"how did the continental army form so fast" Topic

was there already a continental force before lexington and concord or did they just conscript men out of the millitas?do you think if the british garrisoned America properly with about 50,000 regular troops the revolution would have not been successful?

Who is "they"?

The Second Continental Congress convened as scheduled after Lexington and adopted the army around Boston. Congress chose a southerner, Washington, to command BECAUSE the army at that point was entirely New England -- to make the point that it WAS a continental force.

Congress itself raised very few units. STATES raised units.

And no amount of British troops could have prevented the revolution EVENTUALLY -- and no way Britain could have afforded such a force. Indeed, they couldn't afford what they had, hence the attempts to tax the colonies.

What doc said. Pretty much Continental Congress just made the militias gathered around Boston the Continental Army.

And the militias had been around for a while. The US army traces it's beginning to the first militia muster in Massachusetts in 1636, so there were already formed units organized (even if loosely) that could be pulled together with the right leadership and reason.

New England had a well established militia system for frontier defense.

Aside from the formed militia, everyone saw war coming, so men had already given considerable thought as to whether they would respond to a general call to arms or not.

There were a lot of former soldiers and militia in the American colonies – they had, after all, been at war with France on and off for decades

Do you think if the british garrisoned America properly with about 50,000 regular troops the revolution would have not been successful?

I contend that if there had been a garrison of 0 British Regulars we would still be speaking English!

With the end of the French and Indian War, there were no more French. Pontiac's Rebellion showed the need to have a force on the frontiers.
I would say that the main cause of rebellious feeling in Boston was the British garrison. There was a great resentment about idle soldiers taking jobs from native workers. (Sound familiar?)
There was resentment over quartering troops. The fact that we have a Third Ammendment forbidding this shows how badly it was needed.
No Boston Massacre without a garrison.

To achieve your ideal of 50,000 troops in garrison would have made Philadelphia, New York, and any other town unlucky enough to have a garrison foisted upon it garrison towns.
Perhaps instead of the rebellion starting in Lexington, it would have been a British raid to seize provisions at Germantown or Valley Forge. Or White Plains.

Americans considered themselves BRITISH subjects. There was a long standing tradition hating standing armies and Regular troops.
Paul Revere never said "The British are coming!" by the way. What he called was "The Regulars are out!" Meaning that the hated standing army imposed on loyal subjects of good King George were being obnoxious. Again.

Right. War starts in April 1775 (and really began in late 1774 when Mass began organizing (e.g. the minutemen) to oppose the Coercive Acts. Independence is declared, barely, in July 1776. What were we fighting for during those 15 months? Our rights as Englishmen.

Hmm. I beg to differ. The main reason for the rebellion was the enthusiastic enforcement of the taxation (equally imposed on English merchants) by the Royal Navy and the colonists reactions to that. Then the subsequent attacks on the tax collectors, the corruption of the courts in the colonies enforcing the taxes, the establishment of teh Admiralty Courts (because the colonial ones were viewed as biased or suspectible to public mobs/pressure). My take anyway. The sore points of the army came about as a result of what was largely happening at sea.

The entire British army was only about 45,000 men world wide in 1775. There were roughly 3 million folks living in the colonies at the time. Outside of a few "cities" and large towns, the population was totally rural and widely scattered.

The British had no chance of suppressing the revolt once it started in earnest and their tax attempts and efforts to master the colonies with military power were the spark that set off the rebellion.

Dan

The British Army had many commitments worldwide, including anti-smuggling duty, protecting vital colonies, keeping the Irish pacified, marines for the fleet, etc. No wonder they very quickly sought to rent foreign mercenaries and enlist Loyalists in America. Even so, they were often stretched thin.

If Britain had garrisoned its North American colonies adequately, there probably would have been no French & Indian War…and Britain would have gone broke.

Britain had a long tradition of relying on the locals to provide for the land based defense of their mainland colonies of North America. This made them relatively inexpensive to maintain. It also committed the forces to the control of locals whose interests were not necessarily the same as the Crown's, or of each other.

The origins of the French and Indian War are fairly well known. At that time there were relatively few British troops in North America. After the war ended Britain decided to keep stronger land forces in North America. Paying for these forces was one reason for the British attempts to impose direct taxes on its colonies. Yet just before the AWI broke out Virginia militia was again fighting on the frontier because the British regulars were employed elsewhere.

Well, it depends on what they were garrisoning. If the frontier, which is where you are likely to find army units – it would not have made a difference. The goal there was to control settlers to the frontier and keep the natives in line. If they garrisoned the cities – why would they do that? There were local law enforcement in place already, including militia – especially for feared slave revolts.

Also note that the Navy downsized (much to Lord Sandwhich's chagrin) prior to the war.

If you read, The Men Who Lost America – the military officers were stunned how quickly and completely the revolution had grabbed hold of the civilian reins of power, realizing that by 1777 it was pretty much a done deal, thus why the Howe's left soon after.

The longer term strategy (if there really was one) became about outlasting the revolution and keeping the islands.

Garrisoning the frontier didn't work so well in Pontiac's rebellion. A lot of those little posts went down hard.

There's also the political angle. The Boston masscre resulted in the garrison being exiled to castle William on an island in the harbor. Thereafter the Sons of Liberty controlled the streets until after the tea party when the redcoats were put back in town. And that began the colonists' preparation for military resistance.

"There are those in England who will say that we aren't actually speaking English anymore."

hahahaha, I'd bet this is very true. We've added so much slang, then you add in the accents from different parts. It comes across as a different language.

My understanding each state had their own system of militia. As anti-british movement spread, many of those who were loyal to the crown, were forced out of the militia. So by the time war broke out most of the militia leaders and men were against Britian. The Continental Army enlisted men from all of these different state militia units.

There are those in England who will say that we aren't actually speaking English anymore.

Which is my point….

And no amount of British troops could have prevented the revolution EVENTUALLY -- and no way Britain could have afforded such a force. Indeed, they couldn't afford what they had, hence the attempts to tax the colonies.

So possibly, the winning move would have been not to play?
If all British troops had been removed, the need for taxes wouldn't have been there, so they could have possibly avoided a revolution by simply removing the troops, not increasing them?

A fascinating idea, I like it.

Yes, something to that.

Actually, if Parliament had the sense to limit the Coercive Acts to the Boston Port Bill, Sam Adams and the radicals might have been defeated politically by moderates and revolution delayed. (Nothing likely could have prevented it altogether.)

The biggest problem was that while the Americans considered themselves subjects of George III, they did NOT recognize any control by Parliament. NONE of the colonial charters give any mention to Parliament, they are all contracts between the Throne and the Colony (with, in some cases, the Proprietor acting as a proxy for the Throne).

And, historygamer, the cities was where the British garrisons were located, not the frontier. Probably because it was cheaper to keep them there. Unfortunately, the cities were the places that they were likeliest to irritate the citizenry.

The first question is easy; the existing army around Boston was 'adopted' and later regiments were raised by the states, largely relying on the existing militia organization.

As for the second, I think the answer is clearly no; British regulars garrisoned in more cities means more resentment and tensions, which leads to more colonies to also ramp up their militia preparations and the outcome looks pretty much the same. And as mentioned, 50k troops were more than the British could really afford, which leads to more taxation on the colonies, which in turn leads to more resentment, which is self-defeating in terms of keeping a lid on the situation.

-Will

Although not directly bearing on the topic, but rather to the ensuing discussion, it has been ignored that Britain was not paying the entire cost of the F&IW. Even though there were no or few direct taxes at the time, the colonists were gladly footing a substantial portion of the bill to keep the Papists at bay in both men and materiel. Having, in their eyes, paid their 'taxes' in so doing, they were outraged that the Mother Country would find it necessary to 'bill' them for the 'protection', which, following the war, they saw the occupation as being directed at them rather than the then non-existent foreign threat.

1) 50,000 troops would have required the RN to establish a vastly larger American Squadron to move them around and supply them; this would have been impossible as expansion was out of the question financially, whilst the removal of resources from home waters and the Caribbean would have left both of these regions exposed to the French in any (inevitable) future war with them.

2) The Founding Fathers would mostly have been pimps and brothel keepers instead of tea-smugglers and lawyers.

In "Towards Lexington: The role of the British Army in the coming of the American Revolution" John Shy produces a series of maps illustrating where the British troops were garrisoned betwween 1764 and 1774 (The Proclamation Line Act to the Quebec Act). The shift from the western frontiers to the east-coast cities is obvious (as it undoubtedly was to the Colonists) and you can see that the Army is no longer defending the Colonists from the Indians, but really more the other way around.

However, the book cites numerous examples of excellent relations between the troops and the Colonists – Boston was very much an outlier in that respect – and when war with Spain threatens in 1771, there is a considerable surge in "back door" recruiting of Americans into the British regiments accompanied by widespread expressions of (British) patriotism.

I would thoroughly recommend Shy's book to anyone interested in the lead-up to the war.

There's an interesting comparison to be made here with the American Colonies vs. India. Both were huge, yet the British lost one (which was thinly populated) and conquered the other (which was vastly populous, and organized), despite facing the same relative disadvantages. Why was this?

You still talk gooder than we do.

Piper, good question. The answer is tea. India has it, the American colonies didn't. Of course, there is some leadership difference. :-)