On this day 250 years ago in Annapolis, Maryland, Thomas Johnson wrote to his good friend George Washington at Mount Vernon, Virginia that he would forward to Washington copies of a plan for organization of the American militia prepared by Charles Lee. Johnson also said:

There has been more Alacrity shewn by our people than I expected but we are but illy prepared with Arms &c. I am apprehensive that the Vigilance of the Govt at Home will make it necessary for us to turn our Thoughts towards an internal Supply of Materials.

Johnson had served with Washington in the First Continental Congress and he would serve as the General commanding the Maryland Militia and as Governor of Maryland during the War. Lee was a recently arrived immigrant from England who had had a long career in the British Army and a short stint as a General in the Polish Army. He was widely regarded as the most experienced military officer in the Colonies when the War and would be named as the Major General second-in-command to Washington but would end up being dismissed from the Continental Army after disputes with Washington, the Continental Congress and a host of others before the War ended.

Source: “To George Washington from Thomas Johnson, 24 January 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-10-02-0175. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 10, 21 March 1774 – 15 June 1775, ed. W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995, pp. 242–244.]