Introduction
The Continental Army faced constant challenges recruiting and retaining soldiers during the Revolutionary War. Unlike Britain’s professional military, the American army relied heavily on volunteers, short-term enlistments, and incentives to attract men into service. Recruiting officers often had to persuade civilians to leave their homes, farms, and businesses for an uncertain military struggle. This printed broadside is a set of official instructions issued to a recruiting officer in Massachusetts, authorizing him to enlist sixty able-bodied men into the Continental Army for a three-year term of service to the United States.
This document illuminates the practical challenges of building and sustaining the Continental Army and reveals the social attitudes embedded in revolutionary-era military policy. Its most striking provision is the explicit exclusion of “Negroes, Mulattoes, or Indians,” a restriction that exposes the contradictions of a war fought in the name of liberty by a society committed to racial hierarchy, even as Black and Native men did in fact serve on both sides of the conflict. The instructions also show the army’s preference for single men, its limits on the women who could accompany a regiment, and its insistence that recruiters make no promises they could not keep.
Document
Each colonel upon the new-establishment, to come to headquarters, tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, in order to receive from the Adjutant General, as many printed enlistments, as there are commissioned officers in his regiment—they will therefore without delay distribute one to each officer, who is forthwith to proceed to enlist men for their respective regiments in the continental army. The soldiers as the printed enlistments express to be engaged to serve until the last day of December 1776.
In the General Orders of the 31st of October, it is declared, that every non-commissioned officer and soldier, shall be paid by the calendar month, as follows, to a sergeant forty-eight shillings, to the corporals forty-four, and forty to each private; which pay it is expected, will be regularly distributed, every month—each non-commissioned officer, and soldier, (drums & fifes excepted) is to furnish his own arms; if arms are found him, he is to allow six shillings, at the end of the campaign for the use thereof. New clothing will forthwith be provided, for every non-commissioned officer & soldier, for which an easy stoppage, of only ten shillings a month, will be made out of his pay, until the whole is paid. Two dollars will be allowed to each non-commissioned officer, and soldier, who provides himself with a good blanket, and liberty to take it away at the end of the campaign; the present ample allowance of provisions will be continued, and those who enlist, will be indulged in a reasonable time, to visit their families, in the course of the winter, this to be regulated in such a manner, as not to weaken the army, or injure the service.
To prevent such contentions as have arisen, from the same person being enlisted by different officers, and for different regiments, it is positively ordered; upon pain of being cashiered, that no officer knowingly presume to enlist any soldier, who has been previously enlisted by another officer, where such a mistake happens undesignedly, the first enlistment is to take place—the officers are to be careful not to enlist any person, suspected of being unfriendly to the liberties of America, or any abandoned vagabond to whom all causes and countries are equal and alike indifferent—the rights of mankind and the freedom of America will have numbers sufficient to support them, without resorting to such wretched assistance—let those who wish to put shackles upon freeman fill their ranks, and place their confidence in such miscreants.
Neither negroes, boys unable to bear arms, nor old men unfit to endure the fatigues of the campaign, are to be enlisted; The preferences being given to the present army, the officers are vigilantly to try, what number of men can be enlisted, in the course of this week, and make report thereof to their colonels, who will report it to the General—this to be done every week, until the whole are completed. The regiments are to consist of eight companies, each company of a captain, two lieutenants, and an ensign, four sergeants, four corporals, two drums & fifes and seventy-six privates; as the regiments are completed, they will be mustered, and then reviewed by the Commander in Chief; when a roll of each company, signed by the captain, according to a form previously delivered by the adjutant general; is to be delivered to his Excellency. The colonel of each regiment will receive a list of the officers upon the new-establishment from his brigadier general. The commissioned, non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the present army are, (notwithstanding their new engagement) to continue in the regiment and company they now belong to, until further orders. Upon any soldier being enlisted, from the present, into the new establishment, the regiment he now belongs to, with his name, town and country, are to be entered in a roll kept for that purpose, by each officer: a copy of this roll signed, to be sent every Saturday morning, to the colonel of each regiment—when the new regiments are completed, the colonels may upon application, receive their continental commissions for themselves, and their officers.
