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''Regularity and due Subordination, being so essentially necessary, to the good Order and Government of an Army, and without it, the whole must soon become a Scene of disorder and confusion. The General finds it indispensably necessary, without waiting any longer for dispatches from the General Continental Congress, immediately, to form the Army into three Grand Divisions, and of dividing each of those Grand Divisions into Brigades.''

General George Washington

On 22 July 1775, George Washington, General and Commander in Chief of the American revolutionary forces, ordered the army at Boston to be organized into three divisions. Each division comprised two brigades of approximately equal strength. Major generals commanded the divisions, and most brigades were commanded by brigadiers who were general officers. The division commanders had no staffs, but the brigade commanders had brigade majors to assist them. Brigade majors were officers through whom orders were issued and reports and correspondence transmitted, analogous to regimental adjutants. Initially, both divisions and brigades were administrative commands rather than tactical organizations.

Divisions and brigades soon evolved into semipermanent tactical, as well as administrative, organizations. Because regiments could not maintain their authorized strengths, Washington made the brigade, consisting of several regiments, the basic tactical and administrative unit for the Continental Army. When organized in 1775 all brigades at Boston had about 2,500 men each. During the war commanders deliberately balanced the strength of the brigades for each campaign. For example, Washington employed brigades of roughly 1,400 officers and enlisted men each at Trenton in December 1776 and at Monmouth in June 1778. At Yorktown in 1781 each of his brigades had approximately 1,000 officers and enlisted men.

Although the Continental Army was reorganized on several occasions, many brigades had the same regiments assigned over long periods of time. Nevertheless, Washington and other army commanders had the authority to alter regimental assignments. In 1778 he emphatically told his subordinate, Maj. Gen. Charles Lee, that he [Washington] could change it "every day if I choose to do