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Forging Bonds: Examining Experiences of Friendship for Officers and Soldiers of the Continental Army, 1775-1783 by Rachel A. Engl A Thesis Presented to the Graduate and Research Committee of Lehigh University in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts in History Lehigh University August 2012 i Copyright 2012 ©Rachel A. Engl ii Thesis is accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts in History. “Forging Bonds: Examining Experiences of Friendships for Officers and Soldiers of the Continental Army, 1775-1783” Rachel A.
Engl _______________________ August 16, 2012 _________________________ Monica Najar Advisor _________________________ Michelle LeMaster Co-Advisor _________________________ Stephen Cutcliffe Department Chair Person iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the multitude of people who made this project possible. First off, I would like to thank my advisor, Monica Najar. Her skillful guidance and unwavering support through numerous drafts were great, and I appreciate her continuous challenge to make this piece better than before. I would also like to thank Michelle LeMaster for her insightful advice that helped me to move beyond the ruts of writing and editing.
Additional thanks to my fellow graduate students, especially Kristin Tremper, Christine Hill, and Kelli Curtin who have all generously given their time to reading several drafts. Thank you also to my family who have always supported me and believed that I could finish this! Lastly, I would like to thank my husband who has patiently stood by my side during this process and accepted my curt responses to his questions of “how’s the thesis going?” especially towards the end of the project. iv Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………. 57 v Abstract Previous studies examining friendship in early America have overlooked the nuances of friendships or intimate homosocial relationships for individuals of different social backgrounds.
In an effort to revise this problem, this thesis examines the variation in the experience of friendship for officers and soldiers of the Continental Army during the American Revolution arguing that these two groups of men both supported and experienced differing models of friendship. Officers supported friendships through formal activities and values, such as honor, gentility, and civility, whereas soldiers cultivated their friendships through informal social gatherings with spirit of camaraderie, which highlight their divergent values. Ultimately, the experiential difference of friendship for soldiers and officers in the Continental Army provides historians with the opportunity to examine how factors such as emerging conceptions of masculinity as well as social distinctions affected individual interactions and relationships within a homosocial environment during the American Revolution. 1 Nearly six decades after the American Revolution ended, Private Joseph Plumb Martin published a memoir of his experience as a soldier in the Continental Army.
Even after so many years, his recollection of the close relationships he had enjoyed with his fellow soldiers remained clear. “[T]he soldiers,” he wrote, “each in his particular circle of acquaintance, were as strict a band of brotherhood as Masons, and I believe, as faithful to each other.”1 The men who enlisted and volunteered for service in the Continental Army endured much together throughout the American Revolution. Within the environment of the military, these men spent nearly every minute in the company of other men, voluntarily or not. They slept together in the same quarters; they ate together in the same camp; and they soldiered together through the wilderness and on the battlefield.
Despite this seemingly endless contact that was antagonistic at times, overall these soldiers built a foundation for friendships and intimate relationships through the experience they shared. Martin’s remarks illustrated the significance of hindsight and reflection. While many soldiers may not have recognized or reflected upon their strong brotherhood as Martin did in formal writing, they nevertheless demonstrated through their actions and simple gestures that they achieved meaningful bonds with one another. Martin’s use of the word “brotherhood” to describe the community of common soldiers signified that they not only had a connection as acquaintances within the army but also a deep level of attachment through fictive kinship ties.
Although most soldiers did not use such familial language to describe their relationships with their comrades during the war, 1 Joseph Plumb Martin, A Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier, ed. Note that Plumb’s account is a memoir and written after his service in the Continental Army. Despite the lapse in time between when the events occurred and when he wrote them, his account is nevertheless significant to the study of relationships created between common soldiers. Hereafter cited as Adventures of a Revolutionary Soldier.
2 Martin’s remarks in his memoirs highlighted how he came to understand these bonds. Martin and other soldiers conceived of themselves as part of a larger community. In effect, soldiers like Martin sought to create communities like those that they had left behind through their friendships in an effort to ease the transition from civilian to military life. This form of male sociability, or the tendency to associate with a particular group of people, highlights the fundamental values and experience of soldiers, as well as officers throughout the American Revolution.
The hyper-masculine environment of the Continental Army, which featured the concentration of men from various backgrounds within the contrived setting of the military, facilitated the formation of friendships between officers as well as between soldiers. These relationships provided an intimate level of connection among men who were often strangers before the outbreak of the American Revolution. Officers and soldiers alike embraced these new bonds and found various ways to support them through social activities, while also expressing their value and significance through words and actions. Soldiers fraternized with their comrades at local taverns and within camp while officers enjoyed each other’s company within individuals’ homes or their headquarters.
In addition, officers tended to socialize in intimate settings with a handful of other men while soldiers fraternized in larger groups. This experiential difference of friendship between officers and soldiers marked larger distinctions, as officers and soldiers supported different standards of behavior and values for men. These different standards in turn contributed to divergent understandings of masculinity, which include the typical characteristics and qualities molded by society for men. Throughout the American Revolution, conceptions of masculinity as well as a social hierarchy influenced the 3 manner and spaces within which officers and soldiers cultivated friendships.
For example, the values both groups of men supported often shaped the development of intimate homosocial relationships, which were bonds between members of the same sex in a merely platonic and not sexual sense, and moreover their experience of friendship. By examining these two groups of men, historians can begin to understand how the multiplicity of masculinities complicated an emerging social hierarchy and influenced individual interactions within a homosocial environment during this period of change in the United States. As men from the upper ranks of society, evidence of officers’ immersion within the world of sentimentality materialized within their friendships with other officers through emotional letters and intimate dinners. Conversely, soldiers, who remained largely removed from such a sentimental world, were far more matter-of-fact in the way they talked about their friendships, although the feelings of devotion doubtless ran deep.
Although military culture for officers and soldiers differed in many ways, both groups of individuals supported the creation of relationships between men, highlighting their community’s values and beliefs. These essential differences illustrated the two experiences of male friendship in the Continental Army, which were each in embedded in the multitude conceptions of masculinity and a social hierarchy among officers and soldiers of the American Revolution. This thesis consists of three main sections: an exploration of the values of friendship, an examination of the behaviors of such relationships, and finally a study of individuals who exhibited the variation in the experience of friendship as members of the Continental Army who were promoted from the ranks of the soldiery to the officer corps. In order to demonstrate the experiential difference of friendship between officers and 4 soldiers during the American Revolution, this thesis begins with an exploration of contemporary class structure resulting in the emphasis of different values for officers and soldiers thereby contributing to the varying experiences of friendship.
Following this introductory piece, the thesis explores the fundamental values upheld by officers and subsequently those upheld by soldiers. This section establishes that friendships between soldiers and between officers were fundamentally different as exemplified by the varying values these two groups of men supported. This first section concludes with a case study of disputes which provides an insightful comparison to further examine the diverging values maintained by these two groups of men and the effect on the relationships cultivated by soldiers and officers. Next, this thesis further delves into the experiential difference of friendship between officers and soldiers by investigating the activities and behaviors indicative of such relationships for first officers and then soldiers in the second section.
The contrast between officers’ formal socializing and soldiers’ informal camaraderie becomes apparent through discussion of the similarities and differences of their interpersonal relationships, which helps to crystallize the different experiences of friendship supported by officers and soldiers. Once again, a case study, this time of death within the context of war, helps to draw out the different models of friendship that evolved throughout the American Revolution, with special focus on the inherent behaviors seen through such relationships for officers versus soldiers. The thesis concludes with a section examining a few individuals who rose through the ranks of the soldiery to become officers in order to highlight the differing models of friendships maintained by officers versus soldiers as the behavior and values of this group of men shifted after their promotion to the officer corps. 5 In seeking to understand how two models of friendship developed among officers and soldiers, one must study the factors, including varying conceptions of masculinity, as well as social standards, and how they affected the experience of friendship for individual men.
Historians of masculinity have provided helpful methods to approaching such a topic by challenging static conceptions of gender and seeking to demonstrate how understandings of men’s identity transformed in relation to a host of variables in their works. Anthony Rotundo’s book American Manhood provided the foundation for such studies by presenting an overview of the transformation of masculinity from the colonial period through the twentieth century.2 He contends that during the Revolutionary period a shift in masculinity occurs from one that typically was communally-based to one that was more individually sustained and promoted. His book spurred additional studies that focused on masculinity within specific periods of American history. For example, an important work that followed Rotundo’s book was Lisa Wilson’s Ye Heart of a Man: The Domestic Life of Men in Colonial New England, in which she examined masculinity within the context of colonial New England.3 Wilson argued that a man sought interdependence with his family and his community.
She established this argument upon the idea that a man’s perception of himself was based on his “usefulness” to these two groups. Throughout her book, Wilson provided examples to support the conception of masculinity informed by one’s community during the colonial period, which Rotundo established in his book. In the book, Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man, Thomas Foster sought to further our understanding of men’s 2 E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993).
3 Lisa Wilson, Ye Heart of a Man: The Domestic Life of Men in Colonial New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). 6 identities during the colonial period.4 Foster argued that sex was an essential part of the identity of an eighteenth century man.