A Revolutionary People At War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783 PDF
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This page intentionally left blank Charles Royster A Revolutionary People at War The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783 Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Williamsburg, Virginia, by The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill, North Carolina The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture is sponsored jointly by The College of William and Mary and The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. ©1979 The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Royster, Charles. A revolutionary people at war. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. United States. Army. Continental Army. 2. United States—Civilization—To 1783. 3. National characteristics, American. I. Title. E259.R69 973.3'4 79-10152 ISBN 0-8078-1385-0 ISBN 0-8078-4606-6 (pbk.) 03 02 01 9 8 76 TO MY PARENTS This page intentionally left blank V'TY^TCirY2* While I was researching and writing this book and while I was looking for an academic job, a number of people asked me, "What is your book about?" I always found this question hard to answer—not because I did not know what my book was about but because most of my short answers seemed to give people ideas that I had not intended. If I said that my book was about the Revolutionary War, I seemed to be retelling a familiar story of generals and battles. If I said that my book was about the Continental Army, I sometimes seemed to have become a would-be chief of staff who presumably delighted in organiza- tional charts, chains of command, and the study of logistics. If I said that my book was about the American people during the Revolutionary War, I seemed to sound like a student of the new social history, compiling socioeconomic data. And if I said that my book was about American character, I seemed to deal in elastic abstractions drawn from sources that were suspiciously literate. All of these short answers were accurate but incomplete. Through experience with the misleading effects of incomplete explanations I learned that only by a long answer could I hope to say what my book is about. To give that answer I wrote this Preface. This book assumes that there was an American character prevalent during the War for Independence and that we can profitably analyze it. I use the word "character" because I try to understand not only the formally articulated ideas usually de- scribed by the word "mind" but also some of the most impor- tant emotions, attitudes, and conduct of Americans in wartime. I believe that these attributes of the revolutionary movement vii viii PREFACE bore a coherent relationship to each other that can be recon- structed. Although my book begins by assuming that a national character existed, I hope that my analysis also contains enough evidence to show why I began with this assumption. In order to discuss these prevalent attributes without constantly repeating a stock set of cautionary phrases, I have used the words "revo- lutionaries" and "Americans" interchangeably to refer to the people who seem to me to exemplify this national character. Obviously, these words are not precise. If we take "revolution- aries" to be people who favored resistance to British authority during the war, we know that not all natives of America were revolutionaries and that many people's attitudes differed subtly and changed over the years. Moreover, no matter what criteria we choose for defining the group, our conclusions about it must rest on reasonable inferences, not conclusive proof of the accuracy of the word when it is applied to large numbers of people. Accepting these imprecisions as a necessary evil for the purpose of making generalizations, I have not always taken the space to qualify my conclusions by adding words like "most/' "usually," "probably," At the same time, however, this book does offer evidence that allegiance to the "American" or "revo- lutionary" side in the War for Independence was the prevailing sentiment of people in the United States. And the book im- plicitly argues that the national character of revolutionaries formed one of the principal bases of their wartime allegiance. These propositions are the premises on which the book's dis- cussion of the Continental Army and American character rests. One of the central questions that I ask is, What was the relationship between the ideals espoused during the revolution and the actions of Americans? Because of the comprehensive ideal of citizen, society, and state enunciated by the revolution- ary generation, this question, if applied to the whole era, would require wide-ranging and complex answers beyond the scope of one book. So I have addressed the question in a more specific way. I have studied the ideals that Americans defined for themselves in creating, recruiting, and fighting in an army, and I have studied the relationship of these ideals to their PREFACE ix experience with their army. The ideals of achievement were rigorous, even absolute; the conduct was always flawed and often gravely deficient. What were the nature and the effects of this disparity? I have addressed this question as thoroughly as I could. In the process, I have touched far less systematically on the disparities in other realms—for example, religion, govern- ment, and commerce. I have done so partly because these realms affected Americans' dealings with the army and partly because I believe that my findings on the wartime lot of the Continental Army yield insights relevant to the study of other areas of revolutionary experience—areas that limits of space and competence allow me only to broach in this book. I have found the study of the Continental Army especially rewarding for this purpose because at its center lies one of the most fundamental problems of the revolution: survival. To Americans of that era, the great fact for republics, like the great fact for individuals, was death. The selfishness of cor- ruption, like the debility of age and disease, inevitably killed self-government. Could Americans postpone the republic's day of death? Could they, by unprecedented strength, forestall it indefinitely? The clearest, most dramatic test came in the army's resistance to British force. Here the connection between the individual's conduct and the republic's survival was most visible and direct. From our understanding of this connection we can draw insights into other kinds of conduct in which, according to revolutionary ideals, the republic would depend on citizens' strength. In my discussion of the role of national character in the mili- tary demands of the Revolutionary War I have studied some of the mental processes and emotional crises that revealed Ameri- cans' concerns. However, I have not systematically used the concepts or the vocabulary of clinical psychology. I have tried to enhance my understanding of the people I write about by varied reading outside the field of history. But in writing his- tory I usually do not use technical words, because neither the sources for the Revolutionary War nor my analyses of the revolutionaries fully conform to the requirements of other
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