this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
4 points (83.3% liked)
AskHistorians
1205 readers
9 users here now
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Washington. He helped win the Revolutionary War and freed the colonies from British rule. He had the brilliant idea of not wearing red on the battlefield. He basically founded the system later presidents benefited from.
That said, I’m not sure the man himself ever lived up to the legends about him.
Lincoln is credited for winning the Civil War and reuniting the States. Also freeing the slaves. He’s also quoted as saying he doesn’t care about the slaves, he just wants to put the Confederacy down.
Still, I think I’d rather meet Lincoln. I have a feeling he’d be kind of an asshole. So he’d take a joke better. Washington would probably have a beer with you, too, but Lincoln would take shots with you, chase them with beer, grab his rifle, go kill something, grill it, and share with you. All speculation. He just seems the cooler dude.
But as far as who was better as a president? I think it’s Washington, and I don’t think it’s close.
This one touches on one of the fun historical factoids around warfare around then. Smokeless powder was not invented until the late 1800s, as soon as the first volly was fired, noone could see a damn thing. The british redcoat uniform was a dual purpous. It was the cheapest color to identify your side with, and it being bright helped prevent friendly fire.
And to the colonists, it made them easier to spot. I confess, I was not aware of the smokeless powder thing, but once the smoke clears, red would stand out. If you coloured your uniforms more like the foliage around you, you would be harder to spot under less than ideal conditions.
This seems to be teetering on the idea that the British forces were completely befuddled by the idea of skirmish tactics. Roger's Rangers were an example of a well established and valued scout unit under the Crown's command through the French & Indian War and revived during the Revolution. The British were well aware of the capabilities.
Conventional line infantry played a completely different role than scout units, and for the time and tactics, camouflage was less valuable than clear uniformity. On a battlefield between standing armies using slow loading muskets, military units worked as a whole and camouflage didn't play a large role.
For the Americans, the short version is that while hit and run tactics played a part, the real turning point of the war for the military was the support of France, and for a specific example Baron von Steuben's training of US troops. The US military didn't win through irregular tactics overcoming the British military, but through transforming into a standing military that fought from a similar handbook as the British.
Thats the thing, they were not ideal conditions.
You could see a few dozen yards tops while choking on gunsmoke as 50 guys all fired at the same time. Muskets were cartoonishly inaccurate, they had ~30% chance of the bullet rattling around in the barrel and landing in the dirt if you were aiming for something 30 yards out (provided you could see it, and quickly ID whos side that formation was on). To compensate for that, volley fire was the most effective means doing reliable damage to the opposing army.
The tactics at the time were just developing past the need for pikes and long pointy sticks. Napoleon and the US civil war did the same things, but that was after rifling was invented and bullets usually when where you pointed the loud end of the gun. They were still 150 years out from WWI and thats when, IMO, formality was fully phased out for practicality.