The Unpopular History of the United States by Uncle Sam Himself/Chapter 4
IV
THE RUSH THAT NEVER RUSHED
By December 15, 1775, only 5,917 men had enlisted, not quite a third. George Washington didn't like this and spoke his mind: "I am sorry to mention the egregious want of public spirit. Instead of pressing to be engaged in the cause of their country, which I vainly flattered myself would be the case, I find we are likely to be deserted at the most critical time."
There were splendid examples of patriotic unselfisliness. Twelve companies of riflemen reported near Boston, some of them having marched a distance of 800 miles. These were the first troops raised upon authority of the Continental Congress, and were soon recognized as the six best corps in the army. In spite of cold and starvation and suffering they fought throughout the war, and formed the backbone of those gallant troops which finally achieved our independence. But they had eight years’ service, my son, and became veterans.
The Continental Congress, bear in mind, had no authority whatever to raise or pay or equip a single soldier. Congress could merely pass resolutions and appeal to the sovereign states.
Minutemen volunteered, quite a bunch of them. They came in a minute and stayed about a minute. Each day Washington had a different army from the one of yesterday, and generally smaller. Which explains his letter of November 28, 1775:
“After the last of this month our lines will be so weakened that the Minutemen and militia must be called in for their defense. And these, being under no kind of government themselves, will destroy what little subordination I have been laboring to establish.”
Recruiting went slower than cold molasses, and Washington himself is authority for the statement that men were “holding back to see what advantages could be gained, and whether or not they could extort a bounty.” Every school boy will naturally spurn the suggestion that patriots of the Revolution would put up their services at public auction. But nobody has ever written for the school boy a popular history of the bounty system.
That was not the worst of it. Most of those volunteers engaged for short terms only, and were so fidgety to return home, that some of them left camp ahead of time “getting away with their arms and ammunition.”
The Governor to whom Washington wrote these facts expressed his great indignation, adding this illuminating phrase: “The pulse of the New England man beats high for liberty. His engagement in the service he thinks purely voluntary, therefore, when the time for enlistment is out, he thinks himself not holden without further engagement.”
Of course, that is the law, a perfectly legal construction to put upon their contract of employment. Nearly one hundred years later we find a similar instance at the first battle of Bull Run.
School boys do not regard George Washington as a chronic complainer. Yet his letters are full of paragraphs like this: “Nothing can surpass the impatience of the troops to get to their firesides. Nearly three hundred of them arrived a few days ago unable to do any duty. But as soon as I administered that grand specific, a discharge, they instantly acquired health, and rather than be detained a few days to cross Lake George, undertook a march of 200 miles with the greatest alacrity.”
Doesn’t this jar upon your reverential ideals, to picture 300 heroes of the Revolution limping around camp until Washington told them to go home, when they suddenly became able to march the distance from New York to Washington?
In consequence of slow voluntary enlistments, and the promptitude with which the short time recruit hiked himself homeward, it was considered expedient to try the worst possible makeshift—a bounty. The unpalatable truth is that by the middle of 1775, before the glorious Declaration of Independence, it had become necessary to pay men so much money for volunteering, making mercenaries of the first soldiers of this republic. On the 6th day of December, 1775, the Continental Congress passed this resolution:
“That the charge of bounty in the accounts exhibited by the Colony of Rhode Island against the United Colonies be not allowed.”
Something had to be done. Washington recognized the failure of the volunteer system and suggested “coercive measures” to fill his regiments. But feeble Congress was afraid to take such a radical step; instead of devising a plan of universal service it tried the more popular scheme of spurring patriotism with cash, and began bidding for men under the bounty system. Up, and up and up the climbing prices went. Four dollars bid! Six dollars and sixty-six cents! Ten dollars bid! By 1778 ruling quotations had reached $20 and 100 acres of land. But the rush did not occur. Something else did occur. Bounties made it impossible to get voluntary recruits, and before the end of 1777 Virginia and Massachusetts both had recourse to the draft—conscription, compulsion, universal service, or whatever you are pleased to call it. The states bidding for men against the Congress caused large numbers to desert and go home to grab the greater bounty. By 1779 the bounty had increased to $200 to any able bodied recruit who would enlist for the war. Then New Jersey offered $250, in addition to the $200, the clothing and land allowed by Congress. The Virginia Council raised the limit to $750, in lieu of all other bounties.
This created great dissatisfaction among the men who had previously enlisted at the cut rate of $4, $6.66, and $10. To keep them in good humor, and in service, Congress granted a back bounty of $100 each.
Under these increasing bounties our armies in the field steadily decreased from 89,661 in 1776 to 29,340 in 1781. During that period we had employed nearly four hundred thousand men. Fewer than 30,000 now remained in the ranks. Desertions became so numerous that early in 1779 it was necessary for Congress to recommend a punishment of fine and whipping, think of it—whipping—for all who should knowingly harbor a deserter.
So much for this Revolutionary rush to arms which didn’t rush. The scramble for men was like the Irishman’s idea of a fox hunt. Seeing the scarlet hunters racing and chasing, and trying to catch the fox, he remarked, “Begod, the dom baste is hell to catch, and ain’t worth a dom after you catch him.”