"America’s First Soldiers — 12 Remarkable Facts ..." Topic

…About the Continental Army.

"ONE OF THE ENDURING MYTHS of the War of Independence is that the mighty British Army was defeated mostly by liberty-loving American farmers and settlers who made up for their lack of military experience with sheer pluck and determination. According to the popular narrative, patriot woodsmen sniping from the cover of rocks and trees decimated the orderly ranks of redcoats who were clearly more at home on the battlefields of Europe than the wilderness of the New World. While such lore certainly makes good fodder for Hollywood blockbusters, for the most part, events really didn't play out that way. While the force that humbled the English, the Continental Army, certainly began the war as a mob of semi-disciplined, poorly trained amateurs, by 1780 it had evolved into a professional force capable of standing up to the best King George could throw at it. In honour of American Independence Day, we here at MHN thought we'd explore some amazing facts about the United States' original professional army.

American Regulars? Perish the Thought! – Initially, the First Continental Congress was against the formation of a national armed force. America's founders looked upon the professional militaries of European powers with disdain and feared that a domestic standing army might one day become an instrument of tyranny. Instead, it expected individual colonies to fend off redcoats with their own citizen militias and the more capable emergency "provincial regiments". But following the clashes at Lexington and Concord, Congress changed its tune. On June 14, 1775, the national legislature placed a number of Massachusetts militia units under its authority and also ordered the founding of 10 additional companies of infantry and riflemen. The following day, it named a 45-year-old Virginian by the name of George Washington as the new army's commander-in-chief. By war's end as many as 175,000 soldiers had served in the Continental Army, although at any given moment, troop levels never exceeded 20,000 men and some points in the war dwindled to fewer than 5,000 soldiers…"
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Amicalement
Armand

I really get irritated at the "Stupid British advancing in lines in red coats while clever Yankees hid behind trees…" bs line.

They didn't wear red coats?

They didn't advance in lines?
And it seems like every battle I have read about we were trying to hide behind something…

And it seems like every battle I have read about we were trying to hide behind something

Usually each other.

Obviously the story is much more complex than sniping Americans versus Redcoats advancing in orderly lines – but the war was fought at times in a semi-wilderness, it was fought at times with irregular forces, or armies composed of riflemen, rangers, frontiersmen, and Indians, and of course with variously trained or equipped militia troops.

The richness of the American revolutionary war is one of the reasons its history interests me so much, and the degree that the conflict's skirmishes, raids, and pitched battles defy simple classification becomes one of its defining legacies.

If one looks at the British 1764 manual, and then v. Steuban's you will find entire sections copied from the 1764 manual.

Von Steuben based his new drill manual for the Continental Army on both Prussian and British manuals and practices and adapted it for American use.

Sincerely,
M