Pestering Father with Pop-Calls
It pestered Father mightily to have these pop-call volunteers blowing in on him and blowing out again. Some of them never tarried long enough to hang up their hats. They had implicit confidence in George, and were willing to leave it to George. But if George ever got them haltered and tied, he made soldiers to brag of: “Our soldiers are as good as ever were, and were the officers half as good as the men they would beat any army on the globe of equal number. But neither officers nor men have the requisite subordination and discipline.” His come-and-go militia did not consider themselves bound by the same restrictions as governed the Continental regulars, and destroyed what little discipline Washington succeeded in hammering into his men.
Looking only at the cost, throughout the Revolution it would have been far cheaper to maintain fifty or a hundred thousand Continentals, rather than half as many, and depend for the balance upon hastily gathered militia. Huge levies were employed, which accom-
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