The men carried weapons some of which, in, at any rate, the early days of the war, were made by hand at the village smithy.A man might take to the war a weapon forged by himself.The American soldier had this advantage over the British soldier, that he used, if not generally, at least in some cases, not the smooth-bore musket but the grooved rifle by which the ball was made to rotate in its flight.The fire from this rifle was extremely accurate.At first weapons were few and ammunition was scanty, but in time there were importations from France and also supplies from American gun factories.The standard length of the barrel was three and a half feet, a portentous size compared with that of the modern weapon.The loading was from the muzzle, a process so slow that one of the favorite tactics of the time was to await the fire of the enemy and then charge quickly and bayonet him before he could reload.The old method of firing off the musket by means of slow matches kept alight during action was now obsolete; the latest device was the flintlock.But there was always a measure of doubt whether the weapon would go off.Partly on this account Benjamin Franklin, the wisest man of his time, declared for the use of the pike of an earlier age rather than the bayonet and for bows and arrows instead of firearms.Asoldier, he said, could shoot four arrows to one bullet.An arrow wound was more disabling than a bullet wound; and arrows did not becloud the vision with smoke.The bullet remained, however, the chief means of destruction, and the fire of Washington's soldiers usually excelled that of the British.These, in their turn, were superior in the use of the bayonet.
Powder and lead were hard to get.The inventive spirit of America was busy with plans to procure saltpeter and other ingredients for making powder, but it remained scarce.Since there was no standard firearm, each soldier required bullets specially suited to his weapon.The men melted lead and cast it in their own bullet-molds.It is an instance of the minor ironies of war that the great equestrian statue of George III, which had been erected in New York in days more peaceful, was melted into bullets for killing that monarch's soldiers.Another necessity was paper for cartridges and wads.The cartridge of that day was a paper envelope containing the charge of ball and powder.This served also as a wad, after being emptied of its contents, and was pushed home with a ramrod.A store of German Bibles in Pennsylvania fell into the hands of the soldiers at a moment when paper was a crying need, and the pages of these Bibles were used for wads.
The artillery of the time seems feeble compared with the monster weapons of death which we know in our own age.Yet it was an important factor in the war.It is probable that before the war not a single cannon had been made in the colonies.From the outset Washington was hampered for lack of artillery.Neutrals, especially the Dutch in the West Indies, sold guns to the Americans, and France was a chief source of supply during long periods when the British lost the command of the sea.There was always difficulty about equipping cavalry, especially in the North.The Virginian was at home on horseback, and in the farther South bands of cavalry did service during the later years of the war, but many of the fighting riders of today might tomorrow be guiding their horses peacefully behind the plough.
The pay of the soldiers remained to Washington a baffling problem.When the war ended their pay was still heavily in arrears.The States were timid about imposing taxation and few if any paid promptly the levies made upon them.Congress bridged the chasm in finance by issuing paper money which so declined in value that, as Washington said grimly, it required a wagon-load of money to pay for a wagon-load of supplies.The soldier received his pay in this money at its face value, and there is little wonder that the "continental dollar" is still in the United States a symbol of worthlessness.At times the lack of pay caused mutiny which would have been dangerous but for Washington's firm and tactful management in the time of crisis.
There was in him both the kindly feeling of the humane man and the rigor of the army leader.He sent men to death without flinching, but he was at one with his men in their sufferings, and no problem gave him greater anxiety than that of pay, affecting, as it did, the health and spirits of men who, while unpaid, had no means of softening the daily tale of hardship.
Desertion was always hard to combat.With the homesickness which led sometimes to desertion Washington must have had a secret sympathy, for his letters show that he always longed for that pleasant home in Virginia which he did not allow himself to revisit until nearly the end of the war.The land of a farmer on service often remained untilled, and there are pathetic cases of families in bitter need because the breadwinner was in the army.
In frontier settlements his absence sometimes meant the massacre of his family by the savages.There is little wonder that desertion was common, so common that after a reverse the men went away by hundreds.As they usually carried with them their rifles and other equipment, desertion involved a double loss.On one occasion some soldiers undertook for themselves the punishment of deserters.Men of the First Pennsylvania Regiment who had recaptured three deserters, beheaded one of them and returned to their camp with the head carried on a pole.More than once it happened that condemned men were paraded before the troops for execution with the graves dug and the coffins lying ready.The death sentence would be read, and then, as the firing party took aim, a reprieve would be announced.The reprieve in such circumstances was omitted often enough to make the condemned endure the real agony of death.
