“Your post would be a good one except in involved military personnel — not the public at large.”
A lot of the innoculated were militia, not regulars of the Continental Line. Washington didn’t need to innoculate the public at large. And he did preside over America’s first mandatory mass innoculation.
Even members of the militia may have been serving under some kind of conscription in the first place. Almost everything they did on a daily basis would have been considered excessive in a civilian context.