refusing to spend their own
devalued pay was thus a form of protest. James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender, A Respectable Army: The
Military Origins of the Republic, 1763-1789 (Arlington Heights, IL, 1982), 129.
22
Gilbert recorded an active social scene in his Massachusetts regiment’s winter quarters near
Albany. Of the twenty-eight entries he made in camp in January 1778, twenty made explicit
mention of social activity, be it card playing, going to meetings of his lodge of Freemasons, or
simply drinking to get drunk with fellow soldiers. An entry without social activity – “Came
home and sat alone by the fire all day” – stood out starkly both for Gilbert the diarist and for his
modern reader. His more typical entries recorded social gatherings: [January 24] “At Night I was
at Capt Shays and almost all the officers of the Reg’t and kept it up very high.”63 Gilbert’s diary
reveals far more about the comings, goings, and doings of a circle of male comrades than about
his daily duties as a sergeant. His social world provided far more meaning, self-definition, and
sheer enjoyment than clerical assignments such as “made muster Roles for Lieut Gardner” or
“gathered the weekly Reports in.”64 Whether in quiet conversation or raucous drinking, Gilbert
was a young man in a community of men.
Gilbert’s war diary itself shows the performative aspect of social drinking –
demonstrating vigor and bonhomie. One example, which can only be described as a week-long
bender, appears to have been an extended celebration of the American victory at Stony Point on
the banks of the Hudson River:
August 1, 1779 At Night I went & Drank Grogg with Serjt. Cook at his
tent.
nd
2 At night Serft. Carlton & I went Serjt Major Weston tent and Drank
Grogg freely.
3rd At Night we had a caper up at Serjt. Cooks tent. From there to Serjt.
Wheeler and then at ours.
4th At Night a number of the Serjt. in the Brigade tok a walk into the
Countery and had a Caper. We got back Just at Day.
63
Entries 1-27 January 1778, Rebecca D. Symmes, ed., Citizen-Soldier in the American Revolution: The Diary of
Benjamin Gilbert in Massachusetts and New York (Cooperstown, N.Y.: The New York State Historical Association,
1980), 21-24. Captain Shays was Gilbert’s neighbor back in central Massachusetts the nominal leader of the armed
rebellion against foreclosures and taxation in 1786.
64
3, 12 January 1778, Ibid., 21, 22.
23
5th At Night all the S Majors & Qr. M. Serjt. and number of other serjants
walk out as far as Mr. Bassets. Had a heigh Caper a number of fine
Girls to convers with.
th
6 We got back sun one [h]our high in the Morning. Stopt at the
Comsy[sary]. and Drank a morning Dram and they all came to my tent
and wound off with a Gentele Drink of Groog.
th
7 In the morning it rained. We had the orderly serjt. at our tent to take a
[drink of] sling. At Night we went to Capt. Cumminges tent and Drank
Grogg.
On the eighth day, Sunday, Gilbert went to a church meeting in the morning, after which he most
appropriately rested.65 In this period, Gilbert noted no official duties in his diary (if, in fact, he
was performing any) and only recorded his carousing. His entries developed a rhythm,
suggesting a narrative purposefulness in recording the previous evening’s drinking, with each
successive entry urging higher and higher “capers.” Gilbert’s amusement in recording these
excesses is also striking. Heavy consumption of alcohol was a fact of life in revolutionary
America, but Gilbert’s alcoholic excesses go far beyond even the elevated standards of the
1770s.66 In the army such excesses not only were acceptable, but provided soldiers with crucial
opportunities to seek the camaraderie and approval of their fellow soldiers. 67
As suggested by the “fine girls” featured in Gilbert’s bender, the army camp was not
solely a male space, and women were central to young men’s performances of masculinity. Elite
officers’ genteel wives sometimes accompanied them to winter encampments, while the wives
and children of some older enlisted men followed the army, cooking, washing, and nursing.
Some of these women received recognition and rations from the Continental Army, though never
full acceptance. Other women followed the army as sutlers, selling supplies and drink to
65
1-8 August 1779, Ibid., 56.
W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 7-14.
67
Knouff connects drinking culture of the army to civilian tavern culture and an ‘informal manhood’ that offered an
alternate manifestion of masculine norms. Knouff, Soldiers’ Revolution, 88-89.
66
24
soldiers.68 Still, in the military sphere the ratios of men to women were heavily imbalanced – a
distinct difference from demographically balanced civilian communities. The encampment at
Valley Forge held roughly forty-four soldiers for each woman in the winter of 1777-78. By the
end of the war the Hudson River cantonment at New Windsor held twenty-six men for each
woman.69 Present, but rare, part of the power of femininity in the military sphere was its contrast
with soldierly masculinity. In battle, for example, soldiers were to strike with manly resolve: “let
the sword fall… drive every womanish weakness from your heart.”70 Similarly, military
discipline inflicted signs of womanliness to humiliate unworthy men, with soldiers dressing
malefactors in women’s clothes, painting their faces, or plaiting or curling their hair in a female
style.71 Contrasting a soldierly identity with womanliness produced odd performances. At the
beginning of the war, with very few women living and working in the army, American soldiers
were unprecedentedly dirty. Novice soldiers, perhaps uncertain what behaviors best showed
them as manly warriors, refused the women’s work of washing their clothes. One observer was
horrified that these soldiers apparently preferred to have their linen rot and disintegrate.
Fortunately, the cleanliness of the camp improved after 1777 as more women followed the army
and soldiers grew more professional and accustomed to their soldierly identities.72
The experience of Samuel Dewees points out the complicated emotional weight young
soldiers felt about male and female roles and status in the military sphere. Having escaped into
the army as a small, hungry, and homeless lad, Dewees was lucky to find a place as a colonel’s
waiter at Valley Forge. This colonel, however, had created a peculiar military household in
68
For analysis of this “Continental Community” of both men and women, soldiers and civilians, see Holly A.
Mayer, Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community during the American Revolution (Columbia, 1996).
69
Mayer, Belonging to the Army, 133.
70
Pennsylvania Packet, 28 January 1778.
71
Ferling, Wilderness of Miseries, 117.
72
Royster, Revolutionary People at War, 59-60.
25
camp, bringing a young woman he called his niece to live with him – though as Dewees
suggestively pointed out in his memoir, the colonel married the young lady after the war. Despite
his physically easy situation, Dewees grew tired of “truckling at the heels of, and to the will and
mandate of a woman.” Interestingly, domestic service did not irk him – he accepted another
officer’s invitation to serve as a waiter to escape this scandalous little household. He objected to
the inversion of power relations – in the military sphere a soldier was to hold power and status
superior to women – not they over him. It is telling that Dewees vividly recalled a moment of
sexualized spectacle that validated this proper patriarchal order in camp. In this instance, “a
woman of ill-fame” was dragged onto the parade field before the gathered soldiers. Led by
drummers beating “the W[hore’s] March,” the company proceeded to the river. There a corporal
“attempted to ‘duck’ her by plunging her head under water.” After much struggling, he
succeeded getting her under three times and let her go. “We gave her three cheers and three long
rolls on the drum,” Dewees recalled, “and marched back without our fair Delilah, follower of
Bapta goddess of Shame…. Such frolics as these were often made part of our duties, and which
(being young as some of us were) we enjoyed very well.”73 For young men to enjoy the ritual
shaming of a sexualized woman pointed to both their titillation and their aspiration to exercise
their own control over women. Though subordinated themselves in a military hierarchy, these
young soldiers could rest assured that their birthright – the overarching patriarchal order –
remained intact.74
73
John Hanna, A History of the Life and Services of Captain Samuel Dewees (Baltimore, 1844) 146, 226, 165-66.
Mechal Sobel argues that “great anger at women marks many of the life narratives of men in this period. In a
world that too often seemed out of their control, men often focused on women as particularly dangerous, as well as
potentially controllable.” Sobel, Teach Me Dreams, 136-37. Peter Way argues enlisted soldiers wrangled with their
superiors over the patriarchal order in camp and resisted elite attempts to emasculate and infantilize them: See
“Venus and Mars: Women and the British-American-Army in the Seven Years War,” in Britain and America Go to
war: The Impact of War and Warfare in Anglo-America, 1754-1815 edited by Julie Flavell and Stephen Conway
(Gainesville, 2004), 41-68.
74
26
Women were key to young soldiers’ performances of masculinity for themselves and
others. Unsurprisingly, young soldiers were always on the lookout for the fair sex – and soldiers
and civilian women were often in contact. At the siege of Boston, for example, after collecting
the orders of the day, Corporal Elihu Clark walked several miles with some fellow soldiers
ostensibly to attend religious services, but also “to see some fine girls.”75 The novel military
environment created opportunities for sightseeing: Ensign Henry Sewall on the first anniversary
of the beginning of the war “Walk’d to Bunker Hill with a Number of Ladies.”76 These were
particularly genteel means of flirting, but young Continentals also had more crass ways of
grabbing the attention of local women. “The General does not mean to discourage the practice of
bathing,” Washington sighed in his General Orders, “but he expressly forbids, any persons doing
it, at or near the Bridge in Cambridge… [where] many Men, lost to all sense of decency and
common modesty, are running about naked upon the Bridge, whilst… even Ladies of the first
fashion in the neighbourhood, are passing over it, as if they meant to glory in their shame.” 77
General Nathanael Greene responded to similar complaints on Long Island that soldiers were
frequenting a mill pond “to swim In Open View of the Women and that they Come out of the
Water and Run up Naked to the Houses with a Design to Insult and Wound the Modesty of
female Decency.” What had happened to the “Modesty, Virtue and Sobriety of the New England
People for which they have been so Remarkable?” Greene complained. “Have the Troops Come
Abroad for No Other Purpose than to Render themselves both Obnoxious and Ridiculous?”78
Streaking was a rowdy display, an inversion of civilian morality – a devil-may-care display of
75
11 June 1775, Elihu Clark Diary, Peter Force Collection, LOC; cf. entries for 21 June, 2 October 1775.
19 April 1776, Henry Sewall Diary, MHS.
77
General Orders, 22 August 1775, GW Papers I:346.
78
Orders,18 May 1776, Richard K. Showman, et al, eds., The Papers of General Nathanael Greene (Chapel Hill,
1976-2002), I:215.
76
27
sexuality before a lad’s messmates. The women were hardly the only audience, though their
presence made the gag work.
Soldiers pursued sexual relationships with women in and around camp for understandable
reasons and urges, but always with an element performance for their comrades. Army camps saw
lots of sex between men and women – military regulation did not forbid liaisons, though
commanders did punish outbreaks of venereal disease among soldiers and women who followed
the army.79 As one lieutenant winked in his diary, the “young ladies here are very fond of the
soldiers, but much more so for of the officers.”80 Army life, however, did not offer much in the
way of privacy. “I assure you,” bragged a surgeon to a friend about the sexual availability of
local women, “tho’ our room is not 12 feet square we had no less than three females here last
night and expect more this [evening].”81 Benjamin Gilbert also recorded a series of encounters
among his messmates in the spring of 1778 that suggest how men and women came together in
and around camp. “In the fore noon,” Gilbert noted, “the Srgt went down the hill and plaid Ball.
At Nigt Marcy was at our tent and lay all Nigt with Serjt. Phipps and went home at Gun firing in
the Morning.” Despite erasures in the diary, it is clear the events of the following night were
similar: “Serjt. Phipps [erasure] and at evening Do’d. [dittoed] allong with [Marcy]. The next
week Gilbert recorded, “Bragg Brought Marcy into Camp at Night.” The following day, Gilbert
recorded, “Clear and warm. At Ngt. Marcy was here.” By the end of May, another name entered
Gilbert’s book: Polly Robinson – though he noted soon after, “Bragg and marcy and Pol
Robinson got under Guard and weir Tryed by a coart Martiall.” By June, Gilbert could report,
79
Robert Kirkwood, The Journal and Order Book of Captain Robert Kirkwood of the Delaware Regiment of the
Continental Line (Wilmington, DE, 1910), 94, 105. Orders did warn against contracting venereal diseases and
examined and expelled infected camp followers. Those appearing ill were drummed out.
80
“Diary of Lieutenant James McMichael of the Pennsylvania Line, 1776-1778,” PMHB 16:2 (1892): 141.
81
Samuel McKenzie to Jonathan Potts, Bennington, 27 August 1777. Dr. Jonathan Potts Papers, 1766-1780, HSP.
28
“In the Morning Polly Robinson [and] Nel Tidrey was Drumed out of the Regt.”82 Gilbert’s
diaries reveal numerous social interactions with young women in and around camp – gatherings
for drinking tea or grog, meetings for dancing or sex. The patterns of names and activities
suggest a diverse set of relationships, some sexual, some romantic, some social. Most important,
however, all these interactions unfolded under the view and attention of other young soldiers.
Young Continental officers paid close attention to each other’s sexual performances in
their correspondence with each other: they purposefully made women objects of sexual and
romantic display, demonstrating their masculinity for an audience of their fellow young men.83
“You ask about girls,” replied an officer at Ticonderoga to a friend, “Alas we have none, I
scarcely know what a girl is.” But he had heard his friend’s branch of the army was beset with
women. “I have too great an opinion of your courage and zeal, not to suppose you was warmly
engaged,” he joked – “Hope you come off without a wound.” What better way to banter about
liaisons in camp than with martial double entendre comparing the risks of battle with the risks of
disease – or perhaps more romantically, broken hearts?84 Mostly, officers bragged to each other.
Dr. Robert Wharry on the southern campaign in 1781 wrote to fellow officer that he had
encountered “plenty of Ladies, both fair, black, and brown; (but, by the bye) few fair ones.”
Continuing in this vein of sexual and racial exoticism, he further noted that some of the army
“Lads” had made “extensive acquaintances” but for himself he had “not ha[d] in my power to
pay my devoirs [compliments] to the nice widows or their bands of Eithopians.”85 Benjamin
82
See entries for 28, 29 April, 6, 7, 29, 30 May, 5 June 1778, Symes, ed., Diary, 30-32. For changing norms about
sex in the civilian sphere, see Lisa Wilson, Ye Heart of a Man: the Domestic Life of Men in Colonial New England
(New Haven, 1999), 83-88; Thomas Foster, Sex and the Eighteenth Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of
Sexuality in America (Boston, 2006), ch. 2-3; and Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America (Baltimore,
2002), ch. 7.
83
For more on the place of women in officers’ correspondence see Massey, John Laurens and the American
Revolution, 81-82.
84
N. Rice to Israel Keith, 21 October 1776, Israel Keith II Papers, MHS.
85
Wayne Bodle, “Soldiers in Love: Patrolling the Gendered Frontiers of the Early Republic,” in Sex and Sexuality in
29
Gilbert, on the same expedition, similarly reported how “The Ladies are exceeding Amouris but
not So Beautifull as at the Northward, tho there is some rare Beauties amongst them.” He was
pleased to tell his friend Lt. Park Holland that “Amouris Intrigues and Gallantry are every where
approved of in this State, and amongst the Vulgar any man that is given to concupcience may
have his fill.” Simply put: “The Ladies are exceeding fond of the Northern Gentlemen,
Esspecially those of the Army.”86 When writing about women, young officers always painted
themselves as popular and virile sexual subjects.
In their disordered behavior, their swearing and drinking, and their interactions with
women in and near camp, young soldiers performed for an audience of their peers. This was one
reason why their behaviors either went beyond or contrasted so strongly with the norms or ideals
of their civilian homes. At home, a young man’s control over his external deportment marked his
progress towards an idealized adult manhood. Of course youths would go a bit wild, give their
guardians and elders cause for concern, and tweak their community’s expectations – but in small,
intensely local communities, there would be heavy costs for persistently failing to meet
expectations. Who would trust an unserious, uncontrolled youth? Failure to gain their elders’
regard would foreclose opportunities for better work, increased responsibility, or serious
relationships all necessary to advance in life. The army, however, provided youths with a stage
out of the direct view of their old masters. Only their male peers – and the occasional senior
officer – composed the audience to judge their performances of masculine and soldierly
identities.87
Early America, edited by Merril D. Smith (New York, 1998): 221-22.
86
Benjamin Gilbert to Park Holland, August 1781, Shy ed., Winding Down: The Revolutionary War Letters of
Lieutenant Benjamin Gilbert of Massachusetts, 1780-1783 (Ann Arbor, 1989), 47.
87
On the anxieties and low expectations in Revolutionary America surrounding the transgressive behaviors of young
bachelors, see John McCurdy, Citizen Bachelors: Manhood and the Creation of the United States (Ithaca, 2009); cf.
Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 55, 61.
30
Power and Division: Officers and Enlisted, Identity and Ideology
Poor Lt. Doughterty – court martialed and cashiered for “Unofficer and Ungentleman like
behavior, in associating and playing Ball with the Serjeants.” To reassert his status as an officer
and a gentleman Doughterty challenged a fellow officer to a duel – likely after being mocked for
fraternizing with enlisted men. All that got him was a second charge at his court martial.88 Power
in the world of the army flowed according to an increasingly rigid hierarchy and strict military
discipline, dividing young men according to rank. In a revolutionary cause built on mutual
association and unity of purpose, the ironic outcome in the military sphere was mutual disdain
and mistrust between officers and enlisted. Separated by class, young men created parallel
performances of their military identities. Officers performed for officers; enlisted men for
enlisted. Young officers felt great anxiety about their position and privilege, proving touchy and
quick to duel. Even as military discipline inflicted humiliation, pain, and terror, enlisted men
tried to maximize their dignity and solidarity. The operation of power in the military sphere also
shaped how young men incorporated the ideology of the Revolutionary cause into their identities
and performances.
Continental officers should have felt great confidence – they were the vanguard of a
daring movement that, as Thomas Paine assured them in Common Sense, could “begin the world
over again.”89 Instead, personal anxiety weighed on the junior officers – mostly younger men –
who were caught in the middle of the army hierarchy. Enlisted soldiers resisted their authority,
while senior officers mostly held themselves aloof to demonstrate their own superiority.90
88
14 April 1779, Captain Jacob Bower’s Orderly Book, 1779, SOC. The officer was from Maryland.
Eric Foner, ed., Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (New York, 1995), 52.
90
Royster, Revolutionary People at War, 91. Young officers also increasingly viewed themselves as separate and
different from both the enlisted men below them and the surrounding civilian society. See Massey, John Laurens,
89
31
Contemporaries observed their insecurity, as officers envied the unquestioned authority of their
aristocratic European counterparts.91 They looked jealously at each other as well, convinced
status in the army was a zero-sum competition. Alexander Hamilton’s ambition and identity were
so thoroughly tied up with his military role that seeing others achieve rank and promotion
without merit, he explained, “in some degree makes me contemptible in my own eyes.”92 With
the civilian sphere inaccessible, to counter these insecurities young officers had to seek each
other’s respect and regard.
Desiring rules for disordered and unpredictable relationships, young officers energetically
threw themselves into the paired gentlemanly cultures of sensibility and honor. Both were based
in display and rested on the opinion of others. Their enthusiasm for freemasonry offers an ideal
example. Rooted in emotion and relationship, masonry promised to order social interactions and
balanced officers’ contradictory impulses towards exclusivity and egalitarianism. Lodges
brought officers of different ages and ranks together, but smoothed out the difference of social
station by creating a parallel and invented hierarchy of masonic degrees. Masonry promised
young men rewards of camaraderie and recognition, as well as order and advancement. Samuel
Sewall, a young Massachusetts officer, recorded the events of a masonic gathering in his diary:
the “fraternity” convened, “marched in regular procession according to their different degrees in
Masonry, to an elegant dinner prepar’d for that purpose, where Br. Porter delivered an Oration
suitable to the occassion – After the repast they retired in the same order.” Sewall’s diary
account broadcast what he valued: friendship, recognition, and order. He accordingly closed his
report of masonic harmony with a verse from Psalms: “‘Behold, how good & how pleasant it is
81-82.
91
Massey, John Laurens, 82.
92
Ibid., 137; Hamilton Papers, I:426; II:35, 388.
32
for brethren to dwell together in unity –’”93 Masonry was a manifestation of sensibility – a
shared-worldview that bound gentlemen together, ordering their feelings and performances. An
officer conversant with the ideals of sensibility, as one historian explained, “looked for things to
feel: friendship with other gentlemen, love for a woman, compassion for the unfortunate, ardor
for his country, nobility in self-sacrifice.”94 Masonry gave them an ordered way of expressing
friendship and fellowship; sensibility provided them with an emotional language to show each
other their quality.
Even as young officers embraced relationships that sought to overcome the competition
and division in their ranks, their basic anxiety about their peers’ opinion also led to an explosion
of dueling. Young officers were quick to take offense and seek recourse to duels because their
positions were so tenuous.95 Their commissions declared an advanced, but delicate status that
white men could find uncomfortably fluid. Lt. Overton of a Maryland regiment, for example,
“supposing his character to have been injured by a representation made by lt. Peyton of the same
Reg’t called upon him for a retraction.” Peyton refused and Overton “told him at all events he
must have restitution.” They agreed to meet with pistols. Overton received a ball in the thigh, but
Peyton was shot through the body “& died the same day lamenting his end to be in such a
manner in a private dispute & not in the cause of his Country – in which case he should have left
the world in ease.” He was only twenty years old. Petyon’s civilian status was in part the source
of his downfall. He was the son of a “Family of Fortune in Virginia” but had joined the army
93
27 December 1779, Sewall Diary, MHS. He references Psalm 133:1; see also 17 October 1779 for a similar
account of a Masonic dinner celebrating the anniversary of the Saratoga victory; cf. Steven C. Bullock,
Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840
(Chapel Hill, 1996).
94
On sensibility as a worldview for officers, see Sarah Knott, Sensibility and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill:
Published by University of North Carolina Press for OIEAHC, 2009), 18-19; for their search for emotions to
experience and share, see Royster, Revolutionary People at War, 88-89.
95
Questions of honor – and other competitions over status – are fraught when hierarchy is novel. Leo Braudy, From
Chivalry to Terrorism : War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity (Westminster, MD, 2005), 50-51.
33
against his father’s wishes. The winter before, he had written to his father to request money and
“had in answer that when he should do his duty as a son – he should find him ready to help him
as a Father.” In his mind, the unfortunate Peyton only had his honor as a gentlemen and rank as
an officer. It had to be demonstrated: he could not retract his insult and he had to duel. The
public nature of dueling – and this record in another officer’s diary – shows that these young
gentlemen were right to think they were on display. Gossip about their character constantly
swirled around them. How they handled it meant renewed respect from peers or their sudden
disdain.96
By subsuming their status anxiety into honor culture, young officers found their
touchiness not only forgiven, but approved in the military sphere. A fellow officer observed how
Captain Trumbull “really behaves will in his Military Capacity & supports the Character of a
Soldier well.” He offered as evidence an instance where an officer happened to speak a bit
dismissively – “Capt Trumbull immediately clapt his hand upon his sword & demanded an
Explanation.”97 Small slights or mistaken meanings could provoke duels. Lt. Francis Brooke
remembered eating watermelons with Lt. Whitaker on campaign in South Carolina, “when I said
something that he so flatly contradicted, that I supposed he intended to say I lied; on which I
broke a half of a melon on his head.” Whitaker realized his friend’s honor was at stake and
quickly salvaged the situation: “Brooke,” he asked, “you did not think I meant to tell you you
lied?” Since his comrade had not given him the lie – an unforgivable provocation – Brooke could
96
Saturday, [n.d.] 1780, Tenach [Teaneck, NJ] near English Neighborhood, Papers of Theodore Woodbridge, 17801813, LOC.
97
Josiah Burr to Lydia Smith Burr [mother] 24 January 1777, Burr Family Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale
University.
34
apologize for the melon. Fortunately for all, it ended there. Whitaker had already wounded a
Pennsylvania captain in a duel.98
There were regional differences in honor culture – New Englanders generally looked
down on the southern propensity for dueling. But even the young officers of the army who
disdained dueling as foolish and sinful took up the language of honor, particularly since these
sons of New England rarely matched the wealth or affectations of gentility of their brother
officers from the plantation states. Samuel Benjamin of Connecticut carefully copied down in his
diary a speech rejecting a challenge to duel that nevertheless declared his position as a gentleman
fully possessed of a sense of honor: “Sir, your behavior last night has convinced me that you are
a scoundrel and your letter this morning that you are a fool.” By accepting the morning’s
challenge to duel, Benjamin would only degrade himself. “I owe a duty to god and my Cuntry
which I deem it infamous to Violate; & I am intrusted with a life which I think cannot without
folly be staked Against yours.” Benjamin cared not whether the rogue persisted with womanish
whispers behind his back – but he was still a gentleman: “Remember that to prevent
Assassination I have a Sword & To Chastice insolence[,] a Cane.” Though he would not stoop to
duel, he would defend himself if attacked – and most important, if insulted to his face he would
cane the knave – the form of violence that shamed its victim.99 Only by deploying the language
of honor could an officer maintain his position in the eyes of his army peers. Life in the army
demanded constant display of status from young officers. “[T]his dueling is a most cruel &
98
Brooke, “A Family Narrative,” 95.
Samuel Benjamin, folder 10 [undated, c. 1780, written after the report of Arnold’s treason], Samuel Benjamin
Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University. Born in 1753, Benjamin was approximately 27. On the
meanings of different forms of ritual violence, especially caning, see Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National
Politics in the New Republic (New Haven, 2001), 172.
99
35
horrid Practice,” commented a New England officer in his diary, “and ‘tis a pity that ‘tis
sometimes absolutely necessary.”100
Officers constructed military and manly identities in view of each other, but also used the
men under their command as props: the most important division within the military sphere was
between officers and the enlisted men they led. The Enlightenment ideal for military leadership
encouraged emotional connection between officers and soldiers, albeit tempered by status and
deference. Baron von Steuben, rewriting the Continental Army’s drill manual insisted a captain’s
“first object should be, to gain the love of his men, by treating them with every possible kindness
and humanity.” He should “know every man of his company by name and character.”101
Continental officers loved to view themselves in this flattering light: “They look up to me as a
common Father,” wrote Captain Alexander Scammell to his fiancée. Though his men were
“undisciplin’d,” he was certain the cause was sickness, “severe Duty,” and poor shelter.
“However I shall endeavor to do all that I can for them, and if possible make them pay me ready
and implicit Obedience, through Love and Affection, rather than through Fear and Dread.”102 For
men like Scammell it was the stance that mattered – particularly as he posed as the patriarch for
his future wife. Perhaps some officers succeeded in inspiring obedience through respect. Most
did not.
Despite all the talk of love in the rhetoric that guided Continental officers, military
discipline was harsh, violent, humiliating, and capricious. Displays of punishment proclaimed an
officer’s power and purposefully stripped soldiers of agency. A French officer familiar with the
100
August 1780 (p. 67), Unidentified author, “Diary, 1780 April 21- September 25,” VHS. The diarist had
commented on two duels.
101
[Baron von Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin Steuben], Regulations for the order and discipline of the
troops of the United States. Part I (Philadelphia, 1779), 138, Early American Imprints, Series 1, no. 16627.
102
Alexander Scammell to Abigail Bishop, 8 June 1777 in Collections of the New Hampshire Historical Society
(1889) IX:197-98.
36
violent discipline in European armies found the Continental officers “exceedingly severe.” He
particularly noted how “the power of the officers over the soldiers is almost unlimited, lashing
them with whips and beating them with canes for the slightest faults.”103 The spectacle of
military discipline could be shocking even to those familiar with it. In one instance, a drum
major found himself court-martialed for “beating & abusing” a soldier. But it was all a
misunderstanding: the non-commissioned officer was not guilty, because he actually “was in the
Execution of his Office.”104 The tyranny of military discipline was made perfectly clear in one
soldier’s diary: “We found that one of the men that was flogg’d Yesterday was not sentenced by
the Court Martial but Receiv’d his Punishment through Mistake.”105 Certainly the victim of this
injustice had protested the mistake as they brought down the lash, but to no effect. After
witnessing the brutality of martinets and a string of shockingly unjust executions, young Samuel
Dewees and his fellow soldiers found themselves “afraid to say or to do any thing, for so trivial
appeared the offences of these men… [and] they knew not what in the future was to be made to
constitute a crime.” Dewee recollected, “for some considerable time after this, if I found myself
meeting an officer when out of camp, I would avoid coming in contact with him if I possibly
could… by slipping a short distance to one side.” Observing the capriciousness of military
discipline and justice left this young soldier with only fear and mistrust for officers as a class.106
One reason for officers’ brutality was that their youth and inexperience brought them
little respect. Young officers had difficulty getting recognition even as recruiters. “As all the
Officers were Young Men in the Vigor of Youth,” one officer apologized, “the People of the
Country were in general oppos’d to them & tho’, I believe, they universally were as diligent &
103
Abbé Robin, New Travels through North America [1783] (New York: Arno Press, 1969), 36.
Order Book 1778; Orders issued by John Sullivan to Continental Troops Stationed at Providence, RI, PEM.
105
Quoted in Ferling, Wilderness of Miseries, 117.
106
Hanna, A History, 231-232, 236.
104
37
attentive to the recruiting Service… their Success was not equal to that of some other officers of
less Merit.”107 Francis Brooke, lieutenant of Virginia Artillery, addressed this dilemma directly:
“It may seem strange that so young as I was, not seventeen years old, that I should have the
command I had.”108 At least Brooke had his family’s prominent status on his side, even if he
lacked the authority of age. “Let to command the company,” Brooke recalled, “I felt it a very
arduous task, but I had been long enough in service to know that its discipline must be preserved,
or I could not command it.” After the first day’s march, therefore, Brooke forbade his troops to
go into town. Two soldiers disobeyed, were caught, and given “fifty lashes with the cat-of-ninetails, at the Gun.” Brooke was certain that “This prompt punishment for disobedience to orders
gave me full command of the company, young as I was.” The back and forth of military
discipline was not over, however. That night, the two flogged soldiers deserted. Strikingly, one
reenlisted with a different officer. But no matter. Brooke liked to think he had his company well
in hand.109
To push back against their officers’ brutal discipline soldiers displayed manly fortitude.
A French officer who happened upon a flogging was “astonished” that two of the men “never
uttered the least groan or complaint, or showed any signs of fear. Is this courage, or is the natural
sensibility of mankind less acute among [this] people…?”110 It was defiance. Soldiers similarly
resisted participating in punishment if they questioned its justice. At the execution of two
deserters a soldier remembered how the officers ordered an old soldier to serve as hangman. He
“positively refused…and said he would die rather than accept it.” For his disobedience, he was
tied at the foot of the gallows and flogged. He bore one hundred lashes without a murmur. The
107
Samuel Parsons to Washington, 15 July 1777, Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Correspondence and Journals of
Samuel Blachley Webb (New York, 1893), I:299-300.
108
Brooke, “A Family Narrative,” 87.
109
Ibid., 87-88.
110
Abbé Robin, New Travels through North America, 36.
38
next man picked out of the ranks “after some hesitation” complied – but as he tied the rope a
reprieve for the condemned arrived “to the joy of all the spectators.” After the soldiers were
dismissed, “the intended hangman was knocked and kicked about like a dog” while the old man
“was applauded by every soldier in the garrison, and treated with all imaginable respect for his
manly conduct.”111 In the face of harsh or humiliating discipline, soldiers embraced in camp the
solidarity and unity that made them formidable in the line of battle.
It was ironic that power and hierarchy cut such a deep divide across a republican cause
based on association and unity, and which insisted it required dedication and sacrifice from every
level of society. Still, ideology of the revolutionary movement proved a crucial bond that held
the army together and gave young men the context for their service. Continentals repeatedly
heard from their commanders how “the fate of millions, of a whole Continent of people, depends
on the events of the present unhappy dispute.”112 Certainly some were moved by these heroic
speeches that valorized them as the central actors in a great campaign for liberty. Hezekiah
Hayden wrote his parents in Connecticut at the start of the 1776 New York campaign: “Honor’d
Father & Mother, The time is now near at hand which must probably Determine whether
Americans are to be free men or Slaves.” Citing the struggle between liberty and tyranny,
Hayden accepted that “the Eyes of all our Countrymen are upon us we shall have their
Blessings & praises If hapily we are the means of saving them.” Hayden detailed the noble
stakes for which they fought, and how the American soldiers must “shew the Whole World that
free men contending for Liberty on their own Ground is superiour to any Slavish Mercenary on
Earth.” He insisted, “We have therefore to resolve to Conquer or Die.” Word for word, Hayden’s
111
John Robert Shaw, An Autobiography of Thirty Years, 1777-1807, Oressa M. Teagarden, ed. (Athens, OH, 1992),
62-63.
112
“A Short Valedictory Address to Capt. Bloomfield’s Company of Continental Forces Delivered in the Evening
before they March’d, March 26, 1776,” reprinted in The Plain-Dealer: The First Newspaper in New Jersey, edited
by William Nelson (1894), 30.
39
letter to his parents was George Washington’s General Order of July 2, 1776. This young soldier
appropriated Washington’s text and silently presented it as his own in order to explain to his
parents his feelings about the war and his own place in it. The revolutionary ideology within
Washington’s order so clearly spoke to him that Hayden let it speak for him. Captured a month
later on Long Island, he died a British prisoner. It is unknown whether patriotic fervor provided
comfort or abandoned him to despair.113 For young men, the experience of soldiering drew
together revolutionary ideology, their efforts to form and articulate identity, and the creation of a
new community.
The army certainly served as a school for the ideology and politics of the Revolutionary
movement. John Adlum of Pennsylvania spoke at length about politics with his fellow soldiers.
One of his elders, the “very intelligent Yankee” who had advised him on the nature of
fortifications and fear in battle, also discoursed on politics for “two or three hours” one day in the
summer of 1776 about “the nature of our independence and the policy of it having been declared
when it was; that until we declared ourselves independent the European powers, however they
might be inclined to assist us, could not openly support us.” 114 Thus was young Adlum schooled
in the strategy and politics of their rebellion. When the Continental Army instructed young
soldiers in the politics of the struggle, it also connected their manly aspirations with their
country’s demands. When Washington ordered the Declaration of Independence read aloud to
his army he was certain the document would “serve as a free incentive to every officer, and
soldier, to act with Fidelity and Courage… knowing that the peace and safety of his Country
depends (under God) solely on the success of our arms.” Washington also made explicit the
113
Hezekiah Hayden to Deacon Nathaniel Hayden, 4 July 1776, American Revolution Collection, Connecticut
Historical Society, Hartford [microfilm viewed at DLAR]. For Washington’s orders of 2 July 1776 see GW Papers
V:180; cf. Ruddiman, “A Record in the Hands of Thousands”, 767.
114
Adlum, Memoirs, 51-52.
40
connection between the Declaration and his soldiers’ ambitions for personal independence and
progress through life: he assured every soldier he was “now in the service of a State, possessed
of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to the highest Honors of a free
Country.”115 The pursuit of happiness for young men of the army meant a successful return to
their domestic aspirations – “to sit under one’s own vine and fig tree with no one to make him
afraid.”116 Even the most mundane orders – commands that soldiers not break down farmers’
fences for firewood – sounded the language of the cause: “it is true we are Fighting for Liberty
but it is with a View to the free Enjoyment of our Property… we are called to the Field not only
to Oppose the Enemy but to give protection to the Persons and Property of the Inhabitants…”117
Most importantly, while each Continental stood in a regiment tied to a particular state, these
young men experienced the Continental Confederation in a far more tangible way than their
civilian kin. Indeed, as the war continued the army itself became the clearest manifestation of the
life of the cause, and officers never ceased telling themselves and their soldiers that they
embodied the true spirit of the Revolution.118
Statements of ideological fervor abound in soldiers’ writings in the early years of the war
– and in officers’ writings across the entire period – but as the war continued, the actions of
enlisted men also reveal a combination of soldierly identity and dedication to the revolutionary
cause. Looking back at the 1777 campaign, a colonel marveled at “our poor brave fellows… bare
footed, bare-legged, bare-breeched,” fighting on short rations and only irregularly paid. “Under
all those disadvantages no men ever show more spirit or prudence than ours. In my opinion
115
General Orders, 9 July 1776, GW Writings V:245.
Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York,1997), 131-32, 156.
117
Wing orders, HQ Orange Town, 16 August 1780. Almon W. Lauber, ed., Orderly Books of the Fourth New York
Regiment, 1778-1780 and the Second New York Regiment, 1780-1783 (Albany, 1932), 880.
118
Stephen Conway, The War of American Independence, 1775-1783 (New York, 1995), 174-75; Lee, Crowds and
Soldiers, 217.
116
41
nothing but Virtue has kept our Army together through this campaign. There has been that great
Principle, the Love of our Country, which first called us into the field, and that only to influence
us.”119 At Valley Forge Baron Steuben told Washington that no European army would have held
together under those trying conditions, while Lafayette similarly praised “the patient endurance
of both soldiers and officers” as “a miracle which every moment served to renew.”120 In May
1780, with rations short up in the Hudson Highlands a young officer wrote in his diary, “Our
troops seem to posses more virtue, if possible, than the children of Israel – though in a strange
land, & destitute of break – they do not murmur!”121 Another young officer, writing to his father
from NJ in 1780, “Whist I pittyed the poor fellows for the neglect with which they were treated,
my admiration was drawn forth at the view of the patience with which they bore it. Not a single
complaint have I heard made by a Soldier.… Every one seems willing to wait for a compensation
till his country can grant it to him without injuring herself – which happy time we expect is near
at hand.”122
These officers were wrong that their men did not grumble – but they were correct that
soldiers embraced the cause and took pride in their soldierly contribution. Their resolve appears
in their actions. Desertion statistics are suggestive: the longer a soldier remained in the ranks, the
less likely he was to desert. Indeed, soldiers were most likely to abandon the army in the first
three months of their enlistment and still near home.123 Time spent in the army enduring hardship
with comrades, forming the bonds of group cohesion, and hearing the rhetoric of the cause
served to hold men in the ranks. It is particularly telling that after Benedict Arnold’s defection in
119
John Brooks to [______], 5 January 1778, Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings XIII (1874), 244.
Quoted in Allen Bowman, The Morale of the American Revolutionary Army, (Washington, D.C., 1943), 59.
121
31 May 1780, Fish Kill, Sewall Diary, MHS.
122
Samuel Cogswell, 15 July 1780, Camp Prackness, NJ. “An Unpublished Letter from Camp, July 1780,”
Historical Magazine, 2nd ser., VIII (1870), 102-103.
123
Mark Edward Lender, “The Enlisted Line: The Continental Soldiers of New Jersey.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Rutgers
University, 1975, 206-14; Thaddeus W. Tate, Jr. “Desertion from the American Revolutionary Army,” MA Thesis,
UNC Chapel Hill, 1948, 7-10.
120
42
1780 – in the midst of supply and pay problems – desertions paused.124 In the wake of his
treasonous betrayal of the Revolution and the army, even the dissatisfied found they could hold
on a bit longer. Though veteran soldiers became less likely to desert as time passed, their
propensity to mutiny increased.125 In these collective protests against conditions enlisted soldiers
asserted their military identity to defy their officers. Soldiers at a Pennsylvania barracks
protested their monotonous and unhealthful rations of herring and hard biscuit by affixing the
fish to poles, and marching them around the parade field to the beat of the rogues march. After
this “fish drill,” as one soldier recalled it, they laid their piscine pikes on the parade for “an
official inspection” then “quietly and orderly” returned to quarters.126 With conditions poor and
their pay late and depreciated, in May 1780 Connecticut troops similarly mounted a protest on
their parade field, refusing orders and talking back to their officers. One junior officer snapped at
a grumbling soldier that he was “mutinous rascal.” Enraged, that soldier shouted, “Who will
parade with me?” The men of the regiment, without their officers, performed their drill and
maneuvers like the professionals they had become.127 The largest mutinies of the war – the
separate risings of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Continentals in January 1781 – marked the
ultimate performances of manly solidarity and soldierly identity. The Pennsylvania mutineers
marched on Philadelphia in good order demanding their government honor their enlistment
agreements, while refusing to betray the cause or go to the British. 128
124
Royster, Revolutionary People at War, 72.
Lender, “The Enlisted Line,” 219-220.
126
Hanna, History, 179.
127
Martin, Narrative, 183.
128
Knouff, Soldiers’ Revolution, 100, argues that the mutines were demands for respect as soldiers and valued
participants in the revolutionary community – the mutineers never rebelled against the cause, only their officers,
demanding redress from their government. Neimeyer, by contrast, presents these late war mutinies as strikes for
better wages and conditions and manifestations of a class consciousness: Charles Patrick Neimeyer, America Goes
to War: A Social History of the Continental Army (NY, 1996), cf. 7; see also John A. Nagy, Rebellion in the Ranks:
Mutinies of the American Revolution (Yardley, PA, 2008).
125
43
Though divided from each other, soldiers and officers felt pride in their accomplishments
and their contribution to the cause: “We Strut like Turkey cocks in all their vernal pride,
notwithstanding that we are naked and Moneyless destitute of Women and Wine.”129 But why
not strut? Esprit de corps rose with their growing confidence in their military abilities. After the
Battle of Monmouth, a young New Jersey captain crowed in his diary that they had faced “the
flower of the British army” and defeated “the proud King’s Guards & haughty BritishGrenadiers, & gained Immortal-honor.”130 The army’s class divide separated officers and
soldiers, but they proudly stood together against the civilian society and revolutionary
governments that left them unpaid, hungry, and ill-clothed. “‘Ye silken sons of pleasure, visit
here, & breathe awhile from your debauch –’” wrote Henry Sewall in his diary at West Point,
“Behold the virtue of American soldiers – living in tents at this severe season!”131 In his own
estimation, it was fortunate for America she had a few such sons as him and his brothers in arms.
Promises of money or the force of coercion might bring young soldiers into the ranks, but they
could not keep them there. 132 That motivation had to grow from their own understanding of the
cause and their relationships with their comrades.
*
*
*
Out at Fort Pitt, Lt. Ward had stood his ground as an officer and a gentleman, refusing to
mock his civilian father’s associates. Like the other young men of the army he knew his peers
were judging his quality as a man and soldier. His best assertions of manly independence had
129
4 November 1781, Saratoga, “Jeremiah Fogg to William Parker,” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings
XLVI (1912-13), 485.
130
Mark E. Lender and James Kirby Martin, eds., Citizen Soldier: The Revolutionary War Journal of Joseph
Bloomfield (Newark, 1982), 136-37.
131
2-4 January 1780, Henry Sewall Diary, MHS.
132
Royster finds soldiers’ economic motivations for enlistment inadequate explain persistence in the ranks; see
revolutionary People at War, 373-378. Martin and Lender also wrestle with the question of economic vs. ideological
motivation; see A Respectable Army, 53-55, 76-77.
44
only earned him his colonel’s disdain and a court-martial. That legal stage, however, gave the
young officer another chance to sway an audience of his fellow officers and earn their assent and
regard. His testimony proved a masterful performance of his self-conception as an officer, a
gentleman of spirit, and a true believer in the revolutionary cause. The question, he insisted, was
“whether a commissioned officer, bearing a commission from Congress and carrying arms in
defense of liberty and the rights of mankind, has the privilege to think or not.” His colonel had
declared a group of civilians who opposed him “Rascals, villains, [and] damned scoundrels.”
Ward’s father was among that group and he would not slander him. “I have an affectionate
father, gentlemen,” Ward insisted, “that merits no such appellation. He is a citizen and has
associated with his fellow citizens, to obtain a redress of grievances… Many of the associators,
as they are called, are gentlemen and all I believe good citizens and honest men.” To hear his
father called a scoundrel and not respond with indignation, Ward continued, “would have argued
that I was destitute of filial affection and that I had neither the feelings of a son nor the spirit of a
man.” He followed this assertion of masculine worth with the example of George Washington,
“our Illustrious Commander-in-Chief” who daily set the example of showing respect and justice
“even to the peasant.” Congress likewise forbade “any disrespectful and indecent behavior… to
the civil authority in any state in the union.” Ward knew both his duty and the obligations
imposed by their republican cause. The keystone of his argument, however, was an appeal to his
brother-officers who sat in judgment: “My honour, my character and my reputation, gentlemen,
are now in your possession. To a soldier they are precious gems, and to you I cheerfully intrust
them convinced... that as gentlemen and men of honour, you will act the part of faithful
guardians by restoring that to me in its pristine state and luster.” Ward knew his audience; they
45
returned a verdict of not guilty. Though his colonel rejected his demand for respect on a
Pittsburgh street, his fellow officers accepted and affirmed it.133
Young men had to live together in the army, forming new relationships in an
overwhelmingly male environment. With each other as the predominant audience, the young
soldiers and officers of the army performed their acts of self-creation – seeking the acceptance
and regard that was a key component to a masculine identity. Strikingly, the resulting behaviors
fell far outside the norms of their civilian homes. Presently unable to stake a claim to respectable
manhood in the civilian sphere through economic independence or a household of their own,
young soldiers found alternate masculine performances that satisfied themselves and their new
peers. Excessive swearing and drinking, pursuit of illicit relationships with women, or dueling
ran counter to an ideal of civilian manhood rooted in self-control. If these behaviors would not
have obtained them regard in the civilian sphere, they did in the army. As soldiers these young
men were certain – indeed, repeatedly told – that their sufferings and sacrifices in the defense of
liberty made them paragons of virtue. In their eyes this inoculated them from charges their
uncontrolled behaviors were luxurious, effeminate, or wicked bachelor excess – that their
behavior was unmanly. As soldiers they were virtuous, deserved respect and regard, and sought
it from each other in ways that suited their needs and opportunities in camp.
The experience of the war cut deep divides between officers and enlisted men, but within
their parallel communities their relationships and solidarity held the army together. Sergeant
John Hawkins proudly wrote in his journal about his homecoming to West Point in 1781 – “I
was almost torn to Pieces for Joy by the Men of the Reg’t who was much pleased at my
133
Proceedings of a Court Martial at Fort Pitt, 29 June 1781, Collection of Court-Martial Proceedings, Peter Force
Collection, LOC.
46
return.”134 These relationships proved central the long serving soldiers and officers of the
Continental Army. As Joseph Plumb Martin later wrote in his memoir, “we were young men
with warm hearts” – “We had lived together as a family of brothers… [and] had shared with each
other the hardships, dangers, and sufferings incident to a soldier’s life; had sympathized with
each other in trouble and sickness; had assisted in bearing each other’s burdens or strove to make
them lighter by council or advice….”135 Life in the army meant separation from familiar civilian
homes, exposure to unimaginable horrors of death from disease and battle, exposure to hunger,
cold, and neglect. It might seem a little thing for young men to be concerned for their honor, for
the opinion and regard of their peers, or to behave in ways that made them feel more manly – all
while a weighty contest and uncontrollable forces boiled about them. But perhaps that assertion
of a manly, soldierly identity – those performances set before their peers – increased their sense
of control over the direction of their lives in the army. The new relationships and behaviors of
army life helped make military service bearable for those who chose to undertake it or who could
not escape it. Soldiers of the revolution – those young men with warm hearts – anchored by their
sense of themselves of men worthy of regard could hold onto each other in the midst of terror,
want, and division.
134
3 August, 1781. John Hawkins, Journal, 1779-1781. HSP.
Martin, Narrative, 241. Anderson’s observation of the Seven Years War is apt: trying experiences in military
service creates “a powerful sense of camaraderie among soldiers, a camaraderie that is perhaps the strongest
emotional bod they have formed outside their families of origin.” Fred Anderson, A People’s Army: Massachusetts
Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War (Chapel Hill, 1985), 24.
135