=The Soldiers.=—­As far as the British soldiers were concerned their annals are short and simple.  The regulars from the standing army who were sent over at the opening of the contest, the recruits drummed up by special efforts at home, and the thousands of Hessians bought outright by King George presented few problems of management to the British officers.  These common soldiers were far away from home and enlisted for the war.  Nearly all of them were well disciplined and many of them experienced in actual campaigns.  The armies of King George fought bravely, as the records of Bunker Hill, Brandywine, and Monmouth demonstrate.  Many a man and subordinate officer and, for that matter, some of the high officers expressed a reluctance at fighting against their own kin; but they obeyed orders.

The Americans, on the other hand, while they fought with grim determination, as men fighting for their homes, were lacking in discipline and in the experience of regular troops.  When the war broke in upon them, there were no common preparations for it.  There was no continental army; there were only local bands of militiamen, many of them experienced in fighting but few of them “regulars” in the military sense.  Moreover they were volunteers serving for a short time, unaccustomed to severe discipline, and impatient at the restraints imposed on them by long and arduous campaigns.  They were continually leaving the service just at the most critical moments.  “The militia,” lamented Washington, “come in, you cannot tell how; go, you cannot tell where; consume your provisions; exhaust your stores; and leave you at last at a critical moment.”

Again and again Washington begged Congress to provide for an army of regulars enlisted for the war, thoroughly trained and paid according to some definite plan.  At last he was able to overcome, in part at least, the chronic fear of civilians in Congress and to wring from that reluctant body an agreement to grant half pay to all officers and a bonus to all privates who served until the end of the war.  Even this scheme, which Washington regarded as far short of justice to the soldiers, did not produce quick results.  It was near the close of the conflict before he had an army of well-disciplined veterans capable of meeting British regulars on equal terms.

Though there were times when militiamen and frontiersmen did valiant and effective work, it is due to historical accuracy to deny the time-honored tradition that a few minutemen overwhelmed more numerous forces of regulars in a seven years’ war for independence.  They did nothing of the sort.  For the victories of Bennington, Trenton, Saratoga, and Yorktown there were the defeats of Bunker Hill, Long Island, White Plains, Germantown, and Camden.  Not once did an army of militiamen overcome an equal number of British regulars in an open trial by battle.  “To bring men to be well acquainted with the duties of a soldier,” wrote Washington, “requires time....  To expect the same service from raw and undisciplined recruits as from veteran soldiers is to expect what never did and perhaps never will happen.”