Bunker Hill

obstinately persist in quitting the service, they will deserve the curses of the present and future generations to the latest ages. . . . What can equal such an infamous desertion . . . ? We that have boasted so loud of our private virtue and public spirit, do not have the very vital principles of liberty.”
    Greene admitted, however, that Washington bore part of the blame for the reenlistment crisis by expecting too much of the army he had inherited. “His Excellency has been taught to believe the people here a superior race of mortals and finding them of the same temper and disposition . . . of the common people of other governments, they sink in his esteem.” As Greene rightly pointed out, “you cannot expect [to make] veterans [from] a raw militia [after] only a few months’ service.”
    Not surprisingly, the army’s first commander in chief, Artemas Ward, was even more critical of Washington and his lack of appreciation for the soldiers from New England. At one point, Ward wrote of his
    great concern about the raising [of] a new army, for the genius of this people is different from those to the southward. Our people are jealous and are not inclinable to act upon implicit faith; they choose to see and judge for themselves. They remember what was said of them by some that came from the southward last summer, which makes them backward in enlisting or manifesting a willingness to enlist. . . . Some have said hard things of the officers belonging to this colony and despised them, but I think as mean as they have represented them to be, there has been no one action with the enemy, which has not been conducted by an officer of this colony.
    One can only wonder what would have happened if at the outset Washington had had a New England general with the polish and empathy of Joseph Warren on his staff. Warren might have provided the perspective that allowed Washington to recognize the provincial army’s considerable strengths. At least one biographer has criticized Washington for not taking a direct role in addressing the recruitment problem. With someone such as Warren (as opposed to the excitable, foulmouthed Charles Lee) exhorting the men to reenlist, the conversion from the old into the new army might have gone much more smoothly.
    There is evidence that Washington had begun to recognize the error of his ways. By December, his highly valued secretary Joseph Reed had returned to Philadelphia. In the months ahead, Reed served as his epistolary confidant, and on December 15, Washington responded to a letter in which Reed apparently reported that some of the general’s negative comments about the New Englanders had caused grumblings among the delegates in Congress. “I am much obliged to you for the hints . . . ,” he wrote. “I will endeavor a reformation, as I can assure you my dear Reed that I wish to walk in such a line as will give most general satisfaction.” In the weeks to come, Washington continued to thank Reed for passing along anything he heard about him—good or bad. “I can bear to hear of imputed or real errors,” he wrote; “the man who wishes to stand well in the opinion of others must do this, because he is thereby enabled to correct his faults . . . for as I have but one capitol object in view, I could wish to make my conduct coincide with the wishes of mankind as far as I can consistently.”
    Washington had spent his life attempting to control his emotions. He was accustomed to adjusting his behavior in ways that were more congenial to the wishes of those he sought to impress. In the past, he had succeeded in winning an honorable reputation among his peers in Virginia. Now it was the delegates of the Continental Congress whose expectations he sought to fulfill. This meant that he was no longer just a Virginian; he was attempting to be something that did not yet exist—an American. But already he had taken steps toward achieving that possible future. Through the creation of an army representative of the “continent,” he had provided a tangible, if admittedly imperfect, example of how thirteen autonomous colonies might one day become a new nation.
    Washington had long since come to the conclusion that a reconciliation with the mother country was a virtual impossibility, and in this he was not alone. As early as October 19, after having dinner with a group of Continental officers, the minister Jeremy Belknap recorded in his journal, “I found that the plan