Two men in blue, members of a German baron’s military recruiting party, noticed Candide, a wandering young man down on his luck, sitting in a corner of a tavern. “Now there’s a well-made fellow,” said one to the other, and they quickly moved in on their prey. Striking up a conversation after offering to buy the destitute lad food and drink, they asked Candide whether or not he was “an admirer of the king?” ‎“Good heavens no,” said Candide, “I have never seen him.” Disregarding his answer, the recruiters asked Candide if he would at least drink a toast, compliments...

In 1776, Captain Alexander Graydon was sent into the Pennsylvania hinterlands on a recruiting trip for the Continental army. Finding no one willing to sign the terms of enlistment, he slipped across the Maryland border, hoping, he stated, “that [he] might find some seamen or longshoremen there, out of employ.”¹ His efforts yielded only one recruit, a man deemed so valueless by his community that a local wag informed Graydon that the recruit “would do to stop a bullet as well as a better man, as he was truly a worthless dog.”² Graydon later wrote that his problems with recruitment...

Probably in no part of Europe was the effect of the American revolt and British policy more deeply debated, written about, or considered than in Ireland. For many Americans, Ireland was a kindred spirit and an entity separate from Great Britain; it was another land held in subjugation and oppression. Stories carried to America by emigrants strengthened the connection between the two colonies. The British, on the other hand, viewed Ireland “with the assurance of a landowner speaking of the remote corners of his estate.”¹

Past historiography on Irish participation in the American Revolution has confined itself to arguments about...

On a hot July day in 1775, John Adams and several other members of Congress commiserated about the recruitment of men for the Continental army. An idea came to Adams, however, when a German citizen of Pennsylvania walked through the front doors of Independence Hall. Wearing the full uniform of a Prussian “deaths-head” Hussar, the German soldier “appeared like an apparition.” “He was the most warlike person” Adams had ever seen. After proclaiming that he could raise fifty other men just like himself, the German strode out the doors of Congress determined to recruit some of his countrymen for Continental...

Cash Africa, a free African American citizen of Litchfield, Connecticut, joined the Continental army along with thousands of other young men in the early months of the war. His decision to become a soldier was not hard to understand. After living nearly hand-to-mouth in a society where racial prejudice, bigotry, and poverty abounded, a few months’ service in the army for good wages seemed like a very lucrative offer indeed. Remaining in the ranks until 23 November 1775, Africa was forcibly discharged due to a congressional policy change that had previously allowed African Americans the right to enlist in the...

Nine days after the Boston Tea Party, a white family that had recently moved into newly acquired territory near the headwaters of the Ogeechee River in the colony of Georgia was massacred by Indians. The following month, the Coweta Creeks attacked a fort west of Wrightsborough and killed twenty more whites. Two weeks later, the Georgia militia were routed by Creek warriors. The Georgians refused to serve any further and went home “with this silly speech in their mouths” according to theGeorgia Gazette, “that their families were dear to them, that they were in danger, and that they were...

Like “circuses come to town,” Continental recruiting parties in 1776 fanned out across the thirteen colonies in hopes of enticing men to join the army. Joseph Plumb Martin was one of the many drawn to the commotion caused by the fifes and drums of musicians who entertained the gathering crowd with martial tunes. Martin lived with his grandparents in Connecticut and had already served a short enlistment earlier in the war. But an “elbow relation,” with “a Lieutenant’s commission in the standing army,” continually harangued his grandparents whose consent was necessary for his reenlistment. The lieutenant had even sent a...

Cannons boomed out a warning and signal rockets lit up the New Jersey sky. Suddenly, cheering soldiers poured forth from their huts with their muskets. The men of the Pennsylvania line had mutinied. With pent-up fury and indignation, the soldiers seized several artillery pieces, loaded them with grapeshot, and rushed toward the parade ground. Officers who attempted to quell the mutiny were shot, bayoneted, or roughed up by their own soldiers.¹ Lieutenant Enos Reeves watched as General Anthony Wayne and Colonel Richard Butler pleaded with their men to disperse and return to their huts; their pleas “had no effect.” The...

Toward the end of the Revolution, Joseph Plumb Martin chanced upon the army as it passed a crossroads. He stated that he had never before had such an opportunity to see the entire army as it marched. What he saw was “truly amazing.” “There was Tag, Rag, and Bobtail; some in rags and some in jags, but none in velvet gowns.” The army’s soldiery, Martin insisted, “beggared all description.” He marveled at the great array of dialects and languages spoken by the equally great variety of soldiers as they marched by. “There was the Irish and Scotch brogue, murdered English,...