Fearing the onset of the New England winter, with an army short of both clothing and blankets, Washington hoped to strike a telling blow in the autumn. It would be expensive to build winter barracks for so many men, and he would have to chop down a forest of firewood to keep them warm. A minor mutiny among Pennsylvania riflemen on September 10 only fed Washington’s sense of urgency. As Connecticut and Rhode Island enlistments expired with the new year, he feared a total dissolution of his army. “The paymaster has not a single dollar in hand,” he told John Hancock, predicting that without money “the army must absolutely break up.”⁵ He gnashed his teeth over inexperienced militia soldiers, “dragged from the tender scenes of domestic life” and “unaccustomed to the din of arms,” and doubted they could stand up to British regulars, the best trained and equipped army in the world.⁶

From the beginning, Washington heeded a congressional directive that all major military engagements should be approved by a council of war. This committee structure gave a conservative bias to his plans, curbing his more daring impulses. At a war council on September 11, 1775, he presented a dramatic plan for an amphibious assault across Back Bay in flat-bottomed boats, telling the eight generals present that, with the element of surprise, such a plan “did not appear impractical, though hazardous.”⁷ It was roundly defeated by generals who worried that any delay might expose men to a massacre in an outgoing tide. Washington could be persuasive, able to bend men to his will. He “has so happy a faculty of appearing to accommodate and yet carrying his point, that if he was really not one of the best-intentioned men in the world, he might be a very dangerous one,” observed Abigail Adams.⁸ But the vocal New England generals had no qualms about overruling Washington, and he abided, however grudgingly, by their decision. Before long Washington was to say that, had he anticipated the unending difficulties ahead, “all the generals upon earth should not have convinced me of the propriety of delaying an attack upon Boston.”⁹

Despite his own hard-charging nature, Washington realized that, in view of the fragility of his army, it was sometimes better to miss a major opportunity than barge into a costly error. He once lectured the Marquis de Lafayette, “No rational person will condemn you for not fighting with the odds against [you] and while so much is depending on it, but all will censure a rash step if it is not attended with success.”¹⁰ The general strategy would develop into a war of attrition, with the major emphasis on preserving the Continental Army and stalling until it was in suitable condition to fight. To John Adams, Washington later summarized the dilatory strategy as one of “time, caution, and worrying the enemy until we could be better provided with arms and other means and had better disciplined troops to carry it on.”¹¹ Washington was often likened to the Roman general Fabius, who held Hannibal at bay through a prudent strategy of dodging encounters that played to the enemy’s strength. Nevertheless this commonly cited analogy can easily be overstated, for Washington nursed fantasies throughout the war about fighting a grand climactic battle that would end the conflict with a single stroke.

In October Washington entertained a delegation of three congressmen, headed by Benjamin Franklin, who came to ponder military plans. Washington deplored the reliance on ephemeral New England volunteers. Hoping to graduate to a dependable professional army, he requested a new force of twenty thousand men, with enlistments lasting at least one year, a plan ratified by the politicians in Philadelphia. He sensed his visitors’ eagerness for a tremendous victory before the embattled British Army could be relieved by fresh troops in the spring. That October, after King George III declared the upstart colonies to be in a state of open rebellion, the Crown replaced General Thomas Gage—ridiculed as “Blundering Tom” by his men—with the formidable Major General William Howe.¹² Washington knew that all hope for reconciliation with Great Britain had now been snuffed out. Prompted by his visitors, he convened a second war council on October 18, 1775, and informed his generals that he had received “an intimation from the Congress that an attack upon Boston, if practicable, was much desired.”¹³ Of the eight generals, only Nathanael Greene showed enthusiasm for an attack and then only if ten thousand troops could be safely landed in Boston.

That the British were prepared to unleash patent terror to smash patriotic confidence became self-evident on October 24, when word reached camp that four British vessels had arrived at Falmouth, Massachusetts; after warning the inhabitants to evacuate, they had incinerated more than three hundred houses. Profoundly shaken, Washington told General Schuyler that the perpetrators had acted “with every circumstance of cruelty and barbarity which revenge and malice would suggest.”¹⁴ For Washington, who saw the Revolution as an old-fashioned struggle between good and evil, the Falmouth conflagration was further “proof of the diabolical designs” of the leadership in London.¹⁵

Responding to the Falmouth atrocities, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted legislation permitting American privateers to patrol the coast. With the war having idled much of the New England merchant fleet, Washington obtained congressional approval to arm several vessels as privateers that could keep one-third of the value of any British ships captured. Before long six such ships, dubbed “George Washington’s Navy,” prowled the eastern seaboard, marking the birth of the U.S. Navy.¹⁶ Afraid they might operate like lawless pirate ships, Washington demanded impeccable behavior from these privateers. “Whatever prisoners you may take, you are to take with kindness and humanity as far as is consistent with your own safety,” he exhorted the captain of the first schooner fitted out.¹⁷ Washington’s spirits were buoyed in late November by the capture of the British brig Nancy, carrying a small bonanza of weaponry, including two thousand small arms, which Washington celebrated as an “instance of divine favor.”¹⁸ In an action that bespoke exceptional trust in twenty-five-year-old Henry Knox, Washington gave him vast discretionary power to rove through upstate New York and procure any artillery he could find at Fort Ticonderoga or elsewhere and haul it back to Massachusetts.

Often dismayed by his men, Washington never tired in his efforts at moral improvement. Not just a citizen-soldier, he was a citizen-statesman who wanted his troops to uphold high standards of conduct. He wished them to be more than superb soldiers: they should set an example for patriots everywhere. In general orders to his troops, he articulated their ideals and scolded their vices almost daily. Even in the chaos of war, amid the squalor of an army camp, George Washington evinced unflagging belief in civilized conduct.

With the possible exception of gambling, no moral failing made Washington more apoplectic than alcohol abuse. Just as he had faulted Mount Vernon employees for excessive drinking, he grew vigilant about bibulous generals. In a “Memorandum on General Officers” that he later drew up as president, he recorded the demerits of each general and in almost every case commented on his drinking habits. He faulted one as “rather addicted to ease and pleasure—and no enemy it is said to the bottle,” while another “by report is addicted to drinking.”¹⁹ The chief dilemma in curbing alcohol consumption was that strong drink fortified the spirits of troops. As Washington told John Hancock, the “benefits arising from moderate use of liquor have been experienced in all armies and are not to be disputed.”²⁰ It was hard to keep drinking within bounds, however, especially when tavern keepers rushed to slake the thirst of idle men. Washington meted out dozens of lashes to those found guilty of drunkenness and began regulating purveyors of liquor.