Egos and ambitions. The Founding Fathers had them too. Patriotic noses could also be put of joint, as this day in history proves.
On June 15, 1775 George Washington was appointed commander of the Continental Army by a unanimous vote of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
“Colonel Washington appears at Congress in uniform and by his great experience in military matters is of much service to us.” (John Adams in a letter to Abigail Adams, 1775)
George Washington did show up in Philadelphia in the spring of 1775 in his uniform. It was the same one he had worn more than 20 years earlier during the French and Indian War. Some wags noted it was bit tight.
Following the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the Congress decided that a commander was needed to take over the ragtag army that had encamped on the outskirts of Boston, encircling the British. The wealthy shipping merchant, John Hancock, believed that he deserved the honor, despite the fact that he had no real military experience. But his dream was dashed by his two Massachusetts allies, John and Samuel Adams. John Adams nominated Washington and Samuel Adams seconded the motion. Hancock was astonished. As Adams later noted,
“I never remarked a more sudden and striking change of countenance. Mortification and resentment were expressed as forcibly as his face could exhibit them.”
Washington was in for a few surprises of his own. When he arrived in Cambridge, he found his newly minted arm in a shocking state of disarray. The motley, undisciplined, untrained force was composed of many of those famed “Minute Men” of revolutionary lore. But the growing ranks also included the poor, restless young, and unemployed who had tramped towards Boston looking for adventure and a payday. Numbering between fifteen and twenty thousand, they lacked food and other supplies, as well as basic sanitation. It was a colonial era Woodstock with guns but no music. This was outside a Boston already struggling with smallpox and other epidemic diseases.
Washington’s first order of business was to instill order. He was shocked to learn that the militia men elected their own leaders. Washington was appalled to see a former barber, elected a militia captain, shaving his men. In Washington’s view, Democracy had its limits.
He was also disturbed by another sight: Black men with guns. Some of them had fought at Lexington and Concord. A few months later, Washington announced that no more “free Negroes” would be enlisted. It was an order he would eventually reverse out of necessity.
Read more about the “hidden history ” of the American Revolution in America’s Hidden History.
