According to Donald Trump in his Fourth of July speech,
“In June of 1775, the Continental Congress created a unified Army out of the Revolutionary Forces encamped around Boston and New York, and named after the great George Washington, commander in chief. The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown.
“Our Army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rocket’s red glare it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their star-spangled banner waved defiant.”
Besides the grammatical errors and misused prepositions, there are some historical ones as well.
There was no army during the American Revolution for the simple reason that the colonies had a strong distrust of a standing army not under civilian control. The history of the Mother Country under kings showed how bad that had been.
Instead, there were well regulated militias.
The Constitution allowed for a two year limited federal appropriations for a militia to be controlled by Congress (Article I section 8 clause 12: “To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years”).
Eldridge Gerry compared a standing army to a penis,
“an excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.”
During the War of 1812, the Maryland and Virginia militias were defeated by the British Army at the Battle f Bladensburg in 1814, and President James Madison remarked,
“I could never have believed so great a difference existed between regular troops and a militia force, if I had not witnessed the scenes of this day.”
And thus was born the standing army.
Even during the Revolution, the Continental Congress may have put George Washington in charge of the militias, but what was assembled was not “named after the great George Washington”.
“Our Army” did not man the air, nor did it take over the airports.
And, going by the Star Spangled Banner as written by Francis Scott Key, who wrote, “And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,” showed clearly that the events that inspired the poem occurred during the War of 1812, not the American Revolution.
Fort McHenry was built in 1798, 15 years after the Revolutionary War.