Washington had never any belief in a militia army.

From his earliest days as a soldier he had favored conscription, even in free Virginia.

He had then found quite ineffective the "whooping, holloing gentlemen soldiers" of the volunteer force of the colony among whom "every individual has his own crude notion of things and must undertake to direct.

If his advice is neglected he thinks himself slighted, abused, and injured and, to redress his wrongs, will depart for his home." Washington found at Cambridge too many officers.

Then as later in the American army there were swarms of colonels.