The Provincial Congress was worried. It was losing control of the army.
Joseph Warren had warned about this possibility when he first wrote to the Continental Congress urging them to take control of the armed forces and suggesting the possibility of a military government. In a private letter to Sam Adams he was more direct. He warned that “unless some authority sufficient to restrain the irregularities of this army is established, we shall very soon find ourselves in greater difficulties than you can well imagine.”
Rumors and character assassinations were becoming common in the army and swept through the ranks like a communicable disease. Worse, the soldiers were beginning to take liberties with the private property of those who lived near the camps. Warren explained to Adams how the troops had first turned out with “nothing but the clothes on their backs, without a day's provisions, and many without a farthing in their pockets.” The Patriots gave willing assistance to the soldiers, and where assistance was not given by those of a Loyalist bent, it was taken. “Prudence seemed to dictate,” Warren wrote, that such liberties, born of necessity, “should be winked at.”
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