![]() Sixteen offenses comprised the death penalty ranging from mutiny, sedition, desertion, to plundering. Drafted by John Adams and modeled on the British articles, penalties became more severe for infractions. 20, 1776, the astute assembly in Philadelphia passed the revised Articles of War. Atlas.” Ĭongress had already listened to their supreme military commander. Washington wrote, “to stop this horrid practice, but under the present lust after plunder, and want of Laws to punish Offenders, I might almost as well attempt to remove Mt. When the ensign was brought before a court-martial, his only penalty was a reprimand. ![]() In this most recent case, the ensign caught had his men threaten the superior officer with loaded muskets. He was disturbed by his soldiers’ tendency to steal from civilians, but also expressed his frustration with lenient punishments handed out to plunderers. 25, 1776, penned a letter to John Hancock, president of Congress. Keeping in mind a recent incident of an ensign caught red-handed leading twenty men pilfering a residence, Washington, on Sept. Washington believed he was not given the disciplinary tools to rein in his men to mold an effective fighting force while also protecting civilian persons and property, he gained political points in a nation reeling under British atrocities. Īlong with his desire to instill discipline in a rabble of independent colonists who defied anyone telling them how to act under arms, Washington abhorred thievery and pillaging of civilians and was without mercy when his soldiers were caught and convicted of ‘rapine and plunder.’ In the summer of 1776, he ordered that he would “punish without exception, every person who shall be found guilty of this most abominable practice, which if continued, must prove the destruction of any Army on earth.” ![]() Ward, noted that Washington “seems never to have been concerned… with the terrible suffering endured by soldiers being punished.” An army, as he had proclaimed on New Year’s Day in 1776, “without Order, Regularity & Discipline” was “no better than a Commission’d Mob.” When Washington had taken charge of the Continental Army at Cambridge in the summer of 1775, he found that Massachusetts Provincials in a sorry state, barely fit to fight the mighty British Empire – indeed, “an exceeding dirty & nasty people.,” as he put it privately. A scholar of military justice in the Continental Army, Harry M. It makes small numbers formidable procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.” When Washington was appointed Commander-in-chief of the newly formed Continental Army, he wasted no time proving that he was a strict disciplintarian always willing to levy punishment for the good of the army. In 1757 George Washington, at age 25 noted that “discipline is the soul of an army. Favorite among those designated to punish convicted privates and non-coms. ![]()
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