Washington's Crossing

by David Hackett Fischer

Only a few days before, Washington was infuriated with these men, and ready to clap some of them in irons. Now he was leading them in another way. This gentleman of Virginia was learning to treat a brigade of New England Yankee farmboys and fishermen as men of honor, who were entitled to equality of esteem. That attitude had already begun to spread throughout the army. In 1776, American officers addressed even their lowliest privates as gentlemen. No other army in the world operated on such a principle. Europeans were startled to observe it at work in America; Nicholas Collin observed in 1771, “all are called gentleman and ladies.” Here was a new idea of a gentleman, a moral condition rather than a social rank. It was also a new idea of honor, which was not defined by rank or status or gender, but by a principle of human dignity and decency.