His coat could have been flapping in the wind, and later looked like it was shot while it was next to his skin.

Following the battle, Washington wrote a letter to his brother in which he readily and openly acknowledged:
"By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet [I] escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me!"
Excerpt taken from a website.

That shows both the accuracy of muskets and just how lucky Washington was.

Now I'm just a little confused because, you are saying that muskets are accurate, but other people are saying that the muskets were very inaccurate

I never said muskets were accurate. I said that shows their [in]accuracy. Sorry for any confusion.

Paul, Washington said coat, you said jacket. Big difference.

Coats were like overcoats, buttoned only down to the waist, with a lot of loose material hanging either side when he was on a horse.

Like many great men, Washington was lucky. He says so himself. No reason to doubt that this happened.

Do you think that the muskets used had, anything to do with the holes through his coat.

Other than having been neccesary to make the holes, not really.

Oh Sorry, not the muskets, I meant the bullets, do you think they could have "curved" in flight? Making the holes, yet not injuring himself?

His coat was probably waving, meaning stray bullets could have hit it yet not injured him.

I think he was just hit on the side several time or when his coat was flapping in the wind and so forth. Back then their were alot of undershirts making the outer coat nowhere near the skin by a couple of inches meaning he could have been hit in the side but the musketball not hitting him. sometimes the coat would be unbuttoned down the front also for more movement allowing it to be flapping or moving away from the body from were it could be hit. Now you all are forgetting that their were primitive rifling in this time frame also i believe giving better accuracy over muskets but rifles were rare and expensive along with time consuming to make.

Blake, Ferguson has been mentioned, so rifles have not been forgotten.

If his coat was not flapping in the wind though, would it still be possible for that to happen? Don't forget the horses that were shot under him.

Will Someone Please Respond, now I'm curious.

How many times do people say "It is possible", before you accept it?

Paul, I suggest you find some pictures of how people dressed back then. Especially the type of coat we now call an overcoat or topcoat.

My name isn't Paul, it's just my screen name!

quote:

My name isn't Paul, it's just my screen name!

Whatever your screen name is, is how people address you here.

Would you rather we use Mr. Frank?

There's a lot of confusion here. First of all, discussion of the accuracy of muskets is completely irrelevant to this conversation. The musket balls came close enough to Washington to hit his clothing. The fact that muskets aren't accurate is only salient if the eyewitness was the shooter, in which case he may have thought he was close enough to make a sure shot. Curved trajectories due to the ball spinning in the air wouldn't account for this, after all, as someone said, it's not like they hit the clothes and suddenly turned 90 degrees and didn't hit the skin.

This is really a lot more simple than people are making it out to be: George Washington came very close to being shot. So close that horses he was riding, men he was standing next to, and even the clothes he was wearing were hit, but his body wasn't. He could have been wearing a T-shirt, and as long as the bullet or ball just grazed the clothing, it could have made a hole in the clothes and not broken the skin.

As people in those days wore layers of relatively heavy wool clothing, and coats and cloaks were sometimes billowy, especially for someone moving around quickly and on horseback, Washington's clothes could easily have been hit, while he wasn't, which makes him extremely lucky.

Nothing supernatural. Richard Montgomery was also a good general, but he just happened to get hit in the head with a cannonball. The soldiers who survive tell all of their near-miss stories. The ones that die aren't around to tell about all the times that the bullet missed by that much.