As patriots who love our country, we desire to defend it as well as ourselves and our families. We do what we can to ensure that our Constitution remains, and I, as well as many of you, am willing to do my part to preserve it. However, envisioning what fighting against tyranny or against a foreign opposing force can be difficult to imagine, when we are militia. I thought that a portion of a paper I wrote a couple of years ago might shed some (very broad) light on what our forefathers endured, and some of what we may experience should our situation be similar. Of course, I love just learning about American history, anyway. So, by request from thatguy, here you are. I hope it isn?t too horrible. Remember, I was still very much a novice when I wrote this, and though I?ve made some revisions, I?m not taking the time to rework the entire paper.
The performance of patriot forces in the first few months of the Revolutionary War stood in stark contrast to later years of fighting. On April 19, 1775, British general Thomas Gage dispatched troops to confiscate Patriot military stores and arrest Patriot leaders. Instead, they found themselves in a run for their lives as the seven hundred British regulars retreated to Boston, under fire from a force of over a thousand American militiamen. The British lost 73 men killed and 174 wounded, many mortally, while Patriot losses were 49 killed and 39 wounded. At the battle at Bunker Hill (the battle actually took place on Breed?s Hill, next to Bunker Hill), 3,500 Americans inflicted forty-five percent casualties on an attacking British force of 2,500, while sustaining only twelve percent casualties themselves. The commanding British officer, General Howe, said, ?I freely confess to you, when I look on the consequences of it?I do it with horror.? General Washington?s Continental army grew to 20,000 men, which he took to fortify New York in early 1776. By the end of that year, Washington?s part of the army had only 2,600 men left, a shell of its former self that had fled from fortified New York and lost multiple American strongholds to the British. For many of the battles to come, Washington would be on the defensive against larger British forces. In fact, he may never have won the war had the French not given considerable military aid to the colonies. To explain these contradictory performances of the Continental Army, we must look at the backgrounds and motivations of the men who comprised it.
In the very beginning of the war, in 1775, militiamen made up the forces of the Continental Army. During this time in the colonies, militias were very common and they usually mustered for training at least once a month. The militias were the colonies? default defensive organization in lieu of a standing army, and they fought against Native Americans, responded to civil disturbances, and fought during the French and Indian War. They consisted of men who were ordinary citizens from different classes, including farmers, doctors, blacksmiths and many others. They used their own weapons and equipment. Their primary arms were rifles and muskets, and quite a few were excellent shooters. These men were the core of the initial patriot forces and were chiefly responsible for the impressive results during the running battle from Lexington to Boston and in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Unfortunately, after Washington?s defeat at New York, the army?s decreasing morale combined with an expiration of the six to eight month enlistments of the soldiers in the army resulted in a tremendous loss of numbers. Quite literally, thousands of men ?quit? the army after their enlistments expired and did not rejoin. To their credit, many continued to fight in their local or state militias. Sometimes the militias would fight alongside the Continental Army, but the army officers had many issues with them. Many of these officers regarded the militia as too independent, somewhat cowardly and too familiar with their officers. George Washington actually seemed to detest their performance in combat. Stephenson quotes him as saying,
To place any dependance [sic] upon Militia, is, resting upon a broken staff. Men just dragged from the tender Scenes of domestick [sic] life; unaccustomed to the din of Arms; totally unacquainted with every kind of Military skill, which followed by a want of confidence in themselves, when opposed to Troops regularly train?d [sic], disciplined, and appointed superior in knowledge, and superior in Arms, makes them timid and ready to fly from their own shadow.
Militias, as General Washington stated, had a tendency to run when they were without good cover, or if the enemy closed the distance for a close-quarters engagement. During the battle for New York, with militia fleeing past him, Washington threw his hat to the ground, lashed out with his cane at the retreating men and shouted, ?Are these the men I am to defend America with?? However, some officers did see their potential. General Gage of the British army wrote, ?Whenever they find good cover they make a good stand, and the country naturally strong, affords it them.? Continental general William Moultrie seemed to agree as he stated, ?The militia are brave men, and will fight if you let them come to action in their own way.? The militiamen who fought in the war were generally patriotic, but it seems that they did not like the European style of fighting that Washington and the Continental Army advocated. They were still able to make a difference throughout the war, even in small units, by raiding enemy supplies, harassing British troops and engaging Loyalist forces at home.
The Continental Army had much trouble getting new recruits after 1775. The Continental Congress and even the individual colonies began to use ?incentives? to encourage men to join their military forces. These included pay, food, supplies, clothing, shoes, land, and alcoholic drinks. Many men signed on just because they needed the necessities the recruiters offered. Because the lack of British imports damaged colonial economic resources, it was difficult to find certain types of jobs and most of the men who volunteered were poor. The only problem with the Continental Army offering enticements was that it depended on the Congress for these supplies, and ultimately the Congress depended on the colonies. The colonies looked after themselves first and the colonial militia recruiters were often able to make much better offers than the Continental Army recruiters were. Also not helping the recruiting and supply situations was the hyperinflation of the continental dollar. As an example, in May of 1780, Patriot general Johann De Kalb paid $850 for food and lodging for four people for one night.
The primary weapons of American forces were muskets or rifles. Musketeers used a bayonet if they had one and this armament was generally all they carried. Riflemen were not able to use a bayonet, and so some would carry an independent cutting weapon, such as a knife, sword or tomahawk, to fight with if the enemy closed in on them. The fact that rifles could not mount bayonets was actually a significant tactical advantage for an enemy who did have bayonets and had the chance to close the distance to his foe. Patriot riflemen would often retreat in combat because British forces would charge them with their bayonets. The bayonet killed, wounded, and forced the surrender of many American riflemen. Further complicating the situation, rifle ammunition fit snugly into the bore so that the rifled grooves would give the ball spin and, as a result, greater accuracy. However, that also meant that a rifle took three or four times as long to load as a musket. An experienced musketeer could load a musket between two to four times a minute, but a rifleman would do well to load between one or two shots a minute. This only exacerbated the rifleman?s situation if the enemy managed to come within one hundred yards. However, there were ways to combine the two for an effective battle strategy. Continental general Daniel Morgan used his militia riflemen to fire two volleys of accurate rifle fire, and then retreat behind the safety of Morgan?s Continental regulars, who were armed with muskets and bayonets and able to keep the British cavalry and infantry away from the vulnerable riflemen.
Of course, the musket had its disadvantages also. To be effective with a musket, the average musketeer had to close the distance to the enemy to a hundred yards or less in order to have a decent chance of hitting him. Rifles, on the other hand, could easily hit targets at 200 yards and, according to British cavalry major George Hanger, he witnessed (and was almost prey to) an American rifleman firing accurate shots (within a foot of him) from 400 yards away. Riflemen scared the British soldiers, a fact that Americans quickly learned. Regarding the Battle of Bunker Hill, a soldier stated that the American rifle fire had been so effective that it forced the British advanced guard to erect cover. This soldier said that, ?nothing is to be seen from their breastworks but a hat?.?
Patriot forces used propaganda during the war to preserve the legendary reputation of the American sharpshooter. Continental general Charles Lee said, ?It is a certain truth that the enemy entertain [sic] a most fortunate apprehension of American riflemen. It is equally certain that nothing can diminish this apprehension so infallibly as a frequent, ineffectual fire?In short, they must never fire without almost a moral certainty of hitting their object.? He instructed his riflemen to never fire at a target in excess of 150 yards. If a bullet hit a British soldier every time a rifleman fired, they would continue to fear their American enemy. Hence, the British experienced psychological warfare at its best (or worst): if you step out in the open, you had better pray there is not a hidden rifleman aiming at you. This was a relatively new tactic in warfare, as many military units did not possess rifles before this time. During the American War for Independence, the Hessian mercenaries were the only other force to deploy riflemen of their own, called the Jagers.
Artillery played a very important role in 18th century warfare. The militaries of the period had several different kinds of cannon and mortars to deal heavy damage to formations of troops and to fortifications. There were usually only three options for ammunition: Solid shot (iron balls of different sizes), canister (iron cans filled with some kind of small, deadly metal pieces), and spherical shell (hollow iron globes with powder inside; the fuse on the outside was lit and it exploded in the air above infantry). Artillerymen preferred solid shot most of the time and it was reasonably effective at ranges of up to 900 yards. Gunners would ?aim? the cannon (an art according to Stephenson, since the cannon had no sights) so that the iron ball would ricochet off the ground and come up at head level with the target enemy troops. A cannonball that came close to hitting you could still kill you. Joseph Martin, a veteran of Yorktown, said:
I was sitting on the side of the trench, when some of the New York troops coming in, one of the sergeants stepped up to the breastwork to look about him?at that instant a shot from the enemy (which doubtless was aimed at him in particular, as none others were in sight of them) passed just by his face without touching him at all; he fell dead in to the trench; I put my hand on his forehead and found his skull was shattered all to pieces, and the blood flowing from his nose and mouth, but not a particle of skin was broken.
Solid shot, even if it had lost too much velocity to remain airborne, could still be very deadly. American soldier John Trumbull observed during the siege of Boston that when some soldiers thought they could stop and retrieve rolling cannonballs,
it produced also a very unfortunate result; for when the soldiers saw a ball, after having struck and rebounded from the ground several times (en ricochet), roll sluggishly along, they would run and place a foot before it, to stop it, not aware that a heavy ball long retains sufficient impetus to overcome such an obstacle. The consequence was that several brave lads lost their feet, which were crushed by the weight of the rolling ball.
The most devastating use of solid shell was when it flew into the side of a troop formation, causing multiple casualties. James Duncan stated that, during the Battle of Yorktown, ?four men of [his] regiment were unfortunately killed?by one ball.? Canister could be even more deadly than solid shell, but as the shot spread tremendously over distance, gunners could begin firing it at 400 yards, though it was most accurate at distances of 100 yards or less. Fired accurately at a formation of troops, it would tear gaping holes in the ranks. Several artillery pieces firing canister accurately at several troop formations could greatly affect the outcome of a battle. The spherical shot, timed to explode in the middle of an enemy formation, decimated enemy troops. It took considerable skill to estimate the distance as well as how long the fuse should be, but as Dr. James Thacher stated during Yorktown:
It is astonishing with what accuracy an experienced gunner will make his calculations, that a shell shall fall within a few feet of a given point, and burst at the precise time, though at a great distance. When a shell falls, it whirls round, burrows, and excavates the earth to a considerable extent, and, bursting, makes dreadful havoc around. I have more than once witnessed fragments of the mangled bodies and limbs of the British soldiers thrown into the air by our bursting shells.
Though the Continental Army usually did not possess a great amount of artillery during the war, these quotes have shown that what they did have they were capable of using to great effect. Cannon and mortars were indispensable tools of war that could destroy infantry assaults, blow holes in enemy fortifications, and provide defense against enemy ships. Artillery, with experienced gunners to use it, could even the odds on a battlefield, or tip them in your favor.
The suffering of the American soldier in the war resulted from not only wounds sustained in combat but also from starvation, disease and a lack of proper medical care. Combat wounds were bad enough. A ball wound to the stomach or head area usually ensured your death. Wounds from sabers and bayonets were also very gruesome and hard to treat effectively. However, wounds in battle actually accounted for very few of the deaths in both armies. According to Stephenson, disease accounted for eighty to ninety percent of deaths in the war. Gangrene, tetanus, dysentery, typhus and smallpox are just some of the horrible diseases that the soldiers dealt with throughout the war. Washington eventually decided to inoculate his entire army against smallpox. He said, ?Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure, for should the disorder infect the Army, in the natural way [which resulted in a 16 percent death rate compared to 0.33 percent for inoculation] and rage with its usual Virulence, we should have more to dread from it, than the Sword of the Enemy.? A lack of proper medical care probably killed as many soldiers as battle did. Not only was it difficult to acquire actual doctors (many medical personnel were apprentices to an actual physician); it was also hard to keep needed medicines in stock. The only analgesics were opium, alcohol or Peruvian bark, and in many cases, the mere shock of a serious operation would kill the patient. Of course, that is if the patient actually made it to the hospital. British lieutenant Thomas Anburey described a post-battle scene as such:
[The] friendly office to the dead, though it greatly affects the feelings, was nothing to the scene of bringing in the wounded; the one was past all pain, the other in the most excruciating torments, sending forth dreadful groans. They had remained out all night, and from the loss of blood and want of nourishment, were upon the point of expiring with faintness; some of them begged they might lay and die?some upon the least movement were put in the most horrid tortures and all had near a mile to be conveyed to the hospitals?These poor creatures, perishing with cold and weltering in their own blood, displayed such a scene, it must be a heart of adamant that could not be affected by it.
Even if the wounded patient did make it to a medical area, it did not guarantee his safety. During the battle at Bemis Heights, the Baroness von Riedesel, the wife of the Hessian commander, said this about her situation in a house used for medical purposes:
Eleven cannon balls went through the house, and we could plainly hear them rolling over our heads. One poor soldier, whose leg they were about to amputate, having been laid upon a table for this purpose, had the other leg taken off by another cannon ball, in the very middle of the operation. His comrades all ran off, and when they again came back found him in one corner of the room, where he had rolled in his anguish, scarcely breathing.
Therefore, if a soldier had a stomach or head wound, he would probably die. He might have died waiting for medical personnel to come help him off the battlefield. He may have died just sitting in the medical area, if a battle was still raging. If he had an extremity wound, he may have needed that extremity amputated and the shock had a good chance of killing him. If he had a disease, there were no antibiotics to help him so he would have to let the disease run its course. Americans today would call all these things suffering. American soldiers in the Revolutionary War called it life.
American soldiers sacrificed much during the war for their, and our, independence. They were not all great and upstanding patriots. They were human just like us. However, most did their duty as they saw fit and contributed, in one way or another, to the war effort. Due to their efforts, America is a free nation and positively affects the lives of millions around the world. Everything good that America is, was and will be is because of the actions and sacrifices of these brave men.
BibliographyBerger, Carl. Broadsides & Bayonets. San Rafael: Presidio Press, 1976.
Kelly, C. Brian. Best Little Stories from the American Revolution. Nashville: Cumberland House Publishing, 1999.
Stephenson, Michael. Patriot Battles: How the War of Independence Was Fought. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.
