From his earliest days as a soldier he had favored
conscription, even in free Virginia. He had then found quite
ineffective the "whooping, holloing gentlemen soldiers" of the
volunteer force of the colony among whom "every individual has
his own crude notion of things and must undertake to direct. If
his advice is neglected he thinks himself slighted, abused, and
injured and, to redress his wrongs, will depart for his home."
Washington found at Cambridge too many officers. Then as later in
the American army there were swarms of colonels. The officers
from Massachusetts, conscious that they had seen the first
fighting in the great cause, expected special consideration from
a stranger serving on their own soil. Soon they had a rude
awakening. Washington broke a Massachusetts colonel and two
captains because they had proved cowards at Bunker Hill, two more
captains for fraud in drawing pay and provisions for men who did
not exist, and still another for absence from his post when he
was needed. He put in jail a colonel, a major, and three or four
other officers. "New lords, new laws," wrote in his diary Mr.
Emerson, the chaplain: "the Generals Washington and Lee are upon
the lines every day... great distinction is made between officers
and soldiers.
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