Washington rides into Cambridge; a crowd of farmers and tradesmen is now his army
By June 1775, colonial militia had already fought at Lexington and Concord and now ringed British-held Boston, but they had no unified command. The Second Continental Congress commissioned George Washington as commander-in-chief on June 15, 1775, and sent him north to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to take charge of the assembled New England forces. Washington arrived to find an army of farmers and tradesmen short on gunpowder, discipline, and uniforms. He spent the rest of 1775 turning that crowd into an army capable of forcing the British out of Boston the following March.
Congress chose a Virginian to lead a New England army on purpose, binding the southern and northern colonies to one cause before either had agreed to independence. Washington's acceptance of command, without pay, set the model for civilian control of the American military that has held for two and a half centuries.
QWhy did Congress specifically want a southerner to lead a New England army?
The forces besieging Boston in the spring of 1775 were almost entirely raised from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Delegates from the southern colonies worried that a war run entirely by New Englanders would fracture colonial unity before it began. John Adams argued in Congress that appointing a Virginian, Washington, as commander would make the army belong to all thirteen colonies rather than one region. It worked: the appointment turned a regional militia crisis into a shared continental cause almost overnight.
QWhat shape was the army in when Washington actually arrived at Cambridge?
Washington found roughly 16,000 men camped around Boston with almost no gunpowder reserves, inconsistent uniforms, and officers elected by their own troops rather than appointed by rank. Sanitation in the camps was poor enough that disease outbreaks were a constant threat. Washington wrote privately that he had walked into a mob rather than an army. He spent months on basic organization, drilling companies and setting up a supply chain, before the force was capable of anything resembling coordinated action.
QHow did captured cannon end the siege without a battle?
In late 1775, a young Continental officer named Henry Knox led an expedition to haul roughly 60 cannon overland from the captured British Fort Ticonderoga in New York to the Boston siege lines, a journey of some 300 miles across frozen terrain using ox teams and sledges. Washington had the guns placed on Dorchester Heights overnight in early March 1776, giving them a clear line onto the British fleet in the harbor. General Howe judged the position unassailable and withdrew his entire force by sea on March 17 rather than risk a bombardment.
