Harry M. Ward examines the formative years of the Department of War as a microcosm of the development of a centralized federal government. The Department of War was unique among early government agencies, as the only office that continued under the same administrator from the time of the Confederation to government under the Constitution. After the peace was established with Britain, citizens were suspicious of keeping a standing army, but administrator Benjamin Lincoln's efficient administration did much to dispel their fears. Henry Knox was the second Secretary, and he faced the problem of maintaining peace on the frontier, as his tiny army twice lost battles with Indians. It was only after the Whiskey Rebellion and Shay's Rebellion, that the young nation fully comprehended the importance of a maintaining a national military.

Appendices include laws and legislation concerning the Army Medical Department. Maps include those of territories and frontiers and Continental Army hospital locations. Illustrations are chiefly portraits.

This book was written to explore the contribution of Revolutionary War veterans to the founding of the American republic. By veterans, we mean all those who served in the Continental and state forces, on land or sea. Twenty three of those veterans were among the men who signed the Constitution in Philadelphia on 17 September 1787. That document, as the eminent American historian Samuel Eliot Morison put it, is "a work of genius, since it set up what every earlier political scientist had thought impossible, a sovereign union of sovereign states. This reconciling of unity with diversity, this practical application of the federal principle, is undoubtedly the most original contribution of the United States to the history and technique of human liberty."

Following the formation of a regular army in 1784, a popular distruct of military power and the generally unsettled nature of national administration kept the army in a continual state of fluctuation, both in terms of organisation and size. Few officers were making a long-term commitment to military service. But by 1860, a professional army career was becoming a way of life. In that year, 41.5 percent of officers had served 30 years, compared to only 2.6 percent in 1797.