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The Revolutionary War's Global Impact

• Michele McAloon

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Professor John Ferling takes us on a captivating journey through the international dimensions of America's founding conflict in "Shots Heard Around the World: America, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary War." As we approach the 250th anniversary of American independence, this conversation reveals how our revolution emerged from the ashes of the Seven Years' War, when France began meticulously planning revenge against Britain after their devastating 1763 defeat.

The Revolutionary War proves far more complex and precarious than our national mythology suggests. British leaders initially believed they could quickly suppress colonial resistance, while American patriots hoped international pressure might force British concessions without prolonged conflict. Meanwhile, France's foreign minister Vergennes orchestrated a masterful long game—first providing secret aid, then openly joining the American cause in 1778 once French naval power had been rebuilt.

What makes this discussion particularly illuminating is Ferling's attention to the human dimension of the struggle. Continental soldiers endured unimaginable hardships, with mortality rates approaching 40%—far higher than American losses in World Wars I and II combined. The decisive Battle of Yorktown in 1781 represented an almost miraculous alignment of circumstances, as French naval forces under Admiral de Grasse arrived at precisely the right moment to trap Cornwallis's army.

Why should Americans today care about these international dimensions? Because they reveal how contingent our independence truly was. Without French strategic vision, financial support, and military intervention, the Revolution likely would have failed. Ferling makes a compelling case that Vergennes deserves recognition alongside Washington, Franklin, and Adams as a founding father of American independence.

What questions does this perspective raise about how we commemorate our national origins? How might understanding the Revolution's global context shape our approach to international alliances today? Listen now to discover how America's birth was fundamentally shaped by a worldwide struggle for power and the complex web of relationships that made independence possible.

Michele McAloon:

Hello, welcome back to the end of the summer. You are listening to Crossword, where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word, and my name is Michele McAloon. Okay, I've gotten off my summer duff and decided to go ahead and start. I can't believe it my fourth season of podcasting. I have over 200 episodes and it has been quite a journey. Today I'm going to interview Professor John Ferling.

Michele McAloon:

Shots Heard Around the World, america, britain and Europe in the Revolutionary War A great book to start off our season, because this season I'm going to really concentrate on American revolutionary books, or the sesquicentennial. I challenge going to really concentrate on American Revolutionary Books, or the Sesquicentennial. I challenge you to say that 10 times fast. It means the 250th year celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. This book that I am doing the interview with today, with Professor Ferling, is a great starter book. Also, rick Atkinson's books, the Revolutionary Trilogy. They are great history books that cover the sweep of time and really read like a novel.

Michele McAloon:

And I hope you stay with me this season. I hope you tell your friends about me because Crossword, at the end of the day, is a nonfiction author book podcast. But what I'm really trying to do is sit down with authors whose works spark curiosity, they challenge our perspectives and they tell the stories that shape our world. And the best things that we can do as human beings is to be in conversation, talking to each other, forming community. So I hope readers out there when they hear one of my podcast interviews, they buy the book, they read the book and they tell their friends about the book and it engenders conversation. You can find more information about me at bookcluescom.

Michele McAloon:

This year I'll try to post more about books and blogs and things that are being read and what leaders are saying and what listeners are saying. Thank you, god bless. Hello folks, we are so lucky to welcome Professor John Ferling. He has written a wonderful book Shots Heard Around the World, america, britain and Europe in the Revolutionary War, and it is a great book to start off the semi-quincentennial or the 250th year celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which we will celebrate next July 4th, 2026. Welcome to the show, professor Ferling.

Professor John Ferling:

Well, thank you for having me.

Michele McAloon:

Professor Ferling is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of West Georgia. He is the author of many books on the American Revolution, including Jefferson and Hamilton, also Whirlwind, a finalist for the 2015 Kirkus Book Prize and most recently winning Independence. He and his wife, carol, live near Atlanta and you know readers this book. If your history is kind of the Betsy Ross sewing the flags that you got from grammar school, but you want to kind of dive more into Revolutionary War history, this is a great book for doing this. It really is, and it is so well written and it's so engagingly told. So I love this book, professor Ferling it's so engagingly told.

Professor John Ferling:

So I love this book, professor Ferling. Great, I'm just overjoyed that you did.

Michele McAloon:

It really is. It's a good one, your book, the Revolutionary War. It really is from the very beginning and, as you say in the introduction, it's a war, that it's basically a world war. It was born out of a world war. It was born out of the Seven Year War which went 1756 to about 1763, around that timeframe, a European-based war, but that was also actually fought between the French and British in Canada, in North America. But it's also a book about relationships, whether it's international relationships, whether it's personal relationships, whether it's governmental relationships. You really show how this all goes in to actually making the Revolutionary War and you do a great job of putting it in the historical context of how and why it happened and when it happened. What do you think the influence of the Seven Year War was on the American Revolution?

Professor John Ferling:

Its influence was enormous because France and Spain both lost in the Seven Years War. The Seven Years War was the fourth war that Great Britain had fought France over a period of 75 years, and the French came out of the other wars in pretty good shape. But they lost disastrously in the Seven Years' War. They lost territory. Their navy was pretty much completely destroyed. Amy was pretty much completely destroyed. They lost most of their access to the Newfoundland fisheries, which may not sound that important, but it was a crucial industry. It generated a great deal of wealth and training of men to be sailors in the French Navy and whatever. So the French lost heavily and even before the war was over and they knew that they were going to be defeated, they were beginning to plan for the next war, in the sense that they had begun to rebuild their navy.

Professor John Ferling:

All too often in history, I think, one war is the trigger for the next war. That was the case in this instance that the French were committed from 1763, when the Seven Years' War ended, to another war with Britain, a war of revenge and redemption to restore France to its previously exalted place. But it couldn't be done overnight. They had to rebuild their navy, and building ships took a long, long time in the 18th century, given the technology of the time. So they set about rebuilding their navy and from the very beginning they thought this was a process that would probably not be completed until around 1778, that it would take them around a dozen years to reach a point where they could contest the British on the high seas, and if they would be combined with Spain, their traditional ally, they would have actual naval superiority. So both Spain and France began reconstructing their navy and then biding their time until they could go to war with Britain again.

Michele McAloon:

I tell you, you really see this as in the sweep of time, in the sweep of history, because you really do see that you go from the Seven-Year War to the American Revolution, to the War of 1812, to Napoleon and finally to the Congress of Vienna in 1815. So you really see the sweep of war in history and you know something If you don't want war to continue, don't go to war. I mean, and we've learned that time and time again, haven't we? Wars don't solve wars.

Michele McAloon:

Unfortunately, going into this war, you talk about French and you you have some great one liners. You talk about the sulfurous hatred the French had for the British. But all of everyone goes to war with a certain assumptions and sometimes those assumptions are wrong and sometimes those assumptions are right. What assumptions did the British and French have going into war, into supporting either fighting against the Continentals, fighting against the Americans, or supporting the Americans? And actually, what assumptions did the US Continentals have at the beginning of the Revolutionary War? That's kind of a convoluted question, but I do think we have to talk about what they assumed and what they hoped to achieve.

Professor John Ferling:

Sure, and as is the case in a great many wars, the assumptions that preceded the war turned out to be wrong in many, many instances. Always In this particular case, I think the British really tried to avoid war. I mean, they began to have problems with the colonies around the middle 1760s, with the colonial protests against the Stamp Act and tightening the customs regulations and whatever. But they appeased the colonists for a great many years with repealing legislation, modifying legislation, trying what they could. But eventually the colonists defiance reached a point that the British had to make a choice we have to use force or we have to capitulate to them, and capitulation might mean losing the colony. So the British I think in late 1774, made the decision to use force. It was something that they decided on after the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia defied them and refused to concede to the coercivax that the British had passed, and so the British decided to use force. And at that point I think the British felt that they would use force and it would mean war. But it would be a very short war. The colonists didn't have an army, they didn't have a legacy of unification, the colonists pretty much stood alone and in previous wars they had not cooperated with one another. The colonists didn't have a navy, they didn't have the means of sustaining themselves during the long wars a very agricultural economy in North America at that time and so I think the British just felt that it would be a short war. Some felt that the British Navy alone could suppress the rebellion and others thought one battle would be all that would be required. They did have some pretty good British authorities.

Professor John Ferling:

Lord North was the prime minister and he and his cabinet had pretty good intelligence from the commander of the British Army, general Thomas Gage, who was also the last royal governor of Massachusetts. And General Gage kept telling them well, look, this is a widespread rebellion. You think it's centered in Massachusetts and New England and there's not much support for it outside of New England, which you're wrong. It's a widespread rebellion, and so if you make the decision to go to war, you need to commit a large army to America before the war begins, because the first battle can be really crucial. If we just absolutely destroy the Americans in that first engagement, then people in Pennsylvania and Virginia and South Carolina and whatever are going to say we just can't fight the British, they're too powerful. But Lord North's government didn't listen. And it went to war with maybe 6,000 troops in America and they were scattered around so that they really were unprepared for war and it was the first major mistake, I think, that the British made in going to war.

Professor John Ferling:

So the British, I think, were just on the wrong track, I guess, when they made their choice. The Americans, on the other hand, I guess, when they made their choice, the Americans, on the other hand, I think, were divided. John Adams was a delegate to the First Continental Congress and he came home and he wrote a letter and he said the members of the Congress are afraid of war, they don't want to go to war and I think generally I was probably right. They hope to avoid to war. And I think generally I was probably right, they hoped to avoid a war. But on the other hand, more and more of them felt that they had no choice, they didn't want to capitulate to the demands that the British were making of them. And I think they felt like probably a majority of them when the second Congress met, just about the time the war began in spring of 1775, the majority in Congress felt that if the colonists could maintain themselves for maybe a year or so, maybe even defeat the British one or two times in small engagements, the British might decide this just isn't worth the effort and they would make the concessions that could avoid the war.

Professor John Ferling:

As far as the French were concerned, they were just watching very carefully to see what happened. From the moment the British learned of the first colonial protests in the mid-1760s, they sent secret agents over to America to snoop around and try to determine whether this might lead to a revolution, whether there was anything they could do to help bring about a revolution against England, and what chances the colonists had if they did go to war. And the secret agents, year after year, pretty much reported the same thing back to the French government the revolution is unlikely and the colonists don't have the ability to wage a long war against the British. So the French just otherwise pretty much stayed out of it until they did learn that war had broken out on April 19th 1775 at Lexington and Concord and along so-called Battle Road between Concord and Boston. And once the French learned that war had broken out, then they sent another agent over to America to meet with Congress.

Professor John Ferling:

Another agent over to America to meet with Congress, and it was an agent named Akard Bonvillard who arrived in Philadelphia just before Christmas of 1775, which would be seven or eight months after the first shots of the war, and Bonvillard was posing as a French businessman and he met with several congressmen, and they met in secret. In fact they met so secretly that most of the members of Congress didn't know that they were, that Benjamin Franklin and a couple of other congressmen were even meeting with Bonvelar. They met at Carpenter's Hall. They met at Carpenter's Hall, and out of that meeting Bonvillard went back to Paris and he reported that the colonists do have the means of waging war. They've got zillions of militiamen, he said, and they have a continental army that's well-led, with lots of experienced officers. Their problem is they don't have the means of waging war, they don't have the weaponry, they don't have the munitions, the men don't have uniforms and whatever, and so they would need help. And so the French then had to make a least. In the short haul.

Professor John Ferling:

The French made the decision to provide secret aid to the Americans. I mentioned a little bit earlier that their target date for completing the rehabilitation of the Navy was 1778. So they're still about two years away from that, and so they had to keep their aid to the American secret. I mean, I think they really knew that it wouldn't be secret for that long. The British would catch on with what was going on, and sure enough the British did.

Professor John Ferling:

But the British hoped to avoid a war with France if they could and they thought they could defeat the Americans, get it over with before the French and the Spanish came into the war. And so the French make the decision to provide secret assistance to the Americans, and that's a decision that finalized in the late spring of 1776. And it takes a while to get all of that material together and then it has to be shipped across the sea, so it's not going to arrive in America until 1777. So 1776, the colonists are on their own really, and that really becomes an absolutely crucial year in the war. Because I think the British did have the capability of defeating the Americans in 1776 and bringing the war to an end and the American Revolution really before it ever got started. But it didn't work out that way for the British.

Michele McAloon:

How well equipped were the British soldiers at this time? One of the things you bring out in your book is that the logistics was not insurmountable, but it was definitely difficult, coming from I mean 3,000 miles across a big ocean, of having to. They even, they brought food, they brought everything for these soldiers. How well equipped were they in 1776 at this point?

Professor John Ferling:

I think they had a couple of problems. One was that they didn't have a sufficiently large army. The British, as I mentioned earlier, only had about 6,000 or so troops in North America when the war began. Once Lord North's government learned the bloodbath that the British Army experienced on the day, the war began at Lexington and Concord and then at Bunker Hill in June of 1775, then they began in earnest to expand the British Army. The British Army totaled about 48,000 men altogether when the war began and it would more than double after that. They would raise another 60,000 men in the course of the war. So that was one shortcoming that the British had. But on the other hand British Army was a professional army.

Professor John Ferling:

The British Army was a professional army At the outset of the war. The men had ample weapons and munitions and certainly ample training. Many of them were inexperienced. They hadn't fought a war in a dozen years and so many of the men had not been in combat yet. But by and large it was a well-trained army, certainly better than the Americans could throw against them. But they did have logistical problems. Britain is 3,000 miles away and across the Atlantic Ocean from the colonies, and this is a day obviously before telephones and computers and whatever.

Professor John Ferling:

GPS. Yeah, sides plagued the British probably a little bit more. But the British would send messages home about what they needed and what the military situation was, and it would take 30 or 40 or even 50 days for the information to reach Britain. And then they had to respond to that, get the materials together, send the materials across the Atlantic, and so by the time those materials arrived, maybe five or six months after the first intelligence that they had gotten, that intelligence was outdated. That was a problem.

Professor John Ferling:

And Washington and the Americans had the same problem too. I mean, they didn't have computers or telephones either. And so this is a war that's waged across the continent, that stretches from the northern colonies down to the southern colonies. It stretches for thousands of miles, thousands of miles, and getting the messages, communications from one end to the other was a lengthy process that plagued both sides. So the British had logistical problems, but I think compared to the Americans it really paled compared to the logistical problems that the Americans had, you know, in terms of lack of uniforms and shoes and blankets and sometimes in winter encampments like Valley Forge and at Morristown Next year, there was a dearth of food for the soldiers for days on end, for the soldiers for days on end. There's one diary kept by an American soldier, joseph von Martin. He was at Morristown in the winter of 1779, and he talks about the men being so hungry they were eating the bark off of trees and whatever to try to stay alive.

Michele McAloon:

Wow, and that kind of plagues it through the whole eight years of the war. Right yeah.

Professor John Ferling:

Yeah.

Michele McAloon:

In one of your last chapters you said when the men went home, they went home hungry. Some of them couldn't even get home because when they were finally emancipated or not emancipated but allowed to leave their military service. So this is something that plagues George Washington throughout the war, correct?

Professor John Ferling:

Yeah, absolutely yeah, it's an ongoing problem throughout. I mean, they tried everything that they could. They appealed to the civilians and, to be sure, communities had drives to raise materials, blankets and shirts and whatever for the soldiers and send them off. And women on the home front sewed and made shirts and clothing and what even. And sometimes, as Washington said, we've gotten a lot of supplies from the French. They've sent over a lot of things but they're rotting in a warehouse someplace. We don't know where they are. They're not getting to the army, and this was in the age before railroads and trucks and whatever.

Professor John Ferling:

So they had to haul equipment in horse-drawn wagons and across roads that were unpaid, and they had to do it oftentimes in climate weather, so that the roads were just quagmires. And there was a lot of corruption in the American logistical operations as well. So it all conspired to make for problems that continued throughout the war. For the common soldiers, the officers fared better I mean especially the senior officers like Washington and the other general officers During it, when they would go on to winter quarters. They usually commandeered a house somewhere and had a roaring fireplace and ample food and whatever. But for the soldiers it was a long, grim war and some of those soldiers did wind up serving for many years. Some of them kept records on how much they had traveled. They traveled by foot and some of them wound up by their calculations having marched as much as 2,000 miles in the course of the war.

Professor John Ferling:

So they had good shoes at the beginning. They didn't have good shoes at the end, and Joseph Plum Martin that I mentioned earlier even talked about, you know, having to sleep in the field at night or being so tired that they would sleep, go to fall asleep while he was standing on his feet, certain time periods when they were out in the field. So it really is a long, grim war and I think it's one thing that the Americans, maybe the American public, isn't so aware of today. I mean, we know about the losses in the Civil War and World War I, world War II, korea and Vietnam and whatever, but oftentimes I think maybe it's because of the paintings.

Professor John Ferling:

We don't have photographs from the Revolutionary War, we have paintings and the paintings usually show the officers and oftentimes even the soldiers in resplendent uniforms and looking like they're well-fed. They certainly don't look like guys who were starving in those paintings. So I think that has led to some missteps in people's thinking. But the fact of the matter is that probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 or 40 percent of the men who actually served in the Continental Army during the war died. That compares to like 1 percent of the Americans who served in the military in World War II.

Michele McAloon:

So yeah, just incredible in the military in World War II.

Professor John Ferling:

Yeah, just incredible. Yeah, tough war with a huge mortality rate, and it was a large mortality rate among the British soldiers within the British Army and the British Navy as well. So it wasn't just the Americans that paid the price, but the British did too, and a lot of suffering on the home front. I found surprising that I discovered in the course of working on the book was how much disaffection there was in Great Britain as the war went along.

Professor John Ferling:

Great Britain as the war went along People were paying much higher taxes because of the war. There were trade imbalances brought on by the war that led to widespread unemployment in certain industries in certain areas in England and there were many petitions sent to the government to please end the of property and almost led to could have led to the death of Lord Northam and some of the other officials. They were in a precarious situation but managed to survive.

Michele McAloon:

You know, one of the things, though, that I found amazing and this is to be all patriotic here, but I think this is the genius of America in some ways you said by within four or five years, by the end of the war, when the hostilities in 1983, or what was it 1983, when the final peace agreements were signed is that Britain was experiencing a not a deficit but a surplus because of exports and imports coming from the United States at that point, and we actually the United States, kind of became an engine for that economy, which is just amazing to me of how scrappy and dire this war was to end up like that. I mean, we are a energetic, innovative people. We really are, and have been from the very beginning.

Professor John Ferling:

The war was followed by a good bit of prosperity in America.

Professor John Ferling:

I mean once.

Professor John Ferling:

It that case they had gone through the Depression followed by World War II, so there'd been deprivation for a dozen years or so and so they just went on a spending spree in the late 1940s and 1950ss was a very prosperous time.

Professor John Ferling:

It wasn't that prosperous in America right after the war. They were turning toward consumerism and buying things from the British and there was a great deal of fear during the war in England that the war would lead to debt, that the war would lead to debt and the debt would drag down the British economy and they would have a depression and might bring on a revolution. That didn't happen. They did go into debt during the war but they very quickly came out and, as you mentioned, some of it is due to the fact that they did have a thriving trade with America in the 1780s and particularly in the 1790s. But they also really restored the empire. They lost North America, lost the United States at any rate, but they got into the Pacific and expanded in that area after the Revolutionary War, so that historians talk about the second British Empire was in existence by the second about the 1790s. So the British came out of it in pretty good shape.

Michele McAloon:

And our French friends didn't do so well, though out of it in pretty good shape, and our French friends didn't do so well, though. You do an excellent job of explaining the position of the French foreign minister Verzand, who you do a great job of explaining him, and the role that he played, ensuring that French, because he really did think this was a way to defeat the British correct. He did a great job of making sure that the French stayed involved despite huge crippling debt in their economy.

Professor John Ferling:

Yeah, absolutely, because he first provides. He's the one that that Pruscians is the one that makes the decision to provide secret aid. And then, after the Americans defeated the British at Saratoga and captured an entire British army there in October of 1777, Pruscians is ready to come into the war and he concludes an alliance with the United States in February of 1778. So they're in the war now and he's able to persuade his king, louis XVI, to provide secret aid. Then he's able to persuade Louis XVI to ally with the Americans and enter the war In 1778, as I mentioned earlier, that target date for the French Navy being completed, and it was the rehabs. Rehabilitation had been completed and so they come into the war. But it's an unsuccessful entrance into the war. They don't win anything in 1778. They don't win anything in 1779. And so by 1780, there's beginning to be opposition to remaining in the war in France and it's also beginning to be opposition to continuing to think of North America as the focal point. There were some who wanted to stay in the war, but they said what we have to do is defeat the British at Gibraltar and take that, and that'll force them to make peace, or maybe in the Caribbean or whatever and Virginians again, he was convinced that the war could be won in America.

Professor John Ferling:

And in 1780, he persuaded Louis XVI one last time take another step, and that was a twofold step. One was to send a French army to America, and it arrives in the summer of 1780 in America under General Rochambeau. It lands in Newport, rhode Island. And the second decision is to also send a French Navy to America, and that took a little bit longer. The Navy didn't sail until early 1781, and it went to the Caribbean first. It went to the Caribbean first because of the danger of hurricanes. You would conduct your naval operations in the Caribbean in the spring and in the early summer and then try to get the heck out of there by about July or August, because that's when hurricanes start brewing. August of 1781. But thanks to Vergennes and thanks to Louis XVI, there's now French Army, and the French Navy here Wrote a piece for the Journal of the American Revolution that came out I think it was in April or May, sometime, that's right arguing that Vergennes ought to be regarded as one of America's founding fathers.

Michele McAloon:

Oh, absolutely.

Professor John Ferling:

Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in Washington, because without him, america couldn't have won Absolutely. I may be wrong about this, but as far as I've been able to determine, there's only one town in the United States named for Brugens. There's a town named for him in Vermont, but that's the only one that I've been able to find. Places named for Lafayette. Obviously we have one in Georgia which is pronounced Lafayette here in Georgia.

Michele McAloon:

You get Lafayette here in.

Professor John Ferling:

Georgia, yeah, lafayette and obviously many places named for Washington and Adams and Franklin and whatever, but not for Pritchett.

Michele McAloon:

And DeGrasse I mean Admiral DeGrasse, if he hadn't gone to the Chesapeake, you know, if he hadn't gone to the Tidewater, it would be a whole different scene. And you really set up, I think, probably the best description I've heard of Battle of York, of the circumstances that led to it and how thin those circumstances were, because if any of the elements had changed, they may not have won the Battle of Yorktown. And the Battle of Yorktown was pivotal because the sand was running out of the iron glass for the United States and for France for that matter also.

Professor John Ferling:

But you do a great job of explaining that or Providence having a hand in things. I don't know that he ever said that about Yorktown, but he should have. Yeah, wow, it really is miraculous, when you think about it, that here's Rochambeau commanding the French army in Rhode Island and he writes to de Gras down in the Caribbean around June and he says there's really a problem in the South. That's where you're most needed. Can you come when you come north, instead of coming to New York, which Rochambeau and Washington had agreed that would be the focal point in 1781. But unbeknownst to Washington, rochambeau writes to de Grasse and says can you come to the Caribbean? So he sends that in the spring. It goes by a letter. It takes weeks before de Grasse gets it. And de Grasse agrees that he's going to come to the Caribbean, agrees that he's going to come to the Caribbean. He sails for the Caribbean but Rochambeau doesn't know exactly where he's coming. He just knows that he's written and asked him to come to the Caribbean. He arrives in August.

Professor John Ferling:

Literally only about four or five days before de Grasse arrives in the Chesapeake is when Rochambeau learns that he's coming to the Chesapeake. So he immediately tells Washington and then the French and the American army have to come from New York by foot all the way down to the Chesapeake. That's a long walk To rendezvous with de Grasse. How all of that? I mean this is a war where almost nothing that was planned worked out as planned. Everything went awry, which tends to happen not in wars all the time, and all kind of other things in life, but in this case everything seemed to work, just everything meshed together almost miraculously. So Washington could have said it was providential that Yorktown took place.

Michele McAloon:

What your book also really shows is how I mean it was providential in so many ways because there were so many turning points where it could have gone wrong or and it did go wrong, but somehow in the end it came out.

Michele McAloon:

And one thing you really present is there's so many interesting side stories in this eight-year period. There's so many different interesting personalities, there's so many different interesting relationships of how this goes forward. You know the Franklin Adams John Jay relationship, the Cornwallis Clinton relationships, the, you know we didn't even go into the Southern Vortex, but it really is and it's worth a year-long reading of finding these different personalities and these different wars and these different, because it was tremendously challenging with really with, like you said, not a lot of resources. I have one last question for you what is the difference and this is I didn't realize, I don't think I really truly understood before I read this book but the difference between the militia and the Continental soldiers, because the Continental soldiers was basically a Federalist army but the militia often filled in for the Continental. That was a real relationship, wasn't it? And it was a tenuous one at times.

Professor John Ferling:

The militias went back to England, of course, and the first colonists brought militias I mean, they established militias as soon as they got here citizen army and so militias were within each colony, or after 1776, when the colonies became states, they were the property of each state and in fact the federal government, including George Washington, could not call militia to duty. Washington could and did ask governors to call their militia to duty, and as far as I know I'm unaware of any case where a governor ever refused Washington's request. And so the militiamen were soldiers at the state level, I mean, they were just private citizens, and they would have musters every once in a while on a day where they supposedly trained in peacetime, a while on a day where they supposedly trained in peacetime I think it was more of a social event drank a lot of beer and marched around for a couple of hours and whatever. But in wartime it could become deadly serious. And if the militia was raised, then usually their length of service was no more than three months it may not be that long, but that's about the length of time and then those militiamen would be brought out and other militiamen would come in and there'd be long stretches where no militia was on active duty in particular states and so it was very different from the Continental Army.

Professor John Ferling:

In the Continental Army you went in initially, you went in for one year and at the end of that first year, in fact, virtually every man left the Army as soon as his year expired. And Washington went to Congress and said you know, we can't wage a war this way, we need a standing army, men coming in for long periods of time. And Congress refused Washington in 1776. So the men who went in in 1776 also went in for one year and they all left at the end of their one, or nearly all left at the end of that first year. So then, congress, 1776 was not a good year, that the men who came in to the Continental Army for the most part came in for the duration of the war and they thought they were coming in for three years. And many of them felt deceived later on by that. And there were some mutinies in the army in early 1781, principally over that, when men said hey, I thought I was in for three years, and three years are over, and now you're telling me I signed up for the duration and Washington on many occasions asked Congress to conscript or draft men into the Army, and Congress never took that step.

Professor John Ferling:

But some states did, in the sense that in Massachusetts, for example and this would be very typical Congress would assign a quota based on the approximate population of the state.

Professor John Ferling:

So a state like Massachusetts was, along with Virginia, the two largest states in terms of population, and so they had to raise a large number of men.

Professor John Ferling:

And then Massachusetts would assign, in turn, would assign a quota to counties or villages, and when the local village couldn't meet the quota they were supposed to raise eight men and they only could raise seven then they would conscript somebody, and usually what they would do is they would almost invariably pick the young single man in the militia, somebody who didn't have a family and who was young, and he would be the one who would draw the short straw and would be conscripted.

Professor John Ferling:

In that case a lot of those guys went in for only one year and in fact the states couldn't. I mean it was up to the states to recruit. I mean the Continental Army was working with them, but it was up to the states to furnish them in. So they did a lot of recruiting and they had difficulty getting men in for three years. So, despite the three years or the duration notion, a lot of states said, okay, you can come in for one year, but we'll give you land out west after the war, after we win the war, we'll give you land out west if you agree to come in for three years of the duration. So that was how they arranged the army.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, well, you know it's interesting, the National Guard now uses college. They'll pay for college, right? So they promise you something, you know, and it's it's so interesting because, I mean, the Supreme Court recently heard a case about whether how they can use the National Guard or the militia. So this has always been a problem in the background of our history of you know who owns the militia, who's always been tension.

Professor John Ferling:

Washington became president, one of the first things that he went to Congress to do was to try to reform the militia and he got some things through, but that was very much on his mind.

Professor John Ferling:

He had a lot of trouble with the militia obviously during the war, really didn't give them credit for what they had done. I mean, they came in and they fought in battles and they were support troops for the Continental Army and without them I don't think the war could have been won. When Washington went before Congress in December of 1783 and resigned his commission and this is really the end of the war he makes one of his many farewell addresses. We only remember the one that Hamilton wrote for him, two farewell addresses, one to his army and one to Congress at the end of the Revolutionary War. In that farewell address to Congress he thanks his officers but he doesn't say a word about the enlisted men in the Continental Army. He doesn't say a word about the militiamen. But he had already delivered a farewell address at West Point a few weeks earlier to the Army and he certainly thanked the men who served in the Army then, but he didn't say anything about the French in that farewell address and he didn't say anything about the militia in that farewell address either.

Michele McAloon:

That's good. Yeah, you do a good job of not making him a mythical character. I mean, he definitely was a man. He was a general officer. He was a man, he was a general officer and he was a man with faults and you know, and competencies and incompetencies. Professor Ferling, I could talk to you all day. This book really is good because, like I said, it's a lot of stories within stories, because what are the most interesting things in our human lives it's our human relationships and how we act to other and how we act in community, and you really do a good job of showing this. Wish you the best success with this book. I hope a lot of Americans take this anniversary very seriously. I think it's time that we do realize what we fought for and how important it is and how important we are as a country in the world. We really are. We're so important.

Professor John Ferling:

Thank you for having me. I've enjoyed the opportunity.

Michele McAloon:

Well, I've really enjoyed talking with you and hopefully maybe I'll check in with you again during this Semin. Oh, my goodness, I already forgot the word Semi-continental.

Professor John Ferling:

I'll check in again with you, just say 250th. I just say 250th. The 250th.

Michele McAloon:

There we go, that's the word. All right, thank you, sir. God bless to you. ©. Bf-watch TV 2021.