the British Army and the Royal Navy had been driven off by a rabblement of farmers and shopkeeps, led by low-born, ascendant men like the plowman Israel Putnam, the anchorsmith Greene, and the book vendor Knox. Washington had displayed persistence and integrity, as well as political agility. This revolutionary hour had passed, to be succeeded by other hours, some of them dreadful. But already the commander in chief was seen as “the embodiment of purpose,” in the phrase of his biographer Douglas Southall Freeman.
