The Continental Army was created and commemorated as a ‘continental community’, an institution that represented the continent of North America and its interests. The soldiers themselves, however, were more likely to consider themselves as members of a military community that was separate from society at large. Ordinary people who read about the war in newspapers and pamphlets or heard about it in orations and sermons may have considered the Continental Army as representative of their community and their continent. However, those civilians who experienced war at close quarters or who dealt with soldiers face-to-face were more likely to share the view that the Continental Army was a distinct military community.

Popular interpretations of the Revolutionary War were influenced by accounts in printed media, but they were also shaped by their interactions with soldiers of the Continental Army, as well as their exchanges with numerous other military personnel, regular and irregular, friend and foe. Yet historians have reached little consensus on how civilians understood their relationship with the Continental Army. Regional case studies as well as more general histories have argued that negative interactions with the British armed forces politicised inhabitants against the crown. Other studies, how- ever, have suggested a more mixed response to British impositions, with many people experiencing disillusionment and apathy rather than staunch politicisation. Either way, to suggest that civilian relations with the Continental Army were comparatively positive would be wrong: disputes, theft, violence and destruction accompanied the revolutionary military wherever it went.

The analysis of civilian interactions with the Continental Army can be complicated by their difficulties distinguishing the varied armed groups operating around them. As well as the contending Continental and British armies, and their French allies and German auxiliaries, civilians encountered a disparate mix of militias, partisans, raiding parties, and bandits. The availability of military uniforms was scarce at best, and soldiers often made do with anything that was at hand. Even in uniform, colours and designs were often shared by different units in different armies. Eliza Wilkinson was unsure whether a column that passed her home in South Carolina was friend or foe, having ‘heard that the Hessian uniform was much like ours’. Pennsylvanian teenager Sally Wister was terrified by the arrival of a party of Continental dragoons, for she had ‘imagine[d] them British’, since ‘they wore blue and red’.