r being assigned to the officers of each grade. So
far from aiming at a deportment which might raise them above their
privates and thence prompt them to due respect and obedience to
their commands, the object was, by humility, to preserve the
existing blessing of equality, an illustrious instance of which was
given by Colonel Putnam, the chief engineer of the army, and no
less a personage than the nephew of the major-general of that name.
'What,' says a person meeting him one day with a piece of meat in
his hand, 'carrying home your rations yourself, colonel! 'Yes,'
says he, 'and I do it to set the officers a good example.'"

(Graydon's Memoirs, edition of 1846, p. 147.)

We have grown into a habit of depicting all our revolutionary
forefathers, both privates and officers, in beautiful buff and blue
uniform as if we were from the start a regularly organized, independent
nation, fighting regular battles with another independent nation. There
were, I believe, at times a select few, more usually officers, who
succeeded in having such a uniform. But the great mass of our rebel
troops had no uniforms at all. They wore a hunting shirt or smock frock
which was merely a cheap cotton shirt belted round the waist and with
the ends hanging outside over the hips instead of being tucked into the
trousers. Into the loose bosom of this garment above the belt could be
stuffed bread, pork, and all sorts of articles including a frying pan.

We of course do not like to have a picture of one of our ancestors
painted in such a garment. It would not look well. It is better to have
some theoretical uniform, the uniform that our fathers would have had if
they had had the money and time to get one, painted on top of a picture
of our ancestor.

Lafayette has described in his memoirs the rebel army he found in this
country on his arrival in the summer of 1777:

"Eleven thousand men, but tolerably armed and still worse clad,
presented a singular spectacle in their parti-colored and often
naked state; the best dresses were hunting shirts of brown linen.
Their tactics were equally irregular. They were arranged without
regard to size except that the smallest men were the front rank."

When the French officers appeared among us after the alliance, our
officers were often unable to entertain them for lack of decent clothes
and food. Washington in an order of July 24, 1776,