CONTINENTAL ARMY

On 14 June 1775 the Continental Congress resolved to adopt the New England militia, which was blockading the British inside of Boston, into "the American continental army." Continental soldiers became the "regulars" of the American army. Although the Continental Army would essentially disband in 1783 and a new, regular army came into being in 1789, the modern United States Army celebrates 14 June 1775 as its birthday. Congress selected George Washington as commander in chief of the Boston Army. It also authorized the formation of a regiment of "expert riflemen." This unit was the first formation raised as a Continental Army regiment.

A congressional committee proceeded to take the necessary steps to organize and administer the army. It established positions for five major staff officers to assist Washington: an adjutant general, a commissary of musters, a paymaster general, a commissary general, and a quartermaster general. The quartermaster

general was the most important staff officer, responsible for the delivery of supplies, arranging the camp, regulating marches, and establishing the army's order of battle. The army's supply and support services never functioned efficiently. This failure, coupled with the depreciation in the currency, repeatedly brought the army close to collapse.

Congress also created the ranks of major general and brigadier general to serve as the commander in chief's senior subordinates. Among other important measures, Congress issued paper money to finance the war and adopted articles of war to provide a legal system for discipline. Congress also established quotas for each colony whereby individual colonies raised units and then transferred them into the Continental service. During 1775 about 27,500 Continental soldiers were on the payrolls.

continental regiments of 1776

During the summer of 1775 Washington worked with Congress to reorganize the Boston Army. Central to this effort was the creation of a standardized regimental structure. On 4 November 1775 Congress approved the reorganization of Washington's infantry into twenty-six regiments and one regiment of riflemen. Each regiment had a colonel, lieutenant colonel, and major along with a small staff of ten men. Eight identical companies composed a regiment. Each company had four officers, two musicians, eight noncommissioned officers, and seventy-six privates. At full strength the regiment numbered 728 men. Because of sickness, desertion, battle loss, and men assigned to detached duty, a regiment never entered battle at full strength.

The Continental organization differed in several important ways from its British counterpart. Individual Continental companies were larger, and they deployed in two ranks whereas British doctrine formally called for deployment in three ranks. This latter difference stemmed from the different backgrounds of the two armies. Warfare in Europe shaped the British organization, with an emphasis on close order. The soldiers packed elbow to elbow so as to maintain the discipline and solidity required to conduct a bayonet charge. In contrast, the colonial tradition developed in fights against the Indians and the French in wooded terrain. In such combat aimed fire and the ability to maneuver were supreme. Soldiers standing in a third rank could not efficiently fire their muskets. A looser order featuring two ranks had more firepower and could maneuver more handily in woodland combat.

The reorganization of the army extended to the artillery. For administrative convenience the existing New England units merged into a single regiment of twelve companies. Each company had five officers and fifty-eight enlisted men. The enlisted men included eight noncommissioned officers, eight bombardiers, eight gunners, and thirty-two matrosses (low skilled soldiers who provided the physical labor to handle and fire the artillery). Privates filled the last three categories; but because the bombardiers and gunners were specialists who possessed technical knowledge about the artillery, they received higher pay. Henry Knox commanded the regiment with the rank of colonel. His senior subordinates included two lieutenant colonels and two majors. Nine men served on Knox's staff. As was the case with the infantry, the artillery in the field never attained its theoretical strength. Individual companies and even individual artillery pieces operated according to need.

The organizational structure set in 1775 applied to Washington's army and to the nine infantry regiments operating on the Canadian border. Elsewhere, most notably in the South, regiments continued to be organized on an ad hoc basis. The next reform addressed this problem.

enlisting for the duration

Most terms of enlistment expired on 31 December 1776. In the fall of that year Congress and military leaders again reorganized the army. Congress adopted a plan for eighty-eight regiments. Each state had a quota based on its population. Soldiers were to enlist for three years or for the war's duration. Congress continued to commission all officers but individual states could nominate candidates up to and including the rank of colonel. The states were responsible for providing arms, equipment, and clothing. To encourage reenlistment, Congress established cash bonuses and liberal postwar land grants for soldiers who enlisted for the duration of the war. At the same time, Congress modified the articles of war by copying many British practices. The list of capital offensives expanded while the maximum corporal punishment increased from thirty-nine to one hundred lashes. Washington himself promoted these harsher rules because he had concluded that softer discipline did not adequately deter misbehavior.

Because the states were unable to meet their quotas, the eighty-eight-regiment army never came into existence. Neither the bounties nor the first American wartime draft succeeded in filling the ranks. As a result, the entire Continental Army never reached a strength of thirty thousand, and Washington seldom was able to bring fifteen thousand soldiers to a battle. Most recruits for the rank and file were under twenty-three years old. These young men were without property. Some enlisted because they were truly dedicated to the Revolution's ideals. Others enlisted for the money, the annual issue of clothing, and the promise of land once the war ended. All recruits soon learned that government promises were easily broken and neglect and hardship followed. In spite of all this, a vital hard core remained in service, motivated by a mix of patriotism and group loyalty. Men of means avoided service by hiring replacements. Officers, prominent leaders in their local communities, were a class apart. The basis for their selection was experience, the ability to raise men, and their political reliability.

valley forge

The campaign of 1776 demonstrated to Washington that he needed more men, more artillery, and a cavalry force. Thus, in one more congressional measure taken to increase the army's size, Congress authorized sixteen additional regiments along with two more artillery regiments and three thousand light horse, or light cavalry. This marked a change from previous authorizations, under which state governments organized the additional regiments because Congress was unable to afford cavalry. Washington conceived that reconnaissance, not combat, was the cavalry's major duty. He suggested a regimental organization featuring three field officers: colonel, lieutenant colonel, major, a thirteen-man staff, and six troops each with three officers, six noncommissioned officers, a trumpeter, and thirty-four privates. On 14 March 1777 Congress approved this organization. Four regiments of Continental Light Dragoons formed. However, because the horses and specialized equipment that cavalry required were expensive, the four regiments were always well under strength.

The winter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge was the first of a series of annual survival trials for the new Continental Army. The Continentals shrank to a hard core of some six thousand men. They were ill fed and ill clothed. Weeks passed without meat, and men were forced to boil and eat their shoes. Although the army suffered enormous hardship, it also received professional military training from European experts, most notably Frederick von Steuben. Steuben developed a new system of drill suited to American soldiers and American terrain. The result was a dramatic improvement in the Continental Army's fighting ability. Consequently, for the first time in the war, the Continental Army that left Valley Forge in the late spring of 1778 was capable of meeting the British on equal terms.

tactical combat in the american revolution

Of the three military arms—infantry, cavalry, and artillery—the infantry was by far the dominant. Cavalry and artillery played useful supporting roles, but the infantry was the "queen of battle" in the Revolutionary War.

The relative inefficiency of the period's firearms dictated infantry tactics and formations. The infantry soldier's basic weapon was a long-barreled (40 to 46 inches), large caliber (.65 to .80), heavy (8 to 12 pounds), smoothbore, single-shot musket. Continental infantry began the war using British muskets taken from captured arsenals, gleaned from the battlefield, or inherited from earlier colonial wars. Later, most wielded one of the some 100,000 French muskets shipped to America during the war. Contrary to popular legend, among the Continentals only the soldiers in the rifle regiment carried the famous long rifle. The musket fired a solid lead ball that carried about three hundred yards. Because of the barrel's smoothbore, the musket could not reliably hit a target at distances over one hundred yards. Consequently, soldiers tried to hold their fire until the enemy was within that distance. Such waiting required steady nerves.

To maximize firepower, regiments deployed into line. Led by their officers, to the rousing sounds of fife and drum and with national and regimental flags flying in the center of the formation, the attacking force rapidly marched into musket range. At ranges as close as forty yards, the opposing lines traded volleys (massed group fire). When a big, heavy lead ball struck human flesh it had tremendous stopping power, felling a soldier as if he had been hit by a sledgehammer. A head, lung, or belly wound was usually fatal. A smashed arm or leg usually required an amputation. The soldiers well knew that the wounded faced a very perilous future at the hands of the army's surgeons. Consequently, although a regiment might lose only a small percentage of its strength in a firefight, the sight of friends and comrades falling with dreadful wounds had a heavy effect on morale.

After a volley, a bayonet charge could clinch victory. At the order "fix bayonets," soldiers attached a socket bayonet over the musket's muzzle. Although the fourteen- to nineteen-inch-long sword bayonet actually inflicted a very small percentage of battle-field losses, the terrifying sight of a charging line of bayonets was deeply unnerving. Soldiers typically broke and ran instead of engaging in hand-to-hand fighting. The disciplined bayonet charge was the hallmark of the British infantry. The Continental Army acquired the ability to conduct such a charge following its training during the first Valley Forge winter of 1777–1778.

The period's field artillery included long smoothbore guns and shorter smoothbore howitzers. Guns fired solid iron balls or canister; howitzers fired explosive shells or canister. A canister shot was a tin container tightly packed with musket balls. The can left the muzzle, shattered, and released a shotgun-like spread of musket balls. Canister, with an effective range of 500 yards or less, combined lethal fire-power with the confusion and terror caused by sudden, intense casualties. Although a twelve-pounder field gun (so named because it fired a twelve-pound solid ball) had a maximum range of 3,500 yards, accurate long fire was beyond the gunner's technical means. Accordingly, gunners usually held their fire until the target was within 800 yards. Tactically, commanders used long-range field artillery to prepare the way for a charge or defensively to prevent the enemy from closing to decisive range. Battles typically began with a brief exchange of artillery fire. When the target drew close, gunners switched to canister.

Early in the war the Continental Artillery made do with whatever was available in colonial arsenals supplemented by captured British weapons. As the war progressed, the army received European imports, particularly from France, as well as weapons forged domestically.

Cavalry performed important scouting and outpost duties, but the difficulties of maintaining horse-flesh in a relatively barren country greatly hindered the development of a significant mounted arm on either side. Thus, except in the South, mounted charges were rare. The broad savannahs and open pine forests characteristic of the American South offered excellent cavalry country. Here skilled American cavalry leaders such as William Washington and "Lighthorse Harry" Lee led their men into saberwielding melees. In mounted hand-to-hand combat, troopers cut and thrust at their foes using cavalry sabers with a straight or curved blade between thirty-one and thirty-seven inches long and weighing two to four pounds. Cavalry did not attempt frontal charges against formed infantry. Rather, it worked around the infantry's flank or waited until they had lost their formation before charging. Against foot soldiers out of formation, cavalry was lethal.

The purpose of repeated close-order drill was to immunize soldiers from the terror of combat. Only well-trained soldiers could stand unflinching and absorb heavy losses while firing more and faster than the enemy and then charge with the bayonet. During the war's early years the well-trained British soldiers had a considerable discipline advantage over the inexperienced Americans. This advantage faded as the Continental Army acquired experience.

See alsoArmy Culture; Army, U.S.; Gunpowder, Munitions, and Weapons (Military); Military Technology; Militias and Militia Service; Revolution: Military History; Revolution: Military Leadership, American; Soldiers .

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James R. Arnold