As the nation marks the 250^th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution, Eliot Cohen at the Atlantic has an interesting article on George Washington’s seemingly undramatic days in Boston in 1775. They didn’t include dramatic battles, marches, meetings and pronouncements. But they were still critical days. From Cohen:

“What happened that summer outside Boston was of monumental importance. If this was to be an American army and not just an assembly of colonial militias, then Washington would have to be the first American general, and not just a provincial. He would have to create a system out of chaos, and hold together a force against a dangerous enemy.”

And he did so while experiencing a major culture clash in New England:

“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.”

Painting above ‘George Washington at Dorchester Heights.’