On June 15, 1775, George Washington was appointed Commander of the newly-formed Continental Army.
On July 2, Washington finally arrived in Cambridge after a few stops in Trenton, New York and presumably a couple of other places. What he found was a huge mess.
So on July 3, he officially took command and started the work of turning this ragtag crew into some kind of organized fighting force.
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In 1775, New York didn’t have a Times Square, nor a Statue of Liberty, nor even a Brooklyn Bridge. Bagels hadn’t made it to the new world, and pizza wasn’t a thing yet.
So why did George Washington feel it necessary to stop in New York City on his way to Boston?
Short answer: he knew that some of the locals were nervous about his taking command of the army.
Longer answer: oh no, you don’t. You’re going to have to listen to Mike tell you.
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Yesterday, George Washington was unanimously elected Commander in Chief of the Continental Army.
Today he officially accepted the position.
He won’t take actually begin until early July (we’ll get to that episode in a few weeks), but take a look at this image here. He’s already in the blue coat, and his hair is whiter than it was in yesterday’s art.
The truth about his hair color is likely somewhere in between these two images, but of course he wasn’t wearing a coat like that just yet. This art is from a hundred years later, by Currier and Ives.
What I found interesting is that some of the people in the background look a little put out by Washington, even though they’re the ones who elected him. I think Currier and Ives were trying to convey that it was a serious event, but everyone just looks angry. John Adams (in the dark blue to the right) appears especially annoyed, and he’s the one who nominated him in the first place.
And check out the guy to Adams’ right, staring straight at us. There’s always one guy who can’t help but look at the camera.
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Jeez, I gotta stop writing these titles late at night.
Sometimes the history books make it sound like some people just appeared out of nowhere, but they did have pasts. George Washington would be a good example.
Washington has been nearly invisible since this show started on January 1, but that doesn’t mean that the Congress hollered “Anyone wanna be a general?” and he stepped up first. In fact, he was a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774, and for some time he’d been a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, often simultaneously with the Congress thing. And he did have a commendable military background dating back to the French and Indian War, so appointing him the Commander of Colonial forces wasn’t part of someone’s crazy scheme: they thought he could really do it.
And do it, he did.
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George Washington was a frequent letter writer, something that the creators of the stage play 1776 would poke some fun at. But the documentation he kept plays an important part not only in the history of the American Revolution, but in the more mundane details of life during that time in American History. What’s more, we’re fortunate that so much of the correspondence both to and from Washington remains extant to this day. (Not all of it, as you’ll hear today, but it appears that most of it does.)
Today we present two letters: one written from the Second Virginia Convention from George to his brother, and another written to George the same day by a merchant he frequently dealt with. The merchant died not long after writing the letter, so it’s not known whether Washington received it before the merchant died. What we do know is that the death resulted in an unexpected expense for Washington.
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