The core of the Continental Army the people that signed up for the duration not just for
one year tours were the dregs of American society and the enlistment papers said for
the duration or something to that affect right you got a larger pay larger stipend if you
did that right so they're like former indentured servants ex slaves recently arrived Irish
immigrants people like artisans who are out of work the reason they're there is 'cause
they got no place else to go yeah the yeoman farmer remains in the militia many of the
states colonies become states pay militia more than they pay people that go into the
Continental Army because they want them to stay in the state they want them in that very
few of the states meet their troop quotas or their money quotas to support the Continental
Army if they wanted to the Continental Army could have one the war in two years because
they could have raised a hundred thousand troops the population of the country is such
that between the ages of eighteen and fifty there's easily easily done but the states
don't want to do that they're worried about a standing army so they the one way to win
the war is to have a big army but the big army violates the Revolutionary principles
on which the war is supposed to be fought uh Washington lives with this paradox throughout
the war and the average size of the Continental Army at anytime is between twelve and eighteen
thousand ever since then or at least ever since the Civil War we've lived with hugely
expanded armies during war time which are then reduced dramatically very quickly after
war time right was this outside their experience or why didn't they think about doing something
like that oh I see create a standing army and then just you know fold it up like they
did after the Civil War exactly because they're really afraid they they've inherited the British
fear of a standing army like when the Constitutional Convention comes in all these states suggest
additional amendments like they suggest a hundred and twenty four amendments about twelve
of them are about no standing army they really are terrified of this this is a this is uh
military body that can historically develop political control it's the Caesar syndrome
it's the Cromwell syndrome even if you try to disband it it's dangerous the net result
is that the Continental Army is kept on uh short rations to put it mildly uh a budget
string uh it it almost goes out of existence two or three times during the war because
if its annual enlistments ok so like they're at Valley Forge the enlistments go up I mean
run out and so like five thousand guys leave another four thousand die in the winter from
exposure and starvation so you've got like nine thousand troops to make up you've got
to count on nine thousand guys signing up it's like a law school trying to you know
to figure out what the admissions class is going to be in the next year and by the time
the guys learn to be a soldier they leave that's one of the real problems in the Continental
Army but that's what makes this core of uh veterans really crucial and over the course
of the war they develop a veteran officer core it takes a while they discover guys like
Green and Knox and Hamilton uh who become great officers uh at the end of the war they're
promised pensions and they're never paid and it has to do with the standing amy thing again
we don't like okay virtue should be its own reward and we don't like a permanent military
class even though your'e retired and all this kind of stuff like especially in Connecticut
and Massachusetts the newspapers are when the guys come back after the war's over you
should think parades right these are the guys that won the war this was a huge big deal
just the opposite just the opposite they were scorned their houses were threatened with
attack it's unbelievable uh because the attitude towards a standing army is so pervasive especially
in New England and they never got they never got what they they were really due in the
way of pensions and uh uh it it's a disgrace Washington one of the most sad things in his
whole life to see this uh he you know these were his guys and uh these were the guys you
know think about it he he was in there for seven and a half years This excerpt is brought
to you by the Massachusetts School of Law