Bunker Hill

year and leave for home at the end of December. He needed to do here in Massachusetts what he had done in Virginia twenty years ago. He needed to create an American version of the British army.
    As had been proven on April 19, the militia, which could be assembled in the proverbial blink of an eye, was the perfect vehicle with which to begin a revolution. But as Joseph Warren had come to realize, an army of militiamen was not built for the long haul. Each company was loyal to its specific town; given time, an army made up of dozens of competing loyalties would tear itself apart—either that, or turn on the civil government that had created it and form a military dictatorship. An army that was to remain loyal to the Continental Congress could not be based on local affiliation.
    Twenty years ago, Washington had experienced firsthand the dangerous volatility of an army made up of citizen soldiers. He knew how bad things could get when all control was lost. A war fought along the lines of what had happened only three months earlier during the British retreat through Menotomy might turn the Revolution into a ferocious orgy of bloodshed out of which America’s liberties might never emerge intact. The ultimate aim of an army was, in Washington’s view, not to generate violence but to curtail it.
    He might have recognized the dangers of an undisciplined army, but Washington was also driven by a desperate need to prove himself. Even though it might not be justified militarily by what he’d found in Cambridge and Roxbury, he wanted to attack. This meant that the Siege of Boston had entered a new phase that was as much about the conflict raging within Washington as it was a standoff between two armies. Half of him wanted to create an altogether different kind of army—a painstaking process that required time and patience. The other, more impulsive half wanted to “destroy” the British army with one cataclysmic thrust and be done with it. Boston’s fate, it turned out, depended on whether Washington could be saved from himself.
    —
    For the time being, Washington directed his energies to overhauling the provincial army. He pushed forward the courts-martial that had accumulated in the wake of the Battle of Bunker Hill, making, he bragged, “a pretty good slam among such kind of officers as the Massachusetts government abound[s] in.” He issued order after order, insisting that the sentries no longer fraternize with the enemy, and that anyone swimming in the Charles River be sure to hide his nakedness—particularly when a genteel lady was crossing the bridge into Cambridge; he detailed what an officer must wear (a colorful sash across his chest or an epaulette on his shoulder or a cockade in his hat) to distinguish him from his men; perhaps most important, the men must begin using the latrines, or the dysentery that had already begun to spread through the camp would only get worse. “There is great overturning in camp,” the Reverend William Emerson wrote, “as to order and regularity. New lords new laws. . . . The strictest government is taking place. . . . Everyone is made to know his place and keep in it or be tied up and receive . . . 30 or 40 lashes. . . . Thousands are at work [digging entrenchments] every day from four till eleven in the morning. It is surprising how much work has been done.”
    Almost immediately, Washington was forced to confront a crisis among his own officers. Back in June, the Continental Congress had granted commissions that did not reflect the pecking order already established by the colonies. When Connecticut’s General Spencer learned that General Putnam now outranked him, he left for home. General Thomas of Massachusetts was outraged when he discovered that his subordinate William Heath now outranked
him
. After several weeks of soothing ruffled feathers and applying for new commissions from Congress, Washington eventually worked things out to just about everyone’s satisfaction. This was not possible, however, when it came to the army’s regiment of artillery, whose failings at the Battle of Bunker Hill had brought about many of the courts-martial proceedings. The real problem was the regiment’s commander, Colonel Gridley, whose insistence on promoting the fortunes of his incompetent relatives had disaffected what few good officers remained. The medical corps was in an even worse state, with little or no coordination among the many hospitals scattered along the