The Secret of George Washington’s Revolutionary Success

The American Revolution was won by dramatic deeds, but also by decidedly undramatic efforts.

Excerpt: "In August 1775, nothing particularly dramatic was happening among the roughly 14,000 soldiers of the Continental Army besieging the British army in Boston. Indeed, nothing particularly dramatic happened for the next six months.

And then, in March 1776, the British suddenly evacuated Boston. Which is why the months of apparent calm deserve a close look.

The semiquincentennial of American independence has begun: The anniversaries of the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill are behind us; the reenactment of Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys’ storming Fort Ticonderoga was a smashing success. Other big moments await, culminating, no doubt, in a big party on July 4, 2026. One hopes and expects that there will be plenty of hoopla, because that is the American way.

But 250 years ago today, the real and unspectacular work of American independence was under way. The Continental Army, created in June of 1775, had warily welcomed its new leader, George Washington, without much fuss.

A slaveholding Virginia gentleman and loosely religious Anglican was going to lead an army that was mainly made up of New Englanders—including both psalm-singing, Bible-quoting descendants of the Puritans and dissenting freethinkers.

For his part, Washington was appalled at what he saw: militia units that elected their own officers and called them by their first names, free Black men carrying weapons, money-grubbing Yankees (as opposed to land-grubbing Virginia gentry), and general squalor. “They are an exceeding dirty and nasty people,” he told his cousin Lund Washington.