Dr. Scott Stephenson
speaker
278 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 15 Jul
Dr. Scott Stephenson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Well, certainly he had probably a very realistic sense of what he was up against.
And of course, he famously says as he accepts the appointment as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, just two blocks from where the Museum of the American Revolution stands today, they said, you know, my abilities may not be up to the task, but I think he absolutely understood what he was up against.
Although Washington probably commanded, you know, less than 1,500 men directly at the height
of his military experience during the French and Indian War.
You know, he had been in charge of coordinating the defense of the whole Virginia frontier, perhaps 1,000 miles of frontier from the Potomac River to southwest Virginia.
So he had experience in logistics.
He had experience in dealing with civilian authority.
And so certainly Washington harbored, I believe, considerable private doubt about would he be able to actually effectively restore American liberty.
The goal at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War is not independence.
Certainly, perhaps a few radicals were already, people like John Adams, you know, perhaps Franklin were already thinking along those lines.
But for over a year from the outbreak of war, the
stated goal of the Congress was to restore American liberties as British subjects.
It's important to remember that when the war breaks out in 1775, in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania in what's now the Wyoming Valley around Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, that was land that was disputed between Pennsylvania and Connecticut over who owned that property.
And Connecticut settlers had moved down there and started settling in the early 1770s.
So there was a shooting war going on between Connecticut and Pennsylvanians over that.
Out in western Pennsylvania, where I'm from, Virginians and Pennsylvanians are basically in a shooting war as well over is Pittsburgh in Virginia or Pennsylvania.
So think of the king, the crown, the distant British empire as a glue that had held these disparate colonies together.
And when these men from different colonies come together, there is not immediate amity between them.
There's an incident that I think really illustrates this very well.
And we actually dramatically recreate it sort of in 3D in the museum through a tableau of life cast figures representing the characters in the story.
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