Washington Leads Continental Army: Unifying the Colonies Against Britain

George Washington assumed command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on July 3, 1775, taking charge of a force that barely qualified as an army. The Continental Congress had created the position and appointed Washington two weeks earlier, selecting him partly for his military experience in the French and Indian War, partly because he was a Virginian whose appointment would bind the Southern colonies to a conflict that had so far been fought entirely in New England, and partly because he showed up to Congress wearing his old military uniform, signaling his availability without having to ask. What Washington found at Cambridge was not encouraging: roughly 14,000 men organized into militia companies from different colonies, with no unified command structure, inconsistent supplies, limited ammunition, and enlistments that would expire within months. Many soldiers had simply brought their own weapons from home. Washington spent the next months imposing discipline, organizing the rabble into something resembling a professional force, and confronting the fundamental problem that would plague the Continental Army throughout the war: Congress could authorize the army but could not reliably fund it, supply it, or force the states to provide the troops they promised. Washington held this disintegrating institution together through eight years of war, crossing the Delaware, surviving Valley Forge, and accepting the British surrender at Yorktown. When the Treaty of Paris ended the war in 1783, most of the Continental Army was disbanded. The First and Second Regiments survived and became the nucleus of the United States Army.