Revolutionary War Years
Unlike many of Philadelphia's lawyers, who had business ties with England and tended to be Loyalists as the Revolution became imminent, Peters sided with the Whig or American cause. A week after the Continental Congress created the Continental Army, they appointed him as the Secretary to their Board of War. Later his position title was changed to Commissioner of the Board of War. He held this post with honor throughout the active phase of the Revolutionary War. When he resigned in 1781, Congress passed a declaration to thank him for "long and faithful service".
Peters was a good friend and became a benefactor of Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the German officer appointed as Inspector-General and trainer of the Continental Army. Peters often directly paid for his expenses and allowed him and his staff to stay at the family estate, Belmont. In early 1779, von Steuben and his staff completed writing the Blue Book, which was published as the first military manual of the United States Army.
Read more about this topic: Richard Peters (Continental Congress)
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or years:
“Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother’s nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against Protestant ascendancy. ...The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others ...”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“[F]rom Saratoga [N.Y.] till we got back to Northampton [Mass.], was then mostly desert. Now it is what 34. years of free and good government have made it. It shews how soon the labor of man would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object, the happiness of man, to the selfish interests of kings, nobles and priests.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)