July 3, 1775: Washington Takes Command

After Lexington and Concord Washington appeared at the Second Continental Congress signaling his willingness to take part in the War.  It was a foregone conclusion that he would be placed in charge of the Army due to the fame he had won in the French and Indian War, although like the other American veterans of that conflict who also served in the Revolution, he started out the conflict very much an amateur soldier.

Washington arrived at Cambridge, Massachusetts on July 3, 1775 to take command of the largely New England army besieging Boston.  He was appalled at the material from which he was expected to build a Continental Army.  Most of the men seemed to be an undisciplined rabble and most of their officers appeared to be notable only for their stupidity.  He quickly set to work to discipline the army, train them, improve their food, get them better clothes, doing all of this while confronting a besieged British army in Boston which enjoyed complete naval supremacy and a Congress that supplied him with little but empty promises.  Most generals have only to worry about defeating the enemy.  Washington, from first to last in the Revolution, had to worry first about simply keeping his army in existence due to completely inadequate support from Congress and the States, and, once that was accomplished for the time being, then to determine the methods by which his force, usually outnumbered, would defeat a professional army, better trained and better supplied than his army could ever be, and which enjoyed complete command of the seas for almost the entire War.  Washington was our indispensable man in that conflict.  But for his leadership, and his example of selfless patriotism, we would never have enjoyed our against the odds victory.  God granted us Washington precisely at the time in our history when we needed him.