The Congress still lacked a consensus about declaring independence from Great Britain, favoring a purely defensive posture instead of initiating hostilities. The delegates were both thrilled and flustered by news that colonial troops, spearheaded by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, had overrun a British garrison at Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain in upstate New York, producing a huge windfall of cannon and military stores. An ambivalent Congress vowed to return the fort to Great Britain after “the restoration of the former harmony” that the Congress “so ardently wished for.”⁸ The northern colonies protested, regarding the fort as a necessary bulwark against a British invasion from Canada. As evidenced by his uniform, Washington was dubious about reconciliation, but he continued, at least for the record, to support measures to resolve the conflict amicably. Chances for a happy outcome dimmed on May 25 when the frigate Cerberus, bearing thirty-two guns, arrived in Boston Harbor, and three major generals in the British Army—John Burgoyne, Henry Clinton, and William Howe—stepped ashore. Washington clung to the wistful hope that Parliament, not the king, was to blame for these measures, telling George William Fairfax on May 31 that “we do not, nor cannot yet prevail upon ourselves to call them the king’s troops.”⁹

On May 24 Peyton Randolph had to return to the Virginia assembly and was replaced as president by John Hancock of Massachusetts. When the Congress agreed in early June to buy gunpowder “for the Continental Army,” the ragtag forces facing the British in Boston were still composed exclusively of New England militias.¹⁰ Then on June 14 the Congress gave the conflict a more sweeping complexion by authorizing ten companies from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to march north and reinforce those regional troops. There arose a sudden need for a commander to direct the disparate units and meld them into an effective fighting force. The senior figure in Cambridge was then Artemas Ward, a storekeeper from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, whom Charles Lee ridiculed as “a fat old gentleman who had been a popular churchwarden.”¹¹ While not everybody was so dismissive of the Harvard-educated Ward, few beyond New England considered him the ideal man to shoulder the burden of the patriotic cause.

Since Virginia was the most populous colony, it seemed logical that the perfect commander would hail from that state. Rich and ambitious John Hancock hoped to use the Congress presidency as his springboard to the top military job, but even some fellow New Englanders believed that, for the sake of political unity, a Virginian made eminently good sense. Both John and Samuel Adams regarded Washington’s appointment as the political linchpin needed to bind the colonies together. Many southerners feared that the New Englanders were a rash, obstinate people, prone to extremism, and worried that an army led by a New England general might someday turn despotic and conquer the South. The appointment of George Washington would soothe such fears and form a perfect political compromise between North and South.

John Adams enjoyed the curious distinction of being Washington’s most important advocate at the Congress and one of his more severe detractors in later years. Rather small and paunchy, with a sharp mind and an argumentative personality, Adams was a farsighted prophet of independence, the curmudgeon who spoke uncomfortable truths. He later worried that when the history of the American Revolution was written, he would be consigned to the role of spear carrier, while George Washington and Ben Franklin would be glorified as the real protagonists of the drama. No less driven than Adams, Washington kept his ambition in check behind a modest, laconic personality, whereas Adams’s ambition often seemed irrepressible.

In 1807 John Adams would write a scathingly funny letter in which he listed the “ten talents” that had propelled George Washington to fame in June 1775. The first four dealt with physical attributes—“a handsome face,” “tall stature,” “an elegant form,” and “graceful attitudes and movements”—traits that the short, rotund Adams decidedly lacked.¹² Two others concerned Washington’s extraordinary self-possession: “He possessed the gift of silence” and “He had great self-command.”¹³ Since Adams was neither guarded nor silent, he would have been especially sensitive to these traits. He also saw that Washington exerted more power by withholding opinions than by expressing them. Still another advantage was that Washington was a Virginian, and “Virginian geese are all swans.”¹⁴ It also helped that Washington was wealthy—almost everyone at the Congress was mesmerized by his willingness to hazard his money in the cause: “There is nothing . . . to which mankind bow down with more reverence than to great fortune.”¹⁵ The ideology of the day claimed that property rendered a man more independent, which presumably made Washington immune to British bribery.

When comparing Washington with other rivals for the top position—especially Horatio Gates and Charles Lee—one sees that he had superior presence, infinitely better judgment, more political cunning, and unmatched gravitas. With nothing arrogant or bombastic in his nature, he had the perfect temperament for leadership. He was also born in North America, which was considered essential. Endowed with an enormous sense of responsibility, he inspired trust and confidence. A man of the happy medium, conciliatory by nature, he lent a reassuring conservatism to the Revolution. Smoothly methodical and solidly reliable, he seemed not to make mistakes. “He is a complete gentleman,” Thomas Cushing, a Massachusetts delegate, wrote about Washington. “He is sensible, amiable, virtuous, modest, and brave.”¹⁶ The delegates favored Washington as much for the absence of conspicuous weaknesses as for his manifest strengths. Eliphalet Dyer of Connecticut captured Washington’s steady presence: “He seems discreet and virtuous, no harum-scarum, ranting, swearing fellow, but sober, steady, and calm.”¹⁷ The hallmark of Washington’s career was that he didn’t seek power but let it come to him. “I did not solicit the command,” he later said, “but accepted it after much entreaty.”¹⁸ No less important for a man who would have to answer to the Congress, he was a veteran politician with sixteen years of experience as a burgess, ensuring that he would subordinate himself to civilian control. Things seldom happened accidentally to George Washington, but he managed them with such consummate skill that they often seemed to happen accidentally. By 1775 he had a fine sense of power—how to gain it, how to keep it, how to wield it.

ON JUNE 14 the Congress officially took charge of the troops in Boston, giving birth to the Continental Army and creating an urgent need for a commander in chief. By this point the delegates were so impressed by the self-effacing Washington that his appointment was virtually a fait accompli. As a Virginia delegate wrote that day: “Col. Washington has been pressed to take the supreme command of the American troops encamped at Roxbury and I believe will accept the appointment, though with much reluctance, he being deeply impressed with the importance of that honorable trust and diffident of his own (superior) abilities.”¹⁹ The only serious competitor was Hancock, who had little military experience and was hobbled by gout. When John Adams rose to speak and alluded to Washington, the latter jumped up from his seat near the door and with “his usual modesty darted into the library room,” recalled Adams.²⁰ Expecting Adams to nominate him, Hancock watched with smug satisfaction until Adams named Washington instead—at which point the smile fled from his face. “Mortification and resentment were expressed as forcibly as his face could exhibit them,” Adams said. “ . . . Mr. Hancock never loved me so well after this event as he had done before.”²¹ That Washington handled the moment with such tact, even as Hancock gave proof of patent egotism, only made his circumspect manner the more appealing.