Posted on 11/20/2016 11:46:42 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
One winter day in December 1775, months after the battles at Concord and Lexington marked the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the nascent American military formally met its commander-in-chief. A group of Virginia rifleman found themselves in the middle of a massive snowball fight with a regiment of quick-talking New Englanders who ridiculed the strangely dressed Virginians in their “white linen frocks, ruffled and fringed.” The colonies were still strangers to each other at this point: The Declaration of Independence was months away, and the ragtag army representing the rebels was far from formally “American.” The meeting of nearly 1,000 soldiers quickly devolved into an all-out brawl on the snowy grounds of Harvard Yard.
But as quickly as it had begun, the fighting screeched to a halt. A man charged into the middle of the fray on horseback, seizing two men into the air with his bare hands and ordering the militiamen to stand down. Few of the assembled soldiers recognized him as George Washington: Most Americans barely knew what the untested general looked like, let alone anything about his mettle. But part of his uniform announced his identity: his sash. The blue-green shimmering ribbon of silk caught the afternoon light, a formal sign of his command and, according to historians, one of the earliest symbols of national identity in a nascent country that lacked a constitution and a flag. The snowball fight ceased immediately -- the general was on the prowl.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
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LOL!
Me too.
And you can tell it is a bad day when I wondered if it was Applejack.
Great story.
Thanks so much for pinging me. I was not even aware of this coming museum. We live less than 2 hours from Philly, so we can definitely visit. I love to visit any place connected to GW, as he is my favorite Founding Father.
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I’m all for a GW ping list.
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