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virtually a fait accompli. As a Virginia delegate wrote that day: “Col. Washington has been pressed to take the supreme command of the American troops encamped at Roxbury and I believe will accept the appointment, though with much reluctance, he being deeply impressed with the importance of that honorable trust and diffident of his own (superior) abilities.”19 The only serious competitor was Hancock, who had little military experience and was hobbled by gout. When John Adams rose to speak and alluded to Washington, the latter jumped up from his seat near the door and with “his usual modesty darted into the library room,” recalled Adams.20 Expecting Adams to nominate him, Hancock watched with smug satisfaction until Adams named Washington instead—at which point the smile fled from his face. “Mortification and resentment were expressed as forcibly as his face could exhibit them,” Adams said. “ . . . Mr. Hancock never loved me so well after this event as he had done before.”21 That Washington handled the moment with such tact, even as Hancock gave proof of patent egotism, only made his circumspect manner the more appealing.

The delegates deferred the final vote until the next day, when they passed a resolution “that a general be appointed to command all the continental forces raised, or to be raised, for the defense of American liberty.”22 In the ensuing debate, the only credible argument leveled against Washington was that the New England troops deserved one of their own. But with both John and Sam Adams placing his name in nomination, Washington was the tailor-made compromise candidate. “In the meantime,” recollected John Adams, “pains were taken out of doors to obtain a unanimity and the voices were generally so clearly in favor of Washington that the dissenting members were persuaded to withdraw their opposition.”23 Washington was nominated by Thomas Johnson of Maryland and elected unanimously, initiating a long string of unanimous victories in his career.

Washington didn’t learn of his appointment until the Congress had adjourned for the day, and suddenly he encountered delegates who saluted him as “General.” In a twinkling, his world had changed forever. He was feted by delegates at a midday dinner, with Thomas Jefferson, thirty-two, and Benjamin Franklin, sixty-nine, lifting glasses in a postprandial toast to “the Commander in Chief of the American armies.” Washington, deeply moved, sat there abashed. As Benjamin Rush remembered, Washington “rose from his seat and with some confusion thanked the company for the honor they did him. The whole company instantly rose and drank the toast standing. This scene, so unexpected, was a solemn one. A silence followed it, as if every heart was penetrated with the awful but great events which were to follow the use of the sword of liberty which had just been put into General Washington’s hands by the unanimous voice of his country.”24 True to form, Washington devoted the evening to a committee impaneled to draw up army regulations. In his diary on that epochal day, Washington wrote simply: “Dined at Burns’s in the field. Spent the even[in]g on a committee.”25 Even in the privacy of his diary, Washington feared any show of unseemly ambition.

On Friday morning, June 16, John Hancock officially announced that George Washington had been chosen “General and Commander in Chief of the army of the United Colonies.”26 Washington stood humbly at his seat during his reply. There was to be no chest-thumping from the new commander; this wasn’t the Man on Horseback that every good republican dreaded. “Mr President,” he said, “tho[ugh] I am truly sensible of the high honor done me in this appointment, yet I feel great distress from a consciousness that my abilities and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important trust. However, as the congress desire it, I will enter upon the momentous duty and exert every power I possess in their service and for the support of the glorious cause.” Washington’s speech was rife with disclaimers; he had long ago perfected the technique of