4. The Continental Army was paid better than their British opponents, on paper
The Congress offered many inducements to men they wished to recruit into the ranks of the army, including the princely sum of over $6 dollars per month, which increased with advancement in rank, the promise of free land in the fertile lands west of the Ohio River, uniforms, shoes or boots, good food, a liberal alcohol allowance, usually rum or beer, and more. In reality few of these promises were kept. The Virginia riflemen who arrived in the camps during the summer of 1775 eschewed uniforms, preferring to remain in their hunting shirts and buckskins. Delaware and Maryland regiments arrived fully uniformed, though they lacked replacements for those items which naturally wore out with heavy use.
Officially the uniform coat of the Continental soldier was designated by Congress as brown, with buff facings, not the blue uniform so often depicted in art and in motion pictures. Not until 1779 would Washington direct that the Continental Army coat be of blue cloth (the uniform color of the Virginia militia from whence he came), with the facings of a color which would denote their regiment. As the war went on, many Continental Army soldiers wore the red coats of the British or the dark blue or black of the German mercenaries, taken from prisoners or the dead of the battlefield, in lieu of no replacement coats being available from the commissaries. By 1782, when most of the fighting was over, the uniform for the Continental Army was finally standardized, though the army was still clad in many cases by whatever the soldiers could find.