Major Jonathan Bratton

He's dealing with most of his soldiers are not paid the duration of a war.

How do you keep that army in the field?

That's almost mind boggling.

And those are just day to day concerns.

I mean, the idea of a civilian control of the military.

This is something that he set almost right off the bat saying, no, I am a representative of the American government.

which is a representative of the American people.

Therefore, you know, I serve the people.

That is a thing that today we just take for granted that he sets that precedent.

So there's so many things that he does that he sets a stamp on that are so important that we often just take for granted today.

That's a hand grenade to throw into a room of Revolutionary War historians if you ever want them to all start screaming at each other and maybe even fist fighting and clawing at each other.

The idea of a Fabian strategy, going back to a Roman general who lost campaigns but caused his enemy to take so many casualties that it was basically a strategy of victory by defeat, for lack of a better term.

Big argument about, all right, did Washington know what a Fabian strategy was?

Did he even have a strategy?

He does a few times articulate this idea of we are going to essentially we're going to fight them in a war of posts, a.k.a.

we are not going to fight for position.

We'll fight with maneuver.

We will not fight.

You know, one of his go to.

following New York is, we're not fighting unless we've got a good chance of winning.