250 and Counting

Category: George Washington

  • October 8, 1775: The War Gets Whiter

    Cover art for October 8, 1775: Portrait of James Fayette in 1784 by John Blennerhasset Martin. Fayette joined the Continental forces as a spy under Lafayette.

    When the war first started, the Continental Army took on all comers, largely because they didn’t have a lot of choice. Frankly, they needed whatever bodies they could get.

    But it was around this time in 1775 that George Washington and his advisers decided that they could afford to get choosier about their recruits, So they decided not to take on any more Black soldiers. What’s more, soldiers who were already there would not be permitted to re-enlist.

    Eventually—in a couple of years—they’d reverse their stance, for the same reason they took on the Black soldiers in the first place. They were getting low on manpower,

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  • October 6, 1775: A Strongly-Worded Letter

    Cover art for October 6, 1775: Seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Basic design adopted by Governor John Hancock and the Council on December 13, 1780 [1], present design adopted in 1901, rendered by E.H. Garrett

    We actually touched on this once before, but George Washington was known for being quite the gentleman, but he did have a temper, especially when things weren’t handled in a gentlemanly way. Cross the lines of civility and he was hoisting the Jolly Roger, my friend.

    In a previous episode we noted that Washington wrote to General Gage about the treatment that captured American soldiers were receiving. In it was a thinly-veiled hint that he had prisoners too. And he’d be more than happy to treat them the way the British were apparently treating American soldiers. It’s not clear whether this had the desired effect. What is clear is that when something didn’t meet his expectations, he was going to make himself heard.

    And by this date, Washington had a few things that needed to be addressed by the Massachusetts General Court. That sounds like a legal body but it was, in fact, the provincial government at that time. There were some things that the Continental Congress handled for the army, but the General Court took care of much more at that time. Unfortunately for Washington, the General Court was—in his opinion—dragging its feet and needed a nudge in the right direction.

    And Washington was only too happy to provide that nudge.

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  • October 4, 1775: A Spy In The Ointment

    Cover art for October 4, 1775: Portrait of Benjamin Church, created posthumously based on people's descriptions of him. A life portrait was never made of him.

    It’s actually kind of curious that Benedict Arnold gets all the “traitor” press when there were other spies and turncoats doing their thing during the Revolution. Of course there were! There were Loyalists among the Patriots! It was practically a civil war.

    Dr. Benjamin Church, essentially our first Surgeon General (but that wasn’t a thing yet, so), was a Loyalist in Patriot clothing. Arnold was swayed by his young, pretty, Loyalist wife Peggy Shippen. But we’ll get to that eventually. (There was probably more to it than that, but Peggy was at the heart of it.)

    Incidentally, we ran out of time to tell you this part, but it’s only presumed that Church died on the way to Martinique because the entire boat simply vanished; it was never heard from again. I guess you could argue that it was claimed by the Bermuda Triangle.

    Do people still talk about the Bermuda Triangle? That was a big honkin’ deal fifty years ago.

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  • September 11, 1775: One Siege Begins, Another Continues

    Cover art for September 11, 1775: "Siege of Boston" wood engraving (detail), created 1879, artist not cited. via the New York Public Library digital collection.

    As the winter of 1775 approached, George Washington had to think about the state of the siege of Boston. In short, housing and clothing thousands of men in a New England winter is a very different proposition than doing it in the summer.

    So Washington convened his War Council to discuss the possibility of breaking the siege by attacking the city from a different direction.

    Meanwhile up in Canada, General Philip Schuyler takes another run at Fort St. Jean.

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  • September 10, 1775: A Mutiny in Cambridge

    Cover art for September 10, 1775: "Soldiers in Uniform, American Rifleman" (detail), Jean Baptiste Antoine de Verger, 1781

    The riflemen in the Continental Army were a special breed of soldier. They weren’t subject to all the drudge work that most of the other soldiers had to endure.

    The downside to this is, they knew it and they took advantage of it. So when one rifleman got himself in trouble, word got out and suddenly a relatively small problem turns into a relatively big one.

    And while George Washington kinda-sorta recognized this stratification of soldiers, he didn’t do much to discourage it. He did, however, demonstrate more patience with the infantrymen than most people would give him credit for.

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  • September 6, 1775: Washington Appeals Directly to Canadians

    Cover art for September 6, 2025: the first page of Washington's letter to the Canadians. from Library of Congress.

    The Second Continental Congress tried appealing to the Canadian leadership in order to get support for the Independence cause, but they apparently weren’t biting.

    So George Washington tried a different tack: write to the Canadian people themselves. He reasoned that the folks in charge were mostly wealthy landowners who were doing all right financially under British rule. Maybe, he thought, the ordinary Canadian folks weren’t quite so happy with the King.

    He was not, unfortunately, correct in that assessment and nobody was swayed by his argument.

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  • September 5, 1775: Setback in Canada

    Cover art for September 5, 1775: Painting of the Schooner Hannah by John F. Leavitt, date unknown

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

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  • August 29, 1775: From One Virginian To Another

    George Washington was a very good general and a disciplined soldier, but the fact that his men weren’t…well, that worried him a lot.

    He had a huge number of soldiers with him at Cambridge for the Siege of Boston. But since the British were so bottled up in the city, there weren’t many things for them to do other than patrol and keep an eye open for any possible moves the British made.

    Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on whom you ask), Washington was typically forthcoming with this information and he’d tell it to anyone relevant. In today’s case, his concerns fell on someone who was actually paying attention.

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  • August 19, 1775: Washington Hates the Rumor Mill

    Cover art for August 19, 1775: Interior of the British prison ship Jersey. Artist: Edward Bookhout, engraved by Felix Darley, created 1855 but meant to represent conditions during the Revolution.

    In 1681, John Dryden said in his poem “Absalom and Achitophel”:

    Beware the fury of the patient man.

    I hear ya, Dryden, because that’s how I operate.

    And apparently George Washington operated the same way, because he initially took the high road, assuming that rumors about how American prisoners were being treated were just that, and giving General Gage the benefit of the doubt.

    But when the rumors began that Washington was mistreating his prisoners…oh, that didn’t sit well with the General at all.

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  • August 15, 1775: Washington Makes Some Appointments

    Cover art for August 15, 1775: portrait of Colonel George Baylor

    We do seem to be spending a lot of time with George Washington this week.

    It stands to reason, though: Washington was a very busy guy at this time, what with getting his army organized. That meant finding the men who were smart and reliable, to get the ones who weren’t into fighting shape. It also meant figuring out what resources he had and what he needed.

    What we’re learning is that the men that he did promote would eventually go on to prosper, whether in the military or in politics or just their personal lives after the war. There were only a few who did not, and oftentimes there was a reason. Not all of them didn’t prosper out of incompetence; some of them simply had to deal with things like illness or lingering effects of injuries inflicted during the conflict.

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