History Memes

1. American long rifles. No, really, despite the exaggerated mythology around them, the use of long rifles as a skirmishing weapon had an immense impact - nearly every European country in the 20 years after the American Revolutionary War began to adopt long(er) rifles of the American style for military use over the old, short-barreled rifles that were previously popular as primarily as hunting weapons. Previous noble dainty tools with barrel lengths of ~16 inches or less were replaced with rifles with barrels of 24-30 inches to resemble American long rifles (the reverse also occurred - as America's post-independence military standardized, we reduced the length of our first standard-issue military rifle from the ~40 inches seen in the traditional long rifle to ~32 inches). Also a reason for their outsized impact in the American Revolutionary War in particular - fucking half the battles had numbers like "83 dead"; a couple of crack-shot yokels could make up a good percentage of that.

2. The Brits were almost as reliant on local militias as we were - only about half of their forces were professional troops. We tend to focus on the slugfests between Continental Regulars and Redcoats, but much of the war was of frightened militia taking potshots at each other and then scurrying for the hills when panic struck.

3. MARYLAND STRONK

History That Doesn't Suck is a pretty solid podcast and it starts right before the American Revolution. (The podcast is, at least as far as I've gotten in to it, is just U.S. history.)

If you want a pretty good take on it, it is a good source.

The book on Benedict Arnold, 'Valient Ambitions', is also a pretty awesome inside look into the struggles of the U.S. and their army, as they were starting out.

To OP's point, the cold and disease were definitely the worst enemies. But Congress trying to supply an army without a federal tax was not very effective.