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Essay on "Belonging to the Army" by Holly A. Mayer
To comprehend the Continental army in more holistic terms, Holly A. Mayer would have us envision a functioning community consisting not only of rank-and-file soldiers and line officers but a whole variety of noncombatants as well. These "camp followers" were not just female prostitutes, as popular myth and some historians have so narrowly portrayed them. Among those followers longing to the army" were wives and children of enlistees, sutlers, servants, slaves, volunteers, and employees and managers of various staff departments, representing at any given time up to 50 percent of the army's numerical strength. Many were retainers who as "attendants" performed support functions ranging from cooking and scavenging to waiting upon officers as personal servants. Some were "adherents," such as volunteers who served without pay while seeking to prove their worth and obtain officers' commissions. Regardless of specific attributes and motivations, these camp followers, male and female alike, regularly interacted with rank-and-file combatants in forming a heterogeneous national community with a common mission, the winning of American independence. Their reward for so much useful service, however, has been historical visibility.
Mayer's purpose is to reconstruct the identity of these historically neglected persons. She does so with chapters on sutlers and other contractors, wives and children of combatants (the conjugal family), servants, slaves, and volunteers (the extended family), and civilian and military personnel who performed staff functions ranging from the supply of food, clothing, and transportation to the provision of medical and hospital care. Mayer launches her investigation with a chapter on the Continental army as a functioning - but not always functional community and offers a later chapter on the nature and application of rules of military order and discipline with particular reference to camp followers.
The author's approach is primarily anecdotal. For example, she states that "a few female followers.....
