George Washington took command of the patriots surrounding Boston on July 3. He had to train his 14,000 man army for a few months to get them ready for more battles. At the beginning of March 1776, Washington and his men used a cannon brought to them from Ticonderoga by Henry Knox, …show more content…
by sneaking up on the mainly Hessian troops and surprising them. After this surprise attack, Washington moved on to Princeton, N.J., he defeated the British there and forced them to retreat on January 3, 1777, but, throughout September and October of 1777 he suffered serious reverses in Pennsylvania. The biggest success that year was the defeat of the British at Saratoga, N.Y. not by Washington but by Benedict Arnold and Horatio Gates. There was a contrast between Washington’s record and Gates’s genius victory that led to the Conway Cabal- a group of senior Continental Army officers who were trying to replace George Washington as commander-in-chief of the army. Washington reacted quickly, and the plan quickly fell apart due to the lack of public reports and the fact that Washington had pure superiority over his rivals. After holding his weak and dispirited army together during the harsh winter at Valley Forge, Washington learned that France had acknowledged American independence. With the help of Prussian Baron von Steuben and the French marquis de Lafayette, he concentrated on making his army capable of living while being a strong fighting force, and by spring, he was ready to fight again. In June of 1778, Washington attacked the British near Monmouth Courthouse, N.J., on their retreat from Philadelphia to New York. Even though Charles Lee’s lack of