BEFORE LEAVING FOR BOSTON, Washington gathered the stage props for his command performance as top general. He bought five horses and a handsome four-wheeled open carriage, called a phaeton, the first charges to his expense account. He collected five books on military strategy. To spruce up his military apparel, he covered his black leather pistol holders with rich fabric, enhancing their beauty. In all likelihood, he employed the same red and white colors for this upholstery as he used for the servants’ livery at Mount Vernon. Washington also ordered a new uniform, having decided to retain for the Continental Army the colors of the Fairfax Independent Company. For his tailor, he outlined a uniform consisting of “a blue coat with yellow buttons and gold epaulettes (each having three silver stars) . . . in winter, buff vest and breeches; in summer, a white vest and breeches of nankeen.”³⁷

When Washington was named commander in chief, he found himself in an anomalous situation: he was the only person officially on the rolls of the Continental Army; technically, he had been chosen to march at the head of a nonexistent army to fight an undeclared war. Nevertheless he began to assemble the top-flight team of personal aides he would refer to as his military “family.” During the war Washington would develop intimate attachments to several dashing young men of intelligence and sensibility. En route to Boston, he was escorted by Joseph Reed of Philadelphia, a Trenton native educated at Princeton and trained in law at the Middle Temple in London. Smart, courteous, and charming, Reed had a long face with blue eyes and a kindly expression. John Adams praised him as “very sensible,” “amiable,” and “tender.”³⁸ As a member of Washington’s military escort to Boston, Reed fell under the general’s spell and couldn’t resist his insistence that he stay on as his secretary. As Reed remembered, Washington had “expressed himself to me in such terms that I thought myself bound by every tie of duty and honor to comply with his request to help him through the sea of difficulties.”³⁹ For his first aide-de-camp, Washington chose another young Philadelphian, Thomas Mifflin, a radical member of the Congress with a broad, handsome face, “a sprightly and spirited speaker” with a reputation for being temperamental.⁴⁰ In opting for two young Philadelphians from prominent families, Washington showed partiality for members of his own class and a willingness to surround himself with young men more highly educated than he was.

The generals that the Congress picked to support Washington reflected the same calculus of geographic diversity that had shaped Washington’s own appointment. Bowing to political realities, it chose the burly Artemas Ward of Massachusetts as the first major general; Ward would never warm to Washington and resented being upstaged by him. He was followed by Horatio Gates, named adjutant general with the rank of brigadier. Washington admired Gates, lauded his superior knowledge of military affairs, and personally recommended him for the high post, but he would shortly revise this opinion. “I discovered very early in the war symptoms of coldness and constraint in General Gates’ behavior to me,” he later observed. “These increased as he rose into greater consequence.”⁴¹ The next major general picked by Congress was Charles Lee. He too had been recommended by Washington, who again would live to rue the choice. Washington credited Lee as “the first officer in military knowledge and experience we have in the whole army,” but he also saw that he was “rather fickle and violent, I fear, in his temper.”⁴² Another major general was the patrician Philip Schuyler, a wealthy landlord with extensive holdings along the Hudson River. A member of the Anglo-Dutch aristocracy of New York, he had a bulbous red nose, a raspy voice, and a frosty attitude toward his social inferiors. Finally there was the colorful, rough-hewn farmer from Connecticut, the deep-chested Israel Putnam, who had won the endearing nickname “Old Put.” Scarred, weather-beaten, and poorly educated, he was popular among his soldiers. It was said of the suspicious Putnam that he always slept with one eye open. At Bunker Hill he had supposedly uttered the famous words, “Don’t fire, boys, until you see the whites of their eyes.”⁴³ Silas Deane said with admiration that Putnam was “totally unfit for everything” except fighting.⁴⁴

Washington’s final hours in Philadelphia were long and frantic ones. When, on June 20, he sent a farewell note to officers of the five Virginia militias he had commanded, he sounded as if he tottered a bit under the stress. “I have launched into a wide and extensive field too boundless for my abilities and far, very far beyond my experience,” he wrote tensely.⁴⁵ Before setting out for Boston on June 23, he dashed off a quick, reassuring missive to Martha, reminding her that “I retain an unalterable affection for you, which neither time nor distance can change.”⁴⁶

Washington received a festive send-off from the Philadelphia populace. Accompanied by Charles Lee and Philip Schuyler, he was ready to mount his horse when Thomas Mifflin sprinted out, bent down, and held out the stirrup for him—a small courtesy that drew a vast ovation from the crowd. John Adams recorded a genteel detail: many congressmen showed up with servants and carriages to bid farewell to the revolutionary warrior. Washington brought along his versatile manservant, Billy Lee, who would enter fully into the fervent emotions of the struggle; as a garrulous old veteran in later years, he would talk as if he had been a full-fledged member of the Continental Army, not a slave forcibly drafted into service. Nevertheless Lee and another slave named John wore not the blue and buff of the Continental Army but the red and white Washington livery. When John Trumbull later painted Lee, he depicted him as dark-skinned and round-cheeked in an exotic red turban. A skillful horseman, Lee remained at Washington’s side throughout the war, a powerful symbol of the limitations of this fight for liberty. During the war, in a striking mark of their personal relationship, Washington would personally order clothing for Lee.

As he rode north, Washington ventured into terra incognita. With little talent for impromptu speeches, he was ill equipped for his sudden celebrity. Nonetheless, upon encountering large throngs in New York City, he displayed a touch of pure showmanship, wearing a plume in his hat and a bright purple sash. In a city violently torn between Loyalists and patriots, Washington’s hosts worried that he might encounter the royal governor, William Tryon, who had returned from a trip to England that same day. To avoid this clash, Washington crossed the Hudson at Hoboken and arrived at four P.M. near present-day Canal Street, then well north of the town. Met by a military band, nine companies of militia, and a delegation from the New York Provincial Congress, Washington got a vivid glimpse of the cheering masses who counted on him for deliverance. The entire town, it seemed, had emptied out to receive him, and a local newspaper said that “a greater number of the principal inhabitants” had appeared than on any previous occasion.⁴⁷ Washington was whisked to the country estate of Leonard Lispenard. In a sign of the fluid political situation, some people who had welcomed Washington then met Governor Tryon when he landed at eight o’clock that evening, causing Loyalist Thomas Jones to bellow, “What a farce! What cursed hypocrisy!”⁴⁸ In another strange sign of this transitional period, Washington drank in the huzzahs of the multitudes while the Asia, a sixty-four-gun British warship, lay at anchor off the Battery, not far from where he was.