Why George Washington Integrated the Army
The commander-in-chief initially barred black soldiers from joining the ranks, but he came to understand the value—both moral and strategic—of a diverse force.
WHEN GEORGE WASHINGTON FORMALLY accepted his appointment as commander-in-chief of the newly created Continental Army on June 16, 1775—250 years ago today—he was the army. No other officers had been commissioned, the new troops that Congress had called up had not yet been assembled, and the thousands of militiamen already fighting in Massachusetts wouldn’t know they had been joined to a continental effort until their new leader presented himself. The freshly minted general had an unprecedented opportunity to shape an entirely new fighting force.
As members of the U.S. Army and the other military services marched past President Donald Trump’s viewing stand on Saturday, I wondered what George Washington would have thought of what has since become the world’s most diverse military organization, one that closely mirrors the makeup of the people they are sworn to protect.
One in five soldiers serving in the U.S. Army is African American; nearly as many are Hispanic. More than 10 percent label themselves as being of either Native American, Asian or Pacific Islander, or multiracial heritage. Women make up more than 15 percent of the active-duty Army, and, while recent data are difficult to come by, a 2015 study found that more than 5 percent of the Army identified as LGBT. And minorities aren’t just part of the rank and file; more than a quarter of Army officers are nonwhite.
Would George Washington, first commander of the force that was the predecessor of today’s U.S. Army, have cheered to see such astonishing variety? The answer is complicated. It also explains much about our tortured history in deciding who can and cannot defend their country.
After accepting his command, Washington spent several days in Philadelphia getting his affairs in order, not knowing that the bloodiest fight of the conflict to date—the Battle of Bunker Hill—would take place on June 17. Though the patriots had, in the end, been forced to yield, the British causalities had been enormous. When the general first reviewed the troops a stone’s throw from Harvard College in Cambridge on July 3, 1775, more than one hundred free black soldiers were on hand to welcome their new leader. Several had fought at Bunker Hill, including Salem Poor, who mortally wounded a senior British officer. Fourteen of his superiors later praised Poor as a “brave and gallant soldier” deserving of national recognition.
The Virginia planter, however, had never been to New England, and he would have been shocked at the sight of black men in the ranks. At the time, he held some one hundred people in bondage, and his colony’s laws decreed twenty lashes—“well laid on”—for any person of color who carried a weapon. The punishment for using one against a white person was death.
The general’s discomfort with black soldiers overwhelmed his desperate need for troops against the massive British force in Boston, even as much of his army prepared to go home when their contracts expired at year’s end. On November 12, the general forbade any black men from joining the army or re-enlisting, a decree made official policy two weeks later by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
Then Washington made a sudden about-face that would echo down through the next two and a half centuries. In December, word arrived from Virginia that his former friend and the colony’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, had proclaimed freedom to any patriot-owned person who would fight for King George III. Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, were said to be flocking to his banner to join what was called the Ethiopian Regiment. Within days of learning this alarming news, Washington reversed himself.
“It has been represented to me that the free negroes who have Served in this Army, are very much dissatisfied at being discarded,” he explained to John Hancock on New Year’s Eve. Rather than push them to join the enemy, he decided to allow black men to continue their service. Congress immediately backed that change of policy, ordering on January 16 “that the free Negroes, who have served faithfully in the army at Cambridge, may be re-enlisted therein, but no others.”
That cemented the integration of the Continental Army. Washington came to appreciate the value of his black troops, and the following year convinced Congress to allow any free person to enlist. The general also welcomed Catholics—then widely despised—as well as members of the Stockbridge-Mohawk, Oneida, Tuscarora, and other indigenous tribes. The highest-ranking non-white officer was Akiatonharonkwen, also known as Louis Cook, the son of a black man and Abenaki mother. Enslaved people, however, remained largely excluded, though Rhode Island in 1778 freed those in bondage who joined the war effort; many fought in the First Rhode Island Regiment until the last major battle at Yorktown.
By war’s end, some 10,000 black and Indians troops had fought to secure independence, and Washington’s army was the most integrated U.S. force until the Korean War.
For the next eight decades, however, people of color were shut out of army service. The Confiscation Act of 1862 and President Lincoln’s more famous Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 gave the struggling Union both a moral compass as well as thousands of black troops, while Indians began to serve as official scouts three years later. Only in 1948 did President Truman mandate an integrated military.
Donald Trump, by contrast, has sought to exclude people—specifically, transgender people, many of whom have served with distinction and achieved high rank—from the U.S. armed forces. He and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth harshly criticize attempts to ensure diversity in the military, arguing that it’s a distraction, and that it makes us soft and vulnerable. George Washington knew better. He learned the hard way that ensuring an armed force that reflects America is not simply the right thing do to do. It is also a vital pursuit to maintain our national security.
Andrew Lawler is author of A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis that Spurred the American Revolution (Grove Atlantic). For more, see www.andrewlawler.com.
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