On the day before the Continental army fought at Bunker Hill, 16 June 1775, Wash ington accepted the command in his modest way, refusing to accept any pay for his services, except his actual expenses. To his wife, the one person to whom he could lay bare his heart, he wrote: °I assure you in the most solemn manner that so far from seeking this appointment, I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it . . . from a conscious ness of its being a trust too great for my capacity." °A land of destiny° had thrown him into this service, and he could not refuse.
Upon his arrival at Boston, 2 July, Wash ington found his army an armed mob. They had done creditable things, but in a blundering, unmilitary way. Rude lines of fortifications extended around Boston, but they were exe cuted with crude tools and without competent engineers. A few officers were looking after the commissary department, but there was no head. No able officer looked after the recruit ing and mustering service, or the barracks or hospital, and there was only a haphazard method of paying the soldiers. There was no uniform, and the very differences in costume augmented the colonial jealousies and self consciousness. All that distinguishes a well drilled and equipped army from a mob was wanting; yet here was the weapon with which Washington was expected to defeat the armies of the most powerful nation af the world. Only by the exercise of all his gifts as an administrator did he get even the semblance of an artny. His own great care for details, his method and punctuality had their effect upon others, and, though there was malingenng, desertion and petty mutinies, the enemy never knew that the army before Boston was often on the point of dissolution. When, in Decem ber, the ttrms of enlistment ran ont, Wash ington even succeeded, as he said, in disband ing one army and raising another within cannon shot of the enemy. Then early in March 1776 he made an adroit move, seized Dorchester Heights, and left the British nothing to do but evacuate Boston in the utmost haste.
The American leader had scored his first triumph, and, that assured, he hastened with his army to New York, where, it was shrewdly judged, the British would strike next. Con gress urged him to hold the city at all hazards, and contrary to his better sense, he attempted the impossible. Without the control of the sea, New York, on its narrow strip pf land thrust far down between two navigable waters, was a deadly trap. A military genius would have refuaed the risk, hut Washington ventured it, half believing for a time that he might succeed.
He placed his army in a position where every probability pointed to defeat, followed by almost certain capture or destruction. Had Howe not taken such tender care of his enemy's safety, all might have ended there. Washing? ton was able to withdraw from Brookl3m, 30 Aug. 1776, after the defeat on Long Island, and then to evacuate New York and get behind the Haarlem, because, as an English critic said, Howe calculated with the greatest accuracy the exact time necessary to allow his enemy to escape. The unbounded confidence of Wash ington's countrymen had proved too much on tlus occasion for even his steady judgment, and in response to their enthusiasm he had tried to hold a position and defend a place for which his resources were inadequate. He had become for the moment a source of danger to the Americans because they did not understand his real greatness.
Washington realized keenly his own lack of military experience on a large scale — he had no heaven-born genius, and he lcnew it. The skill that he finally attained was that which a strong-brained, sensible man would get in any vocation which he plied industriously, and to which he gave his heart. Washington learned as he fought, and his early errors with the con sequent disaster grew steadily less, until, as a master of his profession, he issued from the war without a peer and almost beyond the reach of envy. Yet not even his ultimate mili tary greatness explains his real service to his countrymen. It was the confidence that Wash ington inspired as a man, rather than his great genius as a soldier, which made him the only man in America who could carry the Revolu tion to a successful issue.
After losing New York Washington fought step by step, as he retreated, repulsing the British at Haarlem Heights and holding his own at White Plains, 28 Oct. 1776, but the med dling of Congress cost him some 3,000 men cap tured in Fort Washington, and then there was nothing for him but a retreat from the Hudson through New Jersey. This was not the only time that the democratic faction in Congress forced their military plans upon their com mander-in-chief.. He was much hampered at first by Congressional interference in his mili tary plans, but he soon won the limitless faith of these democratic enthusiasts, conquering all their fear of military despotism and gaining in the disposal of his own army the supremacy of a Fredericic or a Gustavus Adolphus.