The Continental Army

The Second Continental Congress, then meeting at Philadelphia, (the lawmakers) chose as commander of the "Continental Army" George Washington, a 43-year-old delegate from Virginia, a planter and a ranking militia officer in the French and Indian Wars.
Britain seemingly had enormous advantages in a war against its colonies. It possessed a well-established government, a sizable treasury, a competent army, the most powerful navy in the world, and a large Loyalist population in the colonies. By contrast, the American rebels had no chief executive such as the king, nor a cabinet whose members had assigned responsibilities. In fact, the Americans had no separate or independent departments of government such as war, treasury, and foreign affairs until near the end of the conflict.

The Continental Congress itself had as its rivals the 13 state legislatures, which often chose not to cooperate with their delegates in Philadelphia. Indeed, Congress was an extralegal body, existing at the pleasure of the states before the Articles of Confederation were ratified in 1781.

The Americans, however, were not without their own advantages. A vast reservoir of manpower could be drawn upon. For the most part, men preferred short-term enlistments--and many who served came out for a few weeks or months--but they did serve: the best estimates are that over 200,000 participated on the patriot side. General Washington was often short of shoes and powder, but rarely were he and other commanders without men when they needed them most, although at times American leaders had to take into the army slaves, pardoned criminals, British deserters, and prisoners of war. Moreover, Americans owned guns, and they knew how to use them.

American Colonial Soldier (Left)

If the Continental Army won few fixed battles, it normally fought reasonably well; it extracted a heavy toll on the enemy, who usually could not easily obtain reinforcements. Although only Washington and Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene were outstanding commanders, many others were steady and reliable, including Henry Knox, Benjamin Lincoln, Anthony Wayne, Daniel Morgan, Baron von Steuben, the Marquis de Layfayette, and Benedict Arnold, before he defected to the enemy in 1780.

The Americans also were fighting on their own soil and consequently could be more flexible in their military operations than their opponents. Washington and other Continental Army commanders usually followed the principle of concentration, that is, meeting the enemy in force wherever British armies appeared. In the interior, however, against bands of Loyalists and isolated British outposts and supply trains, the American militia not infrequently employed guerrilla or partisan tactics with striking successes.

British Soldier (Left)

The major contribution of the militia was to control the home front against the Revolution's internal enemies--whether Indians or Loyalists--while the Continental Army contended with British armies in the eastern or coastal regions in more formalized warfare.

British advantages were steadily negated by the vastness of the struggle, by waging war 3,000 miles from Europe against an armed population spread over hundreds of miles, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, from Maine to Georgia. The land was forested, ravined, swampy, and interlaced by myriad streams and rivers. It was discouraging to win battle after battle and see Britain's armies bled of men and supplies in the process, while the beaten rebels always bounced back. It was equally frustrating to seize at one time or another every American urban center and yet have nothing more to show for it than the mere possession of territory, since the Americans had no single vital strategic center.

To the British it seemed to take forever--6 to 12 weeks--for word of campaign strategies to pass from London to commanders in the field, for provisions to arrive, and for naval squadrons to appear in time for cooperation with land forces. The scope of the contest also reduced the Royal Navy's effectiveness in blockading the long American coastline. Stores could be landed at too many rivers, bays, and inlets. Nor could the British employ their fast frigates and formidable ships of the line (battleships of the 18th century) against an American fleet.

American Colonial Officer (Left)

The patriots took to the sea in single ships, either privateers or vessels commissioned by Congress. Consequently, the British-American naval war can be told largely as a story of individual ship duels. The triumph of John Paul Jones in the Bonhomme Richard over H.M.S. Serapis in the North Sea in 1779 was the most famous of these encounters.

Unfortunately for Britain, its generals in the field were much like the political leaders at home, possessed of average talents at best. John Burgoyne, Guy Carleton, Sir Henry Clinton, Charles Cornwallis, William Howe, and Thomas Gage were probably reasonably endowed to fight conventional wars on the plains of western Europe, where orthodox linear formations were in order.

Eighteenth-century European generals, however, were scarcely professionals in a modern sense. Military education was apprenticeship training in the field rather than schooling at such institutions as the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst or its U.S. equivalent at West Point, which were created later. Officers lacked a body of strategic doctrine from which to choose between alternatives for practical application. The British generals revealed themselves grossly inept at improvisation in a unique struggle in America that demanded rapid movement, original tactics, winter campaigning, and -- most important -- contending with a people in arms.

American Artillery Officer (Left)

Moreover, some British commanders, notably the Howe brothers, were deliberately slow in prosecuting the war because they favored a political reconciliation with the rebels.

For all these reasons American generals, even with amateurish militia backgrounds, were not at so serious a disadvantage as they might have been in a subsequent period of history. American officers who had fought with the British army in the French and Indian Wars, observing its procedures and reading the standard military treatises, found in the Revolution that the pattern of warfare as practiced by the so-called experts had hardly changed at all. Washington and his comrades lacked experience in directing massive formations and planning campaigns; but, for that matter, British generals--and admirals too--had themselves been subordinate officers in the last war with France.

(See Bibliography below)

| Back to Timeline | or click on your browser's "back to previous page" button

Author: Don Higginbotham - Permission given by the author.
Picture Credits: New York Public Library; The American Heritage History of the American Revolution, p. 153.
Bibliography: Alden, John R., A History of the American Revolution (1969); Bailyn, Bernard, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967); Bemis, Samuel Flagg, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution (1957; repr. 1983); Dupuy, Richard E., The American Revolution, a Global War (1977); Higginbotham, Don, War of American Independence (1971); Langguth, A. J., Patriots (1988); Morgan, Edmund S., Birth of the Republic, 2d ed. (1977); Morris, Richard B., The American Revolution: A Short History (1979) and The Forging of the Union 1781-1789 (1987); Shy, John, A People Numerous and Armed (1976); Stokesbury, James L., A Short History of the American Revolution (1991); Tuchman, Barbara, The First Salute (1988); Wood, Gordon, Creation of the American Republic (1969).