“Necessary that the regiments be immediately settled”

Many accounts of George Washington’s arrival in Cambridge in 1775 say that he converted the ragtag New England militia into the Continental Army.

That’s a misconception. It’s common enough that I might have expressed that understanding myself when I first wrote about the beginning of the war. But it misses an important development that I now see more clearly, and see as more important.

The New England colonies had already formed armies in the spring of 1775. Militia companies were designed to respond to emergencies, such as the Lexington Alarm. When an emergency was over, men expected to go home. Enlisting in an army meant a man agreed to serve for a defined time.

That was a different legal relationship between a government and its citizens, and for New Englanders military service was all about that maintaining that covenant. As Fred Anderson has written, British army officers (who were used to enlisting for life and commanding men who had done the same) and later Gen. Washington ran into trouble because they didn’t share that outlook.

On 19 April and shortly afterward, about 20,000 militia men mobilized, ending up in camps ringing the peninsula of Boston. But with all the regulars back inside the town, the immediate emergency had passed. Some men wanted to go home.

Two days later, Gen. Artemas Ward wrote to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress:

My situation is such that, if I have not enlisting orders immediately, I shall be left all alone: it is impossible to keep the men here, excepting something be done. I therefore pray that the plan may be completed and handed to me this morning, that you, gentlemen of the Congress, issue orders for enlisting men.

The committee of safety responded with a proposal to sign up “out of the Massachusetts forces, eight thousand effective men,” to serve for seven months.

Two days later, on 23 April, the full congress went further with two votes:

Resolved, unanimously, that it is necessary for the defence of the colony, that an army of 30,000 men be immediately raised and established.

Resolved, That 13,600 men be raised immediately by this province.

The rest were expected to come from the neighboring colonies.

That Massachusetts army would have fewer men per company and fewer companies per regiment than the Massachusetts militia. The Patriot authorities expected some men to go home and hoped to keep units as cohesive as possible.

In the following weeks, there must have been a lot of discussion within the ranks. Some companies enlisted nearly en masse under their familiar officers. Other men chose to go home to their wives, children, and farms. Some went home and came back. To fill holes, there was some shuffling of officers’ ranks and which companies belonged to which regiments (i.e., reported to which colonels).

Ward and his top officers were worried enough about the war to recommend a formal militia call on 9 May so there would be enough armed men to protect Roxbury and Dorchester. Ten days later the general wrote to Dr. Joseph Warren as president of the congress:

It appears to me absolutely necessary that the regiments be immediately settled, the officers commissioned, the soldiers mustered and paid agreeable to what has been proposed by the Congress—if we would save our Country.

That day the provincial congress approved its first Massachusetts army commission, to Col. Samuel Gerrish.

Gradually more pieces were put into place. Ward was sworn in as an army general, not just a militia general, the next day. By the end of the month, what Patriot newspapers started calling “the Grand American Army” had about 16,000 men from four colonies.

To be sure, not all those forces were formally enrolled yet. In Moses Little’s regiment from Essex County, Moses Sleeper had signed on as a corporal on 9 May. But the committee of safety didn’t approve paperwork for the whole regiment until 26 June, the last regimental commission of the spring. By then some of Col. Little’s companies had already fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill.

For more about the process of creating this provincial army, see Mike Cecere’s article “The Army of Observation Forms: Spring 1775 in Massachusetts” at the Journal of the American Revolution.

COMING UP: Taking the oath.

“Alarmed that the Regulars were advancing towards Our Entrencment”

Among the presentations at this Saturday’s commemoration of Gen. George Washington’s arrival in Cambridge is a talk by Longfellow House archivist Kate Hanson Plass on the diary of Moses Sleeper.

Hanson Plass and her team have recently shared the diary online: transcription with annotations and illustrations, plus a link to page images on Archive.org.

The introduction explains:

In the museum collection of the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site is a diary written by a soldier who participated in the early days of the American Revolution. No one knows how the diary got to the house, though it seems likely that a collector in the Longfellow family acquired it for its Revolutionary War connection in the early 20th century.

The book itself is small (5” by 8”), pocket size; its cover and the first and last three pages are missing. There is no indication of the identity of the writer of the diary; at first reading it seems to be anonymous. Using clues inside the diary – references to family members and locations of military service – the author has been established as Corporal Moses Sleeper of Newburyport, Massachusetts, who served for 19 months in Colonel Moses Little’s Regiment (later the 12th Continental Regiment).

Sleeper and Sgt. Paul Lunt of the same regiment obviously shared their diaries since many of their entries are the same. They weren’t keeping private, personal notes but making a record of their military service for people back home and in the future.

Cpl. Sleeper’s surviving pages start right before the Bunker Hill battle, which his regiment wasn’t involved in. Here’s his terse account of those days:

Friday 16 our Men went to Charlestown and Intrenched on a hill beyond Bunker hill they fired from the Ships and Copps hill all the time.

Saturday 17 1775 the Regulars Came out upon the Back of Charlestown and Set fire to It & burnt It down & Came to our Entrenen[?] forced It with the Loss 896 of the Regulars and about 50 of ours The fire began at 3 o Clock and held till 6

Sund 18 we Entrinched on prospect hill alarmed that the Regulars were advancing towards Our Entrencment but found It to be false Returned to Quarters

Mondy 19 Wee killed Some of there Guard

T 20 Went upon Picquet

W 21 past musters

Thirsday 22 Received our month pay

You wouldn’t know from those entries that Capt. Benjamin Perkins’s company, including Cpl. Sleeper, went onto the Charlestown peninsula on 17 June and saw combat. I’ve quoted later recollections of the Bunker Hill fight from other men in that company: Lt. Joseph Whitmore and Pvt. Philip Johnson.

Sgt. Lunt’s description of the battle offered a little more detail:

Saturday, 17th. - The Regulars landed a number of troops, and we engaged them. They drove us off the hill, and burnt Charlestown. Dr. [Joseph] Warren was lost in the battle: the siege lasted about three hours. They killed about 50 of our men, wounded about 80: we killed of the king’s troops 896, - 92 officers, 104 sergeants.

Both Sleeper and Lunt listed an exact number of enemy casualties—a piece of intelligence it usually takes days or weeks to acquire. In Sleeper’s case, we can see that number was written right into the entry, not inserted later. That suggests these provincial soldiers didn’t write their diary entries on the evening after the battle but after time had passed, they had recovered, and they might have had less to do.

“Headquarters of a Revolution” in Cambridge, 5 July

On Saturday, 5 July, the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site will host the Sestercentennial commemoration of Gen. George Washington taking command of the Continental Army.

Washington arrived in Cambridge on the afternoon of 2 July and assumed command from Gen. Artemas Ward. Nineteenth-century tradition held that 3 July was the crucial day, imagining the new commander reviewing all his troops on Cambridge common, but that was at best an exaggeration. The 4th is of course claimed by an event from 1776. So Saturday the 5th is the most convenient date for a celebration this year.

Here’s the “Headquarters of a Revolution” schedule. Unless stated otherwise, all of these events start at 105 Brattle Street, the Longfellow–Washington site. Some offerings overlap, so it’s not possible to see everything. The talks are about half an hour long, the house tours almost an hour, the walking tours more like ninety minutes. Folks who need air conditioning or shelter from rain will no doubt prefer the talks and house tours.

10:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M.
The New Generalissimo
John Koopman and Quinton Castle

On the mansion’s lawn, visitors can meet and talk with living historians portraying Gen. George Washington (Koopman) and his body servant, William Lee (Castle), as they assess the siege, the Continental Army, the political situation, and living arrangements in Cambridge. Photo opportunities.

10:15 A.M. talk in the Longfellow Carriage House
Get Ready with Martha
Sandy Spector

Learn all about the clothing of 1775 as Mrs. Washington finishes dressing for her day. There will be some stories and some gossip, too! Spector is a Boston-based historian, researcher, and interpreter known for bringing emotional depth, humanity, and a sense of humor to her portrayal of Martha Washington.

10:30 A.M. walking tour
Children of the Revolution: Boys & Girls in Cambridge during the Siege of Boston
J. L. Bell

Meet at the mansion’s driveway for a walk around the Tory Row neighborhood and Harvard Square viewing sites and hearing stories of young people caught up in the opening of the Revolutionary War: Loyalists forced from their homes, soldiers in their teens or younger, war refugees, and enslaved children seizing their own liberty.

11:00 A.M. talk in the Longfellow Carriage House
The Revolutionary War Diary of Moses Sleeper
Kate Hanson Plass

An almost-anonymous journal in the Longfellow–Washington site’s collection provides a look at daily life in the Continental Army in Cambridge. Cpl. Moses Sleeper spent most of the Siege of Boston encamped and building barracks around Prospect Hill. Hanson Plass, the Longfellow House Archivist, explains how Sleeper’s perspective adds to our understanding of the experience of the soldiers under General Washington’s command.

11:30 A.M. house tour
Deep Dive: Headquarters of a Revolution
National Park Service staff

Explore Gen. George Washington’s first headquarters of the American Revolution. That mansion became a testing ground for many of the ideals, institutions, and questions that still define our nation. This conversational tour explores Cambridge Headquarters as a hub of revolutionary activity, where generals, enslaved people, paid laborers, poets, Indigenous diplomats, politicians, and soldiers shaped history—and how later generations would shape its memory.

12:30 P.M. talk in the Longfellow Carriage House
Washington in the Native Northeast
Dr. Ben Pokross

This talk describes George Washington’s interactions with Indigenous people while he lived in the Vassall House. After a look back on Washington’s experiences as a surveyor in the Ohio River Valley, the presentation will focus on his diplomatic encounters with Abenaki, Haudenosaunee, Passamaquody, and Maliseet peoples, among others, during the Siege of Boston. Ben Pokross was a Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at the Longfellow–Washington site researching its Indigenous history. In the fall, he will be a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Trinity College in Hartford.

1:15 P.M. talk in the Longfellow Carriage House
On Managing a Headquarters that is Also a Household
Sandy Spector

Martha Washington made her own arrival in Cambridge in December 1775 and stayed until April, setting the pattern she would follow throughout the Revolutionary War: she spent every winter with her husband and the army, and during campaign season usually remained as close as she safely could. Spector describes how the commander’s wife maintained a genteel household in the midst of war.

1:30 P.M. walking tour
Cambridge as a Seat of Civil War
J. L. Bell

Meet at the Washington Gate on Cambridge Common. This tour explores how the Cambridge community split on religious, political, and class lines between 1760 and 1775, culminating in a militia uprising in September 1774 and the outbreak of actual war in April 1775. Hear how the wealthy and congenial Tory Row neighborhood fell apart and became a stretch of military barracks and hospitals.

2:00 P.M. talk in the Longfellow Carriage House
Phillis and George: Thoughts on Letter-Writing, Power, and Self-Representation
Dr. Nicole Aljoe

One famous event during Washington’s time in Cambridge was his exchange of letters with Phillis Wheatley, the young poet who had been kidnapped into slavery. Aljoe, Professor of English and Africana Studies at Northeastern University, explores this encounter in context. She is co-Director of The Early Caribbean Digital Archive and Mapping Black London digital project, Director of the Early Black Boston Digital Almanac, and author of multiple books and articles. 

2:30 P.M. house tour
Deep Dive: Headquarters of a Revolution
National Park Service staff

See above.

2:45 P.M. talk in the Longfellow Carriage House
Cambridge’s Black Community, 1775
Dr. Caitlin DeAngelis Hopkins

The American Revolution was a time of both possibility and peril for Black residents of Cambridge. Enslaved people could pursue their liberty but faced the threats of family separation, deadly epidemics, and violence. Whether moving far away, taking jobs at Washington’s Headquarters, or making complex legal arguments to claim pieces of their enslavers’ estates, Black residents used their knowledge and networks to protect themselves and their families. Hopkins is working with the descendants of Cuba and Anthony Vassall to document the Black history of 105 Brattle. She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard and was formerly the head researcher for the Harvard and the Legacies of Slavery Project.

This commemoration is funded by Eastern National, a non-profit partner of the National Park Service. It’s supported by friendly organizations like History Cambridge and the Friends of Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters.

What Did Washington Do on 3 July 1775?

Gen. George Washington probably didn’t take command in a ceremony on Cambridge common on 3 July 1775. Instead, Gen. Artemas Ward almost certainly turned over the orders book and other necessities late the previous afternoon, as soon as Washington arrived at headquarters in Jonathan Hastings’s house beside Harvard College.

Like most other Massachusetts politicians, Ward was probably pleased to have Washington in command since he embodied the support of the Continental Congress. And since the same Congress had made Ward a major general and second-ranking officer in the army, he didn’t have anything to complain about.

So what did Washington do on 3 July instead? He and Gen. Charles Lee almost certainly spent their first day on the front inspecting the siege lines at what seemed to be their weakest point, near the Charlestown Neck. The British had taken Bunker Hill two and a half weeks before, moving closer to the American camps in western Charlestown and northeastern Cambridge.

Furthermore, it seems likely that Gen. Washington did inspect troops while he was there. That review didn’t involve the whole army, but soldiers stationed near Prospect Hill recorded getting ready for inspections on 3 July.

Lt. Paul Lunt of Newburyport wrote in his diary:

Turned out early in the morning, got in readiness to be reviewed by the general. New orders given out by General Washington.

The same words appear in the diary of Pvt. Moses Sleeper, also from Newburyport; that document is now in the archive of Longfellow National Historic Site.

Lt. John Hodgkins of Ipswich wrote a letter home:

Geaneral Washington & Lees got into Cambridge yesterday and to Day they are to take a Vew of ye Armey, & that will be attended with a grate deal of grandor. There is at this time one & twenty Drummers, & as many feffers a Beting and Playing Round the Prayde.

Forty-two musicians would be about two regiments’ worth, three if they were short-staffed. That passage used to be quoted to support the legend of a big assembly near the Washington Elm, but Hodgkins was probably far from that spot.

None of those diaries or letters records the men’s impression of seeing Washington, or his response to seeing them. The commander might never have actually inspected these men, therefore. But since they don’t write anything about getting all set for nothing, most likely the actual review was routine, and they had nothing to add. They would learn more about the new commander over the next few months.

COMING UP: And the next day?

Soldier's diary at Longfellow House

The Friends of the Longfellow House (a non-profit organization that I work with) has posted a Revolutionary War soldier's diary on its website. Along with the complete text of the diary and pictures of the document is Frances Ackerly's downloadable essay describing how she identified its author as Moses Sleeper of Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Frances's essay describes the manuscript's scope:

In the diary the soldier writes of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Siege of Boston, the threatened bombardment from Dorchester Heights, the British evacuation of Boston, Washington's army's march to New York, the first reading of the Declaration of Independence, the Battle of Long Island, and the beginnings of Washington’s long retreat from New York to Pennsylvania.

Longfellow House, built in 1759 by the Vassall family and now a site of the National Park Service, was George Washington's headquarters during most of the siege of Boston, July 1775 to March 1776. It later became the home of Washington's biographer Jared Sparks, who lived there as a boarder in the early 1800s, and then of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, author of "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," and his family. A Longfellow relative seems to have purchased this diary as a collectible.