The American military force in the Revolution consisted of three distinct grades or classes of soldiers: the regulars, known as continentals; the levies, drafted either from militia regiments or from the people; and the militia. The continentals were longterm men, always under arms, commanded by the chief of the army -- in a word, professional soldiers. The levies were drawn for a short term, but could be called upon for service outside of their own State as well as in it. They were an inconvenient, not to say exasperating compromise between civilians and soldiers, at critical times nearly always reaching the limit

The Fisher's Reach 407 of their enhstment and going cahiily away home, leaving their commander imi^otent for offence or defence. This seemed to happen whene\'er a body of levies had been licked into something resembling soldierly shape. As for the militia, its members could only be called upon for three months' consecutive service outside of the State in which they were enlisted. They were called out and disbanded as the exigencies of war demanded, and were nearly as a])t to leave a cannon in a ditch as a plough in a furrow. But they were frequently good, serviceable soldiers in spite of the miserable system under which they served, and they sprang, armed, from the soil whenever a pressing occasion presented itself. It was the militia and the levies that enabled the commanding general to throw reinforcements into the scale of battle when his little army of regulars was hard ])ressed. The\' were to the British always an unknown riuantity, and set calculations at naught. When Gates needed a larger force of men to oppose to Burgoyne, Clinton sent him the farmer-soldiers of Ulster County -- men of mingled Dutch and German blood -- to complete the auxiliary force.