The Story of America: Story of the American Soldier

In order to form a more perfect. Our lives, our fortune and our sacred honor. Just over 231,000 men served in the Continental army during the American revolution and only 48,000 ever served at the same time. How many can you name? George Washington probably comes to mind. Maybe Hamilton, Lafayette? If you're a real history buff, you might remember Nathaniel Greene or John Stark. How about all the others? Who remembers the ordinary soldiers who won our independence? I'm Michael Knowles and I remember one of those soldiers. Not because he led a famous regiment or went on to hold any high office. There's no monument to his service other than a small headstone in a far flung cemetery with a simple four word epitaph. Soldier of the Revolution. And I remember that soldier because he's my great great great great great grandpa, Simon Knowles. Like most continental soldiers, Simon's name appears in the appendix of a history book. If not for a single army pension application written almost 50 years after the fact, no one would know a thing about his service. But Providence and Congress so arranged things that we do know about his service and the service of tens of thousands of his fellow rank and file soldiers. Simon signed up to fight at the tender age of 15 and he served throughout the entire war, from the battle of Bunker Hill in 1775 across the Delaware with Washington, to the battles of Trenton, Princeton and Saratoga, through the bitter winter at Valley Forge, all the way through final victory at Yorktown and then to an honorable discharge once again with Washington at Newburgh in 1783. After the war, Simon, like most of his fellow veterans, became a farmer. He didn't own much. His estate comprised a heifer, a sword from his father and a walking cane. Personal effects, all of the value of $1. This relative poverty, common among the men who won the Revolution, was a hardship for him, but a blessing to us because it prompted these patriots to detail their service in official government documents in exchange for a modest stipend in their old age. But money was never a top priority for these men. The teenagers and 20 somethings who enlisted and re enlisted in the Continental army might have done so with the promise of pay. But that pay rarely came on time. Even when it did, it was worth less than the paper it was printed on. A wagon load of Continental dollars would hardly buy a wagon load of provisions. The men were paid as though they were volunteers, but they were expected to fight like a professional army general. Stark trained his men in the finer points of warfare, including the bayonet, which astonished the Hessians in the surprise attack at Trenton Hessians survivors recounted that the American troops charged with a ferocity and discipline more characteristic of elite European forces than of a ragtag New World militia. These ordinary soldiers skill in battle was all the more impressive given the fact that they were usually starving. At Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-1778, meat and bread all but disappeared. The men lived on fire cakes, flour and water paste for days on end. The most common refrain from the feeble huts that lined the camp was no meat. Joseph plumb Martin was 17 years old when he encamped at Valley Forge. Oftentimes, he wrote, have I gone 1, 2, 3, even 4 days without a morsel, unless the fields or forests might chance to afford enough to prevent absolute starvation. Often, when I have picked the last grain from the bones of my scanty morsel, have I eat the very bones, as much of them as possibly could be eaten, and then have had to perform some hard and fatiguing duty. One in six soldiers died that winter, those who survived the bullets and bayonets of the British, as well as the constant malnutrition, disease, dysentery, typhus, smallpox, and exposure. General Washington reported that by late December of that year, not less than 2,898 men were unfit for duty by reason of their being barefoot and otherwise naked. Many couldn't walk on their frostbitten feet. And Valley Forge wasn't even the coldest winter. Two years later, during the winter of 1779-1780, one sentry froze to death at his post in Morristown, New Jersey. When the Continental soldiers weren't freezing, they were dropping from heat stroke. At the Battle of Monmouth In June of 1778, countless soldiers collapsed and dozens died from heat exhaustion. One sergeant recalled that the sun baked soldiers drank from mud puddles as they ducked British cannonballs. But the endless suffering was only one part of the story, and the minor part at that. The crucial fact of that battle, of the whole Revolution really, was that the Americans stood their ground before the British slunk away. The patriots had proved that they could face the finest army on earth in open battle, despite an incomparable disadvantage in training and supplies. Unfortunately, the morale boost did not improve material conditions on the ground. When soldiers ran out of food in Maine during Colonel Arnold's expedition to Quebec, they boiled leather for soup after seven days with no kind of nourishment but roots and black birch bark. Private William Beggs recalled his party of soldiers ate a stray horse, and they were lucky to have found him. On the Sullivan Campaign in 1779, soldiers had to settle for horse feed as overstretched supply lines reduced them to half rations without flour. And still they managed to rout Tory Rangers and their Iroquois allies at the Battle of Newtown, a major military victory, albeit one that cost them their clothes. One private, Nathan Davis, recalled that his uniform had been cut to rags by marching through woods and thickets. Many men walked bare chested. The lucky ones wore Indian leggings. Some wore little more than loincloths. But they had broken the Indian strength and advanced the army's campaign. Occasionally, troops mutinied. Who could blame them? But most did not. In Simon's New Hampshire line, no major mutiny ever broke out. These men had not signed up for good food, warm clothes, or pity parties. But they enlisted with a purpose to defend their country. And the defense of one's country entails sacrifice. Modern people sometimes struggle to believe that others are not as cynical as they themselves. They believe that all human action must derive from selfish material interest. The ordinary soldiers who signed up to fight for American independence confound these cynics because they didn't stand to gain much of anything, at least materially, for their troubles, what motivated them was more valuable. Honor, virtue, ideals. Ensign Samuel Cooper wrote to his wife in July 1775, the dangers we are to encounter, I know not, but it shall never be said to my children, your father was a coward. These soldiers took leave of their families, some of whom disagreed even with the cause of independence. They endured and overcame their hardships, for in the words of Massachusetts soldier James Davenport, liberty, peace and independence forever. If the soldiers had one fear, it was the indifference of their countrymen, that their sacrifices would be in vain and their cause soon forgotten. At Valley Forge, Dr. Albigence Waldo was described the dread in his there comes a soldier. He comes and cries, I fail fast. I shall soon be no more, and all the reward I shall get will be poor. Will is dead. In 1780, the Continental Congress voted to give a reward at least to officers who had served in the Revolution, half pay for life, a courtesy later amended to full pay for five years. The ordinary soldier, on the other hand, returned home with next to nothing worthless promissory notes and a pat on the back. It took an additional 38 years, and for most soldiers, more than half a century, for Congress finally to offer a reward to the destitute veterans who had not already died. Even in their old age and penury, these veterans once again gave their country a greater gift than anything they received. In return. They told us who they were and what they did, and not one of their names was ordinary. No man is ordinary. Each man suffers and delights, fails and triumphs in his own way. Or in the words of the poet of the Revolution, Philip Freneau. Far, far from domes where splendid tapers glare Tis his from dear bought peace no wealth to win Removed alike From courtly cringing squires the great man's levy and the proud man's grin Sold are those arms which once on Britons blazed When flushed with conquest to the charge they came, that power repelled and freedom's fabric raised she leaves her soldier famine and name. Sa.