The Continental Army underwent a complex evolution which greatly affected the military, political, and social history of the Revolution. He preferred, however, to produce the same psychological effect on the Army by using last-second reprieves. Washington did execute a few for particularly serious crimes. His approach was mild by contemporary standards and extremely sophisticated. Washington coped by developing, in conjunction with his judge advocates, a system that adapted British military justice to the conditions of American society in the 1770's. Although it was possible for an enlisted man to become an officer, particularly during the reorganizations of 17, Washington's desire to maintain a distance between officers and men as a disciplinary tool kept most of the latter from rising far.ĭesertion rates were high, although few went over to the British. In the deferential society of eighteenth-century America, members of the leading families naturally assumed leadership in the regular forces just as they did in the militia, in politics and law, in the church, and in business. The Continental officer corps, on the other hand, came from the upper social strata.
A sizable minority were hired substitutes or not native to the place where they had enlisted. Enlisted men were young (over half were under twenty-two when they enlisted) and mostly common laborers so poor as to be virtually tax-exempt.
The long-term Continentals tended to come from the poorer, rootless elements of American society to whom the Army, despite its problems, offered greater opportunity than did civilian life. Recent studies indicate that after 1776 the Continental Army did not fit this image. Tradition in the United States depicts the Continental Army as a hardy group of yeoman farmers and middle-class tradesmen under amateur officers who defeated a European army of lower class troops commanded by aristocrats.
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