Comparing Martin And Lender's A Respectable Army

The military myth of American independence is that long ago, a rag-tag band of ordinary civilians banded together to endure untold hardship in the name of independence. Patriot brother banded with brother against the tyrannical British power to create a new America founded upon the principle of liberty, not upon class distinction. This formed the ideological foundation of the new democracy. This is the fable of the colonial army's war against the British in the aptly understated title A Respectable Army by James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender wish to explode. Instead, they suggest that the war was really won by paid soldiers, not by volunteers, and it is them we have to thank for our freedom, not the prototypical rag-tag farmer with a musket.

Rather than a citizen-solder, Martin and Lender stress that for most of the war, the majority of the colonial army had a relatively small percentage of landed farmers. The vast majority of the army's core was made up of poor men with little hope of employment elsewhere, who sought land and hopefully money and perhaps some social respectability as a result of the suffering they endured under Washington's command. They did not enlist for …show more content…
However, almost as soon as their fortunes begin to turn, around the time of Washington's retreat through New Jersey in 1776, desertion immediately became a problem. These volunteer soldier-farmers were disheartened that victory was not coming as easily as they had hoped. They had opposed the British because of personal, economic reasons, and now they were facing difficulties and worried about preserving their land, which was after all the reason that they were rebelling in the first place. Thus, they returned to their harvests and the predicted victory of the superior British, professional seemed