[Mb-civic] A Timely Reminder in '1776' - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

A Timely Reminder in '1776'
By George F. Will

Sunday, July 3, 2005; Page B07

When George Washington, in a spiffy uniform of buff and blue, sitting 
his horse with a grace uncommon even among Virginians vain about their 
horsemanship, arrived outside Boston in July 1775 to assume command of 
the American rebellion, he was aghast. When he got a gander at his 
troops, mostly New Englanders, his reaction was akin to the Duke of 
Wellington's assessment of his troops, many of them the sweepings of 
Britain's slums, during the Peninsular War: "I don't know what effect 
these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me."

You think today's red state/blue state antagonism is unprecedented? 
Washington thought New Englanders "exceeding dirty and nasty." He would 
not have disputed the British Gen. John Burgoyne's description of the 
Americans besieging Boston as "a rabble in arms." A rabble that 
consumed, by one sober estimate, a bottle of rum per man each day.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/01/AR2005070101821.html?nav=hcmodule
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