New Year’s Day in 1778 greeted the Continental Army of General George Washington with a blanket of snow as they were encamped in an area known as Valley Forge in rural Pennsylvania. No battle was fought during the six months they spent there from December 19, 1777 to June 19, 1778. But a harsher struggle was waged against the weather, a feckless Congress, political intrigue, and despair occasioned upon them by hunger, poor clothing, disease, death, and desertions.
This is their story.
In the fall of 1777, Washington had moved his army south from New Jersey to Philadelphia to confront the approaching army of British General William Howe. Howe was sure Washington would fight. Philadelphia was the largest city in the colonies, the seat of revolutionary government – such as it was – and it was surrounded by fertile countryside that could provision British troops.
But Washington had suffered defeats at Brandywine Creek and Germantown and Philadelphia would become his third when Howe outmaneuvered Washington and occupied the city. The defeat of the Continental army at Brandywine in September caused the Continental Congress to flee the city, stopping first at Lancaster and then settling at York west of Valley Forge. After his loss at Germantown in October, Washington and Howe clashed again in December for a three-day battle at White Marsh near present day Washington, Pennsylvania. Failing to destroy Washington’s army before the onset of winter, Howe withdrew his army to garrison it in the comfort of Philadelphia.
Washington chose a spot in the Pennsylvania countryside, 20 miles or a day’s march northwest of Philadelphia where a high plateau and the Schuylkill River made it defensible against surprise attacks. Yet it was close enough to Philadelphia to keep pressure on the British garrison and their foraging. These unsettled hills surrounded an iron forge located on Valley Creek from which it got its name.
Valley Forge was not Washington’s first choice for winter quarters. Like the British, he felt his army should be quartered in a substantial town near highways that could provision his army through the winter and spring when the weather made campaigning almost impossible. But with the provisional government in York, 80 miles west of Valley Forge, Congress wanted Washington’s army between them and Howe’s army despite having no money to feed and clothe an army wintered in the field.
Even before he got there, the Pennsylvania legislature criticized Washington for garrisoning his men for the winter instead of continuing the campaigning. Washington fired back:
I can assure those gentlemen that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside than to occupy a cold bleak hill and sleep under frost and snow without clothes or blankets. However, although they seem to have little feeling for the naked distressed soldiers, I feel superabundantly for them and from my soul pity those miseries which it is neither in my power to relieve or prevent.
Washington’ 12,000 men occupied Valley Forge on December 19, 1777. They were poorly fed. Their clothes and shoes were worn out from fighting and marching. And they were ill-armed to fight – both then or later when the spring rains would subside, making the roads passable once again. Within days of arriving, six inches of snow was on the ground. Only one-third of the army had shoes.
Washington ordered the men to build a log encampment to provide shelter from winter weather. As long as they lived in tents, so did he. Only when they were fully housed did he move his headquarters into the Isaac Potts house – a small stone structure nearby which was owned by the local grist mill proprietor. Washington lived upstairs and conducted business on the ground floor where his aides competed for floor space to sleep at night. One observer called the headquarters “exceedingly pinched for room.” Washington built an adjoining cabin to provide space for meals.
He gave instructions on the dimensions of huts the men were to build, and he specified the layout of company streets and huts for officers and non-commissioned officers. In three days the first hut was up. Another was built in a week from 80 logs cut from miles around with only one axe. The entire army had shelter in six weeks – in two thousand huts. Most were 14 feet by 16 feet with six and a half feet of head room. Except for officers and sergeants, 12 men would live in these huts. Each had a fireplace and a mud-lined wooden chimney. A fire provided defense against the extreme cold, but with no nearby saw mills, there was no supply of planks for floors or roofs making it impossible to stay dry.
Sickness in the camp was rampant. With few blankets and no straw, the sick lay on wet if not frozen ground. Crowded together as they were, influenza, typhus, typhoid, and dysentery all erupted within the encampment. Frostbite was a major problem requiring amputation without anesthesia. Medicines were in short supply along with food and everything else. Soldiers dined on “fire cakes” – a concoction of flour and water cooked over heat. More often there was no food. Death would claim a quarter of them before spring. Fellow soldiers pooled their rags to clothe those who had guard duty, and if the guard had no shoes or stockings, he stood on his hat as protection from the snow. Hundreds of horses either starved to death or died of exhaustion. Men replaced them in the carriage harnesses to haul wood and supplies. At one point Washington had no more than two thousand troops who were able to fight if the British attacked. When enlistments ran out, a thousand men either refused to reenlist or simply slipped off in the night, deserting and returning home.
Twenty miles away, Howe’s army was quartered in dry homes with ample heat and food and sufficient clothing. Their animals were sheltered and fed.
One of the reasons that Washington chose the Valley Forge area to winter his troops was its food production. But as always there were people who used the war and the requirements of its adversaries for gain. Some local farmers held non-perishables off of the market in hope that the future would bring higher prices. Others withheld food and animal provender from Washington’s men but sold them to Howe’s men. Their reasons were economic rather than political. The British paid in gold and Washington paid in Continental dollars of dubious value.
For a while, Washington suffered the foibles of greed with resignation and understanding. Writing to a member of the Congress, Washington said war cannot be waged on patriotic fervor alone and that “we must take the passions of men as nature has given them” even when those passions were driven by the interest for gain or certainly the avoidance of loss. To the governor of New Jersey, William Livingston, Washington wrote in January, "I am pleased to find that your legislature have fixed a price circumscribing the avarice of your farmers, who like their neighbors" (especially those in Pennsylvania) "are endeavoring to take every advantage of the necessities of the Army" by demanding exorbitant prices for their produce.
Despite his deep respect for private property (he paid rent for the Potts house, which he could have seized) Washington drew the line when greed abetted the enemy. He announced that he would hang anyone who sold provisions to the British. He sent troops out into the country to destroy American mills that produced contraband supplies for the enemy and to break the spindles and spikes of their waterwheels.
Faced with starving troops and a defunct currency, Washington sometimes took food by force from the inhabitants of the countryside even as they cried “robbery!” General Nathanael Greene was ordered to fan out into the country with a thousand men and seize all cattle and sheep that were of slaughter weight. Farmers hid their livestock in the woods and swamps making it harder to find. These farmers were not Tory loyalists. Yet they were undisturbed in the contradiction that a struggle for freedom which would be enjoyed by all should be suffered by a few.
Normally an army’s needs for food and supplies are furnished by its quartermaster and commissary. But this was a revolutionary army fecklessly supported by a revolutionary government. It had an incompetent quartermaster more interested in political glory than supplying the troops. And its commissary had been fiendishly organized by Congress in two non-cooperating parts – a Purchasing Commissary and an Issuing Commissary. The former bought and the latter distributed. Logistics – getting food and supplies to where they were needed – was an afterthought whose inept management was compounded by an 18th century transportation infrastructure. Weather could make roads so impassable that teamsters refused to carry supplies to Valley Forge, or finding roads in horrid conditions, they abandoned their wagons full of supplies and returned home on foot.
As early as December 22, just three days after the army settled into winter encampment, Washington wrote to Henry Laurens, President of Congress, at York.
This is their story.
In the fall of 1777, Washington had moved his army south from New Jersey to Philadelphia to confront the approaching army of British General William Howe. Howe was sure Washington would fight. Philadelphia was the largest city in the colonies, the seat of revolutionary government – such as it was – and it was surrounded by fertile countryside that could provision British troops.
But Washington had suffered defeats at Brandywine Creek and Germantown and Philadelphia would become his third when Howe outmaneuvered Washington and occupied the city. The defeat of the Continental army at Brandywine in September caused the Continental Congress to flee the city, stopping first at Lancaster and then settling at York west of Valley Forge. After his loss at Germantown in October, Washington and Howe clashed again in December for a three-day battle at White Marsh near present day Washington, Pennsylvania. Failing to destroy Washington’s army before the onset of winter, Howe withdrew his army to garrison it in the comfort of Philadelphia.
Washington chose a spot in the Pennsylvania countryside, 20 miles or a day’s march northwest of Philadelphia where a high plateau and the Schuylkill River made it defensible against surprise attacks. Yet it was close enough to Philadelphia to keep pressure on the British garrison and their foraging. These unsettled hills surrounded an iron forge located on Valley Creek from which it got its name.
Valley Forge was not Washington’s first choice for winter quarters. Like the British, he felt his army should be quartered in a substantial town near highways that could provision his army through the winter and spring when the weather made campaigning almost impossible. But with the provisional government in York, 80 miles west of Valley Forge, Congress wanted Washington’s army between them and Howe’s army despite having no money to feed and clothe an army wintered in the field.
Even before he got there, the Pennsylvania legislature criticized Washington for garrisoning his men for the winter instead of continuing the campaigning. Washington fired back:
I can assure those gentlemen that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside than to occupy a cold bleak hill and sleep under frost and snow without clothes or blankets. However, although they seem to have little feeling for the naked distressed soldiers, I feel superabundantly for them and from my soul pity those miseries which it is neither in my power to relieve or prevent.
Washington’ 12,000 men occupied Valley Forge on December 19, 1777. They were poorly fed. Their clothes and shoes were worn out from fighting and marching. And they were ill-armed to fight – both then or later when the spring rains would subside, making the roads passable once again. Within days of arriving, six inches of snow was on the ground. Only one-third of the army had shoes.
Washington ordered the men to build a log encampment to provide shelter from winter weather. As long as they lived in tents, so did he. Only when they were fully housed did he move his headquarters into the Isaac Potts house – a small stone structure nearby which was owned by the local grist mill proprietor. Washington lived upstairs and conducted business on the ground floor where his aides competed for floor space to sleep at night. One observer called the headquarters “exceedingly pinched for room.” Washington built an adjoining cabin to provide space for meals.
He gave instructions on the dimensions of huts the men were to build, and he specified the layout of company streets and huts for officers and non-commissioned officers. In three days the first hut was up. Another was built in a week from 80 logs cut from miles around with only one axe. The entire army had shelter in six weeks – in two thousand huts. Most were 14 feet by 16 feet with six and a half feet of head room. Except for officers and sergeants, 12 men would live in these huts. Each had a fireplace and a mud-lined wooden chimney. A fire provided defense against the extreme cold, but with no nearby saw mills, there was no supply of planks for floors or roofs making it impossible to stay dry.
Sickness in the camp was rampant. With few blankets and no straw, the sick lay on wet if not frozen ground. Crowded together as they were, influenza, typhus, typhoid, and dysentery all erupted within the encampment. Frostbite was a major problem requiring amputation without anesthesia. Medicines were in short supply along with food and everything else. Soldiers dined on “fire cakes” – a concoction of flour and water cooked over heat. More often there was no food. Death would claim a quarter of them before spring. Fellow soldiers pooled their rags to clothe those who had guard duty, and if the guard had no shoes or stockings, he stood on his hat as protection from the snow. Hundreds of horses either starved to death or died of exhaustion. Men replaced them in the carriage harnesses to haul wood and supplies. At one point Washington had no more than two thousand troops who were able to fight if the British attacked. When enlistments ran out, a thousand men either refused to reenlist or simply slipped off in the night, deserting and returning home.
Twenty miles away, Howe’s army was quartered in dry homes with ample heat and food and sufficient clothing. Their animals were sheltered and fed.
One of the reasons that Washington chose the Valley Forge area to winter his troops was its food production. But as always there were people who used the war and the requirements of its adversaries for gain. Some local farmers held non-perishables off of the market in hope that the future would bring higher prices. Others withheld food and animal provender from Washington’s men but sold them to Howe’s men. Their reasons were economic rather than political. The British paid in gold and Washington paid in Continental dollars of dubious value.
For a while, Washington suffered the foibles of greed with resignation and understanding. Writing to a member of the Congress, Washington said war cannot be waged on patriotic fervor alone and that “we must take the passions of men as nature has given them” even when those passions were driven by the interest for gain or certainly the avoidance of loss. To the governor of New Jersey, William Livingston, Washington wrote in January, "I am pleased to find that your legislature have fixed a price circumscribing the avarice of your farmers, who like their neighbors" (especially those in Pennsylvania) "are endeavoring to take every advantage of the necessities of the Army" by demanding exorbitant prices for their produce.
Despite his deep respect for private property (he paid rent for the Potts house, which he could have seized) Washington drew the line when greed abetted the enemy. He announced that he would hang anyone who sold provisions to the British. He sent troops out into the country to destroy American mills that produced contraband supplies for the enemy and to break the spindles and spikes of their waterwheels.
Faced with starving troops and a defunct currency, Washington sometimes took food by force from the inhabitants of the countryside even as they cried “robbery!” General Nathanael Greene was ordered to fan out into the country with a thousand men and seize all cattle and sheep that were of slaughter weight. Farmers hid their livestock in the woods and swamps making it harder to find. These farmers were not Tory loyalists. Yet they were undisturbed in the contradiction that a struggle for freedom which would be enjoyed by all should be suffered by a few.
Normally an army’s needs for food and supplies are furnished by its quartermaster and commissary. But this was a revolutionary army fecklessly supported by a revolutionary government. It had an incompetent quartermaster more interested in political glory than supplying the troops. And its commissary had been fiendishly organized by Congress in two non-cooperating parts – a Purchasing Commissary and an Issuing Commissary. The former bought and the latter distributed. Logistics – getting food and supplies to where they were needed – was an afterthought whose inept management was compounded by an 18th century transportation infrastructure. Weather could make roads so impassable that teamsters refused to carry supplies to Valley Forge, or finding roads in horrid conditions, they abandoned their wagons full of supplies and returned home on foot.
As early as December 22, just three days after the army settled into winter encampment, Washington wrote to Henry Laurens, President of Congress, at York.
It is with infinite pain and concern that I transmit [to] Congress. . . letters respecting the state of the commissary's department. If these matters are not exaggerated, I do not know from what cause this alarming deficiency or rather total failure of supplies arises; but unless more vigorous exertions and better regulations take place in that line, and immediately, this Army must dissolve. I have done all in my power by remonstrating, by writing to, by ordering the commissaries on this head... but without any good effect, or obtaining more than a present scanty relief.
Washington was even more explicit in a letter the next day which warned Laurens that the army would be dissolved for lack of food or forced to disperse "to obtain subsistence the best manner they can. . ." The commissary’s failures, he complained, were starving the army into non-existence. A near-mutiny had begun the night before, Washington noted, which portended a breakdown in discipline provoked by a dreadful lack of provisions.
Washington’s exasperation with Congress would shape his later views on federalism. He was dealing with the problems caused by a lack of central government. The only real government that mattered was the government of the states, and after the first blush of patriotism passed, which had united them against Britain, the colony-states returned to business as usual – protecting their self interests. The little band of Congressional eunuchs huddled at York was no government. It could pass no law, levy no property, and raise no army. The states feared a standing army and the one at Valley Forge was little more than a collection of state militia, each under the control of their state’s governor. The Continental Congress at York had to ask – not demand – states to provide what was needed to wage war against Britain, and states could refuse. If Congress offered a bounty to enlist men into the Continental Army, states would offer a higher bounty to enlist them into the state militia, thus creating a bidding war for enlistments. Naturally this led to short enlistments so that a man’s military obligation was quickly over, making him a candidate for another enlistment bounty. If he enlisted once for the duration of the war, he was poorer for it. Manipulating reenlistments was raised to an art form.
Independence from the British king had not yet been won. Therefore, states were learning how to govern themselves on the fly. Little concern was given to governing each other. It was a case of every state for itself. Since power resided in the state legislatures, those bodies attracted the “brightest and best” men. Lesser lights were sent by the states as their representatives to the Continental Congress. Predictably, the esteem of Congress was never high, and its incompetence in getting anything done only lessened it. “What a lot of damned scoundrels we had in that second Congress" Gouverneur Morris of Philadelphia would later observe to John Jay of New York who concurred, "Yes, we had." The despised body could deal with matters of war and peace, produce a currency system, and sign treaties – issues of no real concern to the states. While there had been talk about a national union, the representatives from the states in Congress were in no hurry to produce it. The best that they had been able to achieve while exiled in York was the document known as the Articles of Confederation. This is sometimes called the first constitution but it specified no central executive, legislature, or judiciary.
With little help coming from Congress, Washington went over their heads. He personally wrote letters to the heads of state governments asking for their aid in a desperate situation. To the governor of Connecticut he wrote of “the alarming situation of this army” and that “there is the strongest reason to believe, that its existence cannot be of long duration, unless more constant, regular and larger supplies of the meat kind are furnished.” Washington said he was appealing eastward to New England because he had gotten only a partial commitment from the southern states (colonies) and thus “lay our account of support from thence. . .I. . .therefore entreat you in the most earnest terms. . .to give every countenance to the person or persons employed in the purchasing line in your state. . ."
Washington’s appeal to New England stirred a response. By March droves of beef cattle began heading to Valley Forge. Due to the perfidy of Tory spies in Philadelphia, one herd of 130 fine beef cattle was intercepted by a British raiding party alerted to their coming. Congress was able to round up a modest supply of food, but to supplement those provisions, Washington sent General Anthony Wayne to New Jersey to obtain whatever food and cattle he could find. He returned with 50 head of cattle and 30 horses.
In early March, Washington appointed General Nathanael Greene to be Quartermaster General over Greene’s objections that “nobody ever heard of a quartermaster in history.” Greene’s enterprise and enthusiasm, however, produced immediate improvements in logistics and supply. He sent engineers to improve roads and bridges between Lancaster and Valley Forge. Almost immediately wagons began arriving with clothing and food and farmers began bringing their produce to a camp market.
In early March 70 men from a baking company in Philadelphia arrived in camp. They were led by Christopher Ludwig, a German-born gingerbread baker and patriot. Ludwig refused to exploit his opportunity among hungry men, each of whom got a pound of bread daily. Ludwig was appointed Baker-General by Congress which authorized the daily bread ration for Washington’s men. He settled into baking for the headquarters staff, which brought him into almost daily contact with Washington.
In March, the men who had suffered through the winter to keep the army together received an additional month’s pay. To it Washington added a ration of rum for each soldier.
In April an unusually large surge of shad schooled up the Schuylkill River to spawn. The soldiers netted thousands of them and for the first time since settling the camp, they were able to gorge themselves with food. Those fish not eaten were salted and stored in hundreds of barrels for future consumption.
In a letter to his stepson, Washington characterized Valley Forge as “a dreary kind of place and uncomfortably provided.” While the army still faced critical problems, the immediate crisis of feeding the survivors of a terrible winter in that “dreary kind of place” had been providentially averted in the nick of time.
Their story continues next week.
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