Could America have won the Revolutionary War without Washington?

Somewhat inspired by the nearby poll, could America have won the war without Washington? Who would be good candidates for an American victory otherwise? Charles Lee?
 
Last edited:
Probably not

Washington was at best a mediocre general and often poor especially early on, his great talent was rather to prevent defeat turning into disaster perhaps without him there would have been a crushing defeat early rather than one where though defeated that was not unrecoverable from.
 
Doubt it. Say what you will about his actual capabilities as a general but he had the uncanny ability to keep defeat from turning into disaster which is what the Colonies needed during those first couple years.
 
Maybe, but I doubt if they would have managed without the military help of the French and support of the Dutch and Spanish?
 
the colonists could still have won the war, but I wonder what the future of the Presidency would have been like without Washington... he's the one who refused to be king and set the two-term limit idea. Would the other generals in the war have done the same?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
the colonists could still have won the war, but I wonder what the future of the Presidency would have been like without Washington... he's the one who refused to be king and set the two-term limit idea. Would the other generals in the war have done the same?

This. There was a lot of latent military talent among the Americans (Greene was clearly a superior tactician to Washington, for example). It seems likely that the emergencies of war would have inevitably called up the talented warriors among the Americans. But when the guns fell silent, would whomever had become the commander-in-chief have the strength of character to do was Washington did and which others (Caesar, Cromwell, Bonaparte, to name but three) noticeably failed to do.
 
This. There was a lot of latent military talent among the Americans (Greene was clearly a superior tactician to Washington, for example). It seems likely that the emergencies of war would have inevitably called up the talented warriors among the Americans. But when the guns fell silent, would whomever had become the commander-in-chief have the strength of character to do was Washington did and which others (Caesar, Cromwell, Bonaparte, to name but three) noticeably failed to do.

I concur with you Sir, we may have won the war, but lost everything that the Patriots fought for. One only needs to look at the early history of our sister Republic's here in the Americas, to see the trajectory of our most probable fate. Remember OTL we had potential " Strong hands " as Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, et all.
 
Won? Certainly, the Colonials had no shortage of capable military commanders (Greene, Arnold, ect) but they had very few who you could call firm men of principal capable of carrying through the political goals of the revolution.

One merely has to examine what happened with the various Latin American Revolutions, the French Revolution, and what almost happened to the American Revolution (the Newburgh Conspiracy could have gotten worse) to see what could have happened to the 'Democratic Experiment' in North America.
 
the colonists could still have won the war, but I wonder what the future of the Presidency would have been like without Washington... he's the one who refused to be king and set the two-term limit idea. Would the other generals in the war have done the same?

There wouldn't have been a Presidency without Washington. It was designed with Washington in mind.

There probably wouldn't even have been a Constitution in the same form. Washington's deciding to attend the Philadelphia Convention is what got a lot of people taking it more seriously than previous attempts at reform.

Washington can also be somewhat over-rated in terms of his importance to establishing republicanism in the US: The only person he really saved us from was himself. No one else had the universal respect and commanded the same level of admiration that he did. No one else would have been offered a crown. It's still an absurd level of historical awareness and humility that allowed him to turn in his sword, but the US would not have gone the way of one of the Spanish colonies without him.

Without Washington the US would probably be something more like the EU today: A relatively loose semi-federation of relatively independent states, rather than a semi-unitary, semi-federal mish-mash as exists IOTL.
 
Of course the Americans can win the war. Washington was a mediocre general who was very good with politics, not a god. If it had not been him, there was quite a bit of latent talent among the colonies to fill the void.

Whether the Americans can win the peace without a universally well-respected and popular leader like Washington is a different question.
 
When people say Washington was mediocre what does that mean? That he couldn't pick which battles to fight as a strategist, or that he didn't zig and zag on the battlefield as well as others?
 
When people say Washington was mediocre what does that mean? That he couldn't pick which battles to fight as a strategist, or that he didn't zig and zag on the battlefield as well as others?

A bit of both; by all accounts he had a propensity to devise overly complicated battle plans that demanded better communication and co-ordination than was available.
 
I wouldn't condemn Washington as a mediocre General because his plans were complex and he wasn't a cut above other generals when moving troops around the battlefield. He did take command of the 'Army of New England' and forge it into the Continental Army, that's got to count for a lot in my book.
 
I wouldn't condemn Washington as a mediocre General because his plans were complex and he wasn't a cut above other generals when moving troops around the battlefield. He did take command of the 'Army of New England' and forge it into the Continental Army, that's got to count for a lot in my book.

Well, besides 'not being a cut above other generals' being pretty much the definition of mediocre, Washington really was, especially early on. He had the issue of having really no large command experience at the beginning of the Revolution, having never been in charge of an army sized formation before. He was an amateur facing professionals and it showed. He had a tendency to overlook details that could cost him battles (see: The New York campaign, especially White Plains) and for, at times, being too creative and daring for the capacities of the army he had (see: Germantown).

However, his genius was in that he was a good learner from his mistakes and that he was an immensely socially aware human being. He knew exactly how to inspire and lead men, right from the beginning, and sometimes he was just as bold and daring as necessary without over-doing it. The attack at Trenton stands out as an exemplar of all these qualities: He knew that he needed to find a fight he could win and chose well, and then executed a plan that his army was capable of executing with courage and drive.

Without a Washington, but with a commander who wasn't going to be making the kind of mistakes Washington made, his unique skills as a leader might not have been necessary. He was also merely the most inspiring out of a cadre of impressively inspiring military commanders on the Patriot side, so the Continental Army won't disintegrate in his absence.
 
Washington wasn't an amazing general. He was adequate and there were plenty who could have done better then him. His real skill was that h managed to keep the army together and unified.

That is sort of exactly the sort of general the American side needed during the war. Able enough to hurt the British and evade defeat, but above all maintaining an active, coherent army in opposition at all times.
 
As said, the US didn't need Napoleon or Gustavus Adolphus. So long as the US doesn't lose, the British can't win, and eventually some combination of foreign intervention, war-weariness and domestic politics will force the British to give up.

At the end of the day, the US just needed a general who could keep the army in the field until the British lost. Washington was such a general, but I seriously doubt he was the only person with that talent.

Would it have required luck to find such a commander, and not end up with a disaster like Gates? Some luck, but Washington needed luck OTL (by any rights his army should have been destroyed in the New York campaign, f.e.).
 
As said, the US didn't need Napoleon or Gustavus Adolphus. So long as the US doesn't lose, the British can't win, and eventually some combination of foreign intervention, war-weariness and domestic politics will force the British to give up..

On the other hand, Washington's war of the post strategy was not without risks; he spent 1779 and 1780 basically monitoring New York while much of the south fell. Had Yorktown not turned out the way it did, it's possible the US would have gained a precarious independence, shorn of the southern states, surrounded by Britain...
 
I always thought that Washington's remit was far greater than merely fighting battles, and thus his lack of brilliance on the battlefield must be balanced against his other duties. For starters he didn't just command the Army in the field, he pretty much developed it from scratch in an environment where only about 45% of the population were Patriots. I don't think the British generals faced a situation where the whole army's enlistment term expired and they needed to be re-enlisted while being in musket range of the enemy during a major siege. In fact British commanders were part of a larger and well established system and didn't have to worry about many of Washington's problems, they only had to perform in in battle.
 
Top