Many In Washington’s Army Recruited From Society’s “Dregs"

“There, my boys, are your enemies, redcoats and Tories. We beat them today -or Molly Stark’s a widow tonight.” -Gen. John Stark, Battle of Bennington, 16 August 1777

Many of George Washington’s army regulars were “servants, criminals and slaves” recruited from “the broad underclass of Revolutionary American society,” a noted historian says.

The Revolutionary War was won not so much by independent citizen-soldiers but by their “despised social inferiors…who joined up in return for cold cash and promises of land, freedom, release from jail, and forgiveness for debts and past crimes,” says Michael Chesson, Dean of the new American College of History and Legal Studies, Salem, N.H.

Most of the men forged by Washington into a standing army, “the regulars of the Continental Line, were those without ties to local communities and often without families. They had no stake in society. They owned no land or personal property (and) were not town meeting members or voters.” James Warren, a prominent Massachusetts Patriot leader, said at the time Washington’s men were “The most undisciplined, profligate Crew that were ever collected.”

In an article titled “Be Grateful For Scum” published on the web site of the history college, Chesson said that statistical data compiled by military history authorities James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender shows that at least one in five and perhaps two in five of the New Jersey contingent “were substitutes provided and paid for by wealthier men who had been drafted.”

In fact, “When the militia of Epping, N.H., held its draft in 1777 not a single man drafted answered the call. Every one of them provided a substitute for Washington’s army,” Chesson says. Why did such men fight on until wounded, killed or captured, he asks. “They were most likely to desert in the first six months of their service” but after that, “strong primary group cohesion developed.”

Chesson goes on to write, “They grumbled and complained, as soldiers have from time immemorial, but despite lousy treatment by the Continental Congress and many civilians, they endured and overcame.”

“Such men had never belonged to anything or been accepted by anyone. They had never mattered. In the army they found friends and comrades. And they had a leader who believed in them as they did him.” And so, Chesson continued, “they served often far from home, exposed to months and then years of near starvation, fighting in rags, and leaving bloody footprints in the snow because they had no shoes.”

Today, Chesson notes, “Fewer Americans pursue a military career than in past generations. Few serve even one hitch with no draft to worry about, and an all-volunteer force serves to do our rough and dangerous work around the world.”

He concludes that while few become genuine heroes like Pat Tillman, “who gave up NFL glory and riches for the greater good…every American can study our history and ponder the disputed lessons of the past.”

Michael B. Chesson is the Founding Professor and Dean of The American College of History and Legal Studies in Salem, New Hampshire.

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