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Charles Royster
A Revolutionary
People at War
The Continental Army and
American Character, 1775-1783
Published for the Omohundro
Institute of Early American History and Culture
Williamsburg, Virginia,
by The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
The Omohundro Institute of Early American
History and Culture is sponsored jointly by
The College of William and Mary and
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
©1979 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Royster, Charles.
A revolutionary people at war.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. United States. Army. Continental Army.
2. United States—Civilization—To 1783.
3. National characteristics, American. I. Title.
E259.R69 973.3'4 79-10152
ISBN 0-8078-1385-0
ISBN 0-8078-4606-6 (pbk.)
03 02 01 9 8 76
TO MY PARENTS
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V'TY^TCirY2*
While I was researching and writing this book and while I was
looking for an academic job, a number of people asked me,
"What is your book about?" I always found this question hard
to answer—not because I did not know what my book was
about but because most of my short answers seemed to give
people ideas that I had not intended. If I said that my book was
about the Revolutionary War, I seemed to be retelling a familiar
story of generals and battles. If I said that my book was about
the Continental Army, I sometimes seemed to have become a
would-be chief of staff who presumably delighted in organiza-
tional charts, chains of command, and the study of logistics. If I
said that my book was about the American people during the
Revolutionary War, I seemed to sound like a student of the new
social history, compiling socioeconomic data. And if I said that
my book was about American character, I seemed to deal in
elastic abstractions drawn from sources that were suspiciously
literate. All of these short answers were accurate but incomplete.
Through experience with the misleading effects of incomplete
explanations I learned that only by a long answer could I hope
to say what my book is about. To give that answer I wrote this
Preface.
This book assumes that there was an American character
prevalent during the War for Independence and that we can
profitably analyze it. I use the word "character" because I try to
understand not only the formally articulated ideas usually de-
scribed by the word "mind" but also some of the most impor-
tant emotions, attitudes, and conduct of Americans in wartime.
I believe that these attributes of the revolutionary movement
vii
viii PREFACE
bore a coherent relationship to each other that can be recon-
structed. Although my book begins by assuming that a national
character existed, I hope that my analysis also contains enough
evidence to show why I began with this assumption. In order to
discuss these prevalent attributes without constantly repeating
a stock set of cautionary phrases, I have used the words "revo-
lutionaries" and "Americans" interchangeably to refer to the
people who seem to me to exemplify this national character.
Obviously, these words are not precise. If we take "revolution-
aries" to be people who favored resistance to British authority
during the war, we know that not all natives of America were
revolutionaries and that many people's attitudes differed subtly
and changed over the years. Moreover, no matter what criteria
we choose for defining the group, our conclusions about it
must rest on reasonable inferences, not conclusive proof of the
accuracy of the word when it is applied to large numbers of
people. Accepting these imprecisions as a necessary evil for the
purpose of making generalizations, I have not always taken the
space to qualify my conclusions by adding words like "most/'
"usually," "probably," At the same time, however, this book
does offer evidence that allegiance to the "American" or "revo-
lutionary" side in the War for Independence was the prevailing
sentiment of people in the United States. And the book im-
plicitly argues that the national character of revolutionaries
formed one of the principal bases of their wartime allegiance.
These propositions are the premises on which the book's dis-
cussion of the Continental Army and American character rests.
One of the central questions that I ask is, What was the
relationship between the ideals espoused during the revolution
and the actions of Americans? Because of the comprehensive
ideal of citizen, society, and state enunciated by the revolution-
ary generation, this question, if applied to the whole era, would
require wide-ranging and complex answers beyond the scope
of one book. So I have addressed the question in a more
specific way. I have studied the ideals that Americans defined
for themselves in creating, recruiting, and fighting in an army,
and I have studied the relationship of these ideals to their
PREFACE ix
experience with their army. The ideals of achievement were
rigorous, even absolute; the conduct was always flawed and
often gravely deficient. What were the nature and the effects of
this disparity? I have addressed this question as thoroughly as I
could. In the process, I have touched far less systematically on
the disparities in other realms—for example, religion, govern-
ment, and commerce. I have done so partly because these
realms affected Americans' dealings with the army and partly
because I believe that my findings on the wartime lot of the
Continental Army yield insights relevant to the study of other
areas of revolutionary experience—areas that limits of space
and competence allow me only to broach in this book.
I have found the study of the Continental Army especially
rewarding for this purpose because at its center lies one of the
most fundamental problems of the revolution: survival. To
Americans of that era, the great fact for republics, like the
great fact for individuals, was death. The selfishness of cor-
ruption, like the debility of age and disease, inevitably killed
self-government. Could Americans postpone the republic's day
of death? Could they, by unprecedented strength, forestall it
indefinitely? The clearest, most dramatic test came in the army's
resistance to British force. Here the connection between the
individual's conduct and the republic's survival was most visible
and direct. From our understanding of this connection we can
draw insights into other kinds of conduct in which, according
to revolutionary ideals, the republic would depend on citizens'
strength.
In my discussion of the role of national character in the mili-
tary demands of the Revolutionary War I have studied some of
the mental processes and emotional crises that revealed Ameri-
cans' concerns. However, I have not systematically used the
concepts or the vocabulary of clinical psychology. I have tried
to enhance my understanding of the people I write about by
varied reading outside the field of history. But in writing his-
tory I usually do not use technical words, because neither the
sources for the Revolutionary War nor my analyses of the
revolutionaries fully conform to the requirements of other
