A Winter at Valley Forge – Part II

Despite its defects, Washington maintained an attitude of respect and deference toward Congress which it did not always deserve. He was reluctant to appeal directly to the states for help for fear of undermining Congressional influence in coordinating the war effort. Only after Congress had shown its impotence in feeding and clothing his army did Washington finally resort to a personal appeal to the states.

Congressional impotence was partly due to its tendency to solve problems by committee since there was no chief executive. Most of these committees – over 3,000 would be appointed before the war ended – were three-man affairs. The people selected to serve on a committee usually had no expertise in the problem the committee was created to solve. Congress even created a Committee on Committees to keep track of what everyone was doing.

The proliferation of Congressional committees inevitably began to meddle in the conduct of the war. Washington complained that he was getting inquiries from so many committees that it interfered with his efforts in managing the war. Congress, which had repeatedly demonstrated its ineptitude to provision the war, now began to micromanage its tactical execution without the training or experience to do so. This included second-guessing Washington's chain of command appointments by the several members of Congress who were not Washington enthusiasts. Therefore, one of Washington's challenges during the winter at that “dreary kind of place,” which is what he called Valley Forge, was to rid himself of Congressional micromanagement and neutralize those members who were trying to undermine his leadership. He would do so with hard-nosed politics.

There was never a time during the war that Washington lost the trust, if not the awe, of the soldiers and officers he led. He also had the confidence of the general public, which was apolitical. But a general who does not win victories opens himself to attack from those who would benefit from his demise.

Such was the affair known in history as the “Conway cabal.”

While Washington was being out-maneuvered in the Philadelphia campaign, first losing battles at Brandywine Creek and Germantown and then losing Philadelphia, the capital city, American General Horatio Gates had engaged the British in a battle near Saratoga, New York. The British troops under General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne were surrounded by Gates’ generals, forcing Burgoyne to surrender his entire 5,000 man army. It was a breathtaking victory for the Americans. When Benjamin Franklin, the American ambassador to France, glumly received word that Philadelphia had fallen to the British, the messenger iced the news with word of Burgoyne’s surrender, allowing a jubilant Franklin to now argue compellingly that France should enter the war on the American side.

Although General Gates was the senior commander at Saratoga, the battle turned on the aggressive fighting of General Benedict Arnold, who was wounded in a leg and removed from the field, and Gates’ other subordinate generals. But Gates, a vainglorious self-promoter, claimed sole credit for the victory and his star consequently rose among members of Congress. In a remarkable breach of protocol, Gates sent word of “his” victory and the surrender of Burgoyne’s army directly to the Continental Congress rather than to his superior officer and the army commander-in-chief, George Washington.

Gates had always believed that he, not Washington, should have been appointed commander-in-chief. Yet Washington’s daring attack on Christmas Day in 1776 which captured the Hessian garrison at Trenton, followed by his victory at Princeton, led Congress to believe the right man had been chosen for senior commander. Gates, a cautious fighter, had removed himself from participating in the Trenton attack by feigning illness. He thought Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River at night in rafts to attack Trenton at dawn was too aggressive. Fighting as a detached unit under Washington’s command, Gates was reluctant to attack the British directly at Saratoga giving Arnold cause to refer to him derisively as “Granny” Gates.

With victory over Burgoyne, Gates began to exploit his heroic status to improve his standing in the command structure of the Continental army. He urged his friends in Congress to reconsider him as a replacement for Washington. They succeeded in getting him named President of the Board of War, which Congress had recently announced would change its mission from a legislative committee to an executive agency. When it was made known that Gates would retain his field command as well as serve as President of the War Board, a civilian position, it put Gates in the astonishing position of being a subordinate military officer under the command of Washington and a civilian with authority over Washington’s army.

As Washington fumed, most of a month passed before Gates finally mentioned in passing the victory over Burgoyne in a letter to Washington devoted to another matter. Yet the street-smart Washington did not over-play his hand. He understood that the Gates victory superimposed on his recent losses had turned Congress into a bunch of armchair generals who had become disenchanted with his leadership. Consequently he harnessed his ego and waited for advantage.

Things came to a head when Washington got wind that Congress intended to promote one of his subordinate generals to major general over the heads of more senior brigadiers. Brigadier Thomas Conway was a self-aggrandizing opportunist who had left his birthplace in Ireland to begin a career in the French army. A stint in the Continental army was for Conway little more than a step on his career ladder, enhancing his military standing in France. Washington was a good judge of character and considered Conway a blowhard.  He also knew that Conway had criticized his handling of the battle at Brandywine.

Incensed with the plan to promote Conway, Washington wrote a member of Congress that, “General Conway’s merit as an officer and his importance in this army exists more in his own imagination than in reality. For it is a maxim with him to leave no service of his untold.” Washington seldom spoke so pointedly and was loathe to interfere with civilian control of the military. But by confronting the Conway promotion with Congress, he began demonstrating that he was as adroit at infighting as his critics and as sure-footed in defending his authority as his opponents were in undermining it.

When Gates sent word to Congress of his Saratoga victory, he entrusted it to be carried to York by his young aide James Wilkinson. En route Wilkinson paused at a tavern for rest and refreshment where he happened upon the aide to Major General William Alexander (Lord Sterling), one of Washington’s most trusted commanders. Presumably drunk, Wilkinson revealed to Sterling’s aide a letter from Conway to Gates that was highly critical of Washington. "Heaven has determined to save your country or a weak general and bad counselors would have ruined it," wrote Conway to Gates. The aide reported the comment to Lord Sterling who passed it along to Washington. Washington was stunned to learn that two of his subordinate generals were besmirching his reputation.

With typical Washington shrewdness, he sent a note to Conway containing the offending line without comment, giving Conway the rope to hang himself. Conway alleged that the line had been taken out of the letter’s context. Confronting Gates with the same demeaning comment, Gates said he was “inexpressibly distressed” by it and alarmed that his personal papers had been purloined by some unknown thief.

When Conway was promoted to Major General as well as Inspector General for the War Board, whose president was by then General Gates, an internecine war between Washington and his two subordinates erupted. Uninvited, Conway showed up at Valley Forge one day in his new capacity as Inspector General and Washington received him with chilly civility, telling him that he was not allowed to inspect anything until Congress sent explicit instructions detailing Conway’s authority.

In the end, Washington won out over his scheming rivals because unlike them he had character and control over his temperament. He was consistently polite to Gates thereafter, allowing his defects as a commander to undo him. Conway inundated Congress with so many abusive letters and threats to resign that Congress finally accepted his offer in April 1778. But Conway’s continued criticism of Washington earned him a duel with one of Washington’s most loyal admirers, who shot him in the mouth. Thinking he was dying, Conway penned an apology to Washington before sailing to France.

Washington showed his skill as an infighter in putting down the so-called Conway cabal. That he was able to do it while dealing with the more pressing demands of feeding and sheltering his men in their Valley Forge encampment shows that Washington was a more worthy leader than his enemies, who thought only of advancing their own interests. A lesser man, besieged by so many critics, ignored by Congress, and confronted with suffering soldiers he was unable to help might have packed it in and gone home. Washington longed for Mount Vernon and Martha, and yet not once during the war did he leave his troops to return home for a visit. Martha had always come to him.

She did not arrive until February. The death of her sister and the birth of her second grandchild delayed her. And when she did arrive Martha was taken aback by the state of the army, her husband’s somber mood and jangled nerves, and the cramped quarters in which he lived with his aides. But she was made of stern stuff, and notwithstanding her status as the general’s lady, Martha pitched in and helped the other women who along with their children had accompanied their men into the field. There were about 500 women at Valley Forge – some of them the wives of other generals. Lord Sterling’s wife had brought their daughter, whom Washington called Lady Kitty.

These camp following families lifted the spirits of the soldiers, even those who had no family on the field. Their presence kept many from deserting. The women and children did laundry, mended clothes, helped with the cooking, and provided emotional support. Women also caught the diseases that were rampant among the men. Some were killed on the battlefields while scavenging for food and supplies among the wounded and dead soldiers.

When there was food, the women were given half rations. When there was pay they were given half. Children were given quarter rations and quarter pay for work well done.

Martha had brought with her as much food and supplies as she could pack in her carriage. She also brought wool and cloth, sewing needles and thread, and home medicines. When her carriage became stuck in the snow near Brandywine Creek, she hired a sleigh to take her, her servants, and the supplies the rest of the way to Valley Forge.

Her arrival was a great morale boost to the camp including Washington’s, whose steely reserve was no defense in Martha’s company. She organized the women and joined them in knitting, sewing, and caring for the sick. She also organized occasions for receptions and entertainment. February 22 was Washington’s 46th birthday so he allowed himself to enjoy a drum and fife recital and he permitted the play Cato to be performed for him by his junior officers.

But with the advent of spring, the citizen soldiers Washington had led to Valley Forge had to be ready to fight the mightiest army in the world. Once more a providential solution appeared in the form of Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Ludholf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben, once a member of the elite General Staff of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, now unemployed. He offered his services to the patriot cause for the recompense of his expenses.

Steuben arrived at Valley Forge in February. His baron title was bogus. The previous summer, Benjamin Franklin had sent him to America and embellished his credentials to make him more acceptable to Washington. Now the unemployed captain would be elevated to Lieutenant General and charged with turning Washington’s rag tag army into a fighting force.

As the rotund bemedaled newcomer stalked the camp, trailed by his greyhound, Washington’s army was aghast at the trappings of his horse and his holstered pistols. Steuben was equally aghast at the filth he saw all about. The carcasses of dead horses lay near where men were preparing their food, men urinated in the streams from which they drew water, the sick and the healthy intermingled. Steuben immediately instituted sanitation reforms. Latrines were dug 300 feet from huts and were filled after three days of use. The sick were quarantined and the dead immediately buried. Rotting animals were dragged outside of camp and burned.

Steuben next got to work on uniforms that distinguished officers from enlisted men and then attacked the army’s fitness. While British troops moved on the battlefield in brisk marching steps, the Continental army had no methods for uniform movement. Steuben became a tough drillmaster. He spoke almost no English and commands often had to be translated from French. But he had a rich vocabulary of profanities which he liberally used when teaching close order drill to farmers who had never moved in unison. The bayonet had not been used by the Continental soldiers because they did not trust it for any other use but to cook meat over a fire. Steuben taught them to use it as a weapon of terror. He taught them to fire their muskets, load, and fire them again faster. Everything was done with precision. All day he drilled them on the parade field, teaching them to march and wheel, to switch from line to column and back to line again. He cursed and threatened until he got the results he wanted. From dawn to dusk his voice boomed in camp over the sounds of marching feet.

Soldiers and officers were shocked that General Steuben worked directly with the men, breaking the tradition that a general officer worked through intermediary officers and sergeants. In order to leverage his efforts, Steuben trained the first 100 men personally. When he was satisfied with their discipline, they were sent with evangelistic zeal throughout the army teaching others. When basic training in arms was mastered the training regimen became more advanced.

Steuben’s arrival came at an advantageous time. Washington would lose two to three hundred officers in the spring through resignation. Death from disease had reduced the number of fit troops. New recruits were arriving who had to be quickly integrated into military life. Steuben proved to be a Godsend. The army’s rise from the ashes of Valley Forge owned much to him.

Washington hoped to field 12,000 men in the spring – about the number he had brought to Valley Forge before the decimation brought on by disease, death, and desertions. To accomplish that he was forced to do the unthinkable for that time – enlist black soldiers. Rhode Island raised an all-black battalion of 130 men with the promise that they would be freed from slavery at war’s end for good service. Massachusetts and Connecticut followed. An August census showed 755 black soldiers under arms – about 5% of the army. One officer in a French regiment described the black soldiers as self-confident. Another boasted that they were part of a Rhode Island regiment that “is the most neatly dressed, the best under arms, and the most precise in its maneuvers.”

While Washington’s men huddled at Valley Forge, Benjamin Franklin in Paris managed to pull off the diplomatic coup that would turn the war’s tide – a treaty committing the French to fight with the Americans as allies. In addition, France recognized America as a new nation, not a group of zealots in rebellion against their mother country. Washington got the news in April.

Realizing the difficulty in defending Philadelphia, the British and 3,000 Tories would leave the city in June and the war would wear on for three more years. But with France now an ally it was time for pause and celebration. Washington ordered his army to form on the parade field and the French treaty was read aloud. Thirteen cannons – one for each colony – fired a salute followed by the infantry firing their muskets in sequence. The French were cheered and the French officers in the Continental army were embraced and thanked. Steuben marched the regiments smartly in review, proudly showing off their crack precision to a delighted Washington.

An open air table was set for the 1,500 officers of the army complete with wines, liquors, and various meats. Afterward, Washington played cricket with the younger officers. At 5 p.m. Washington gathered his aides and they mounted their horses to return to headquarters. Those that remained hailed them, clapping their hands and cheering “Long live George Washington!” as they twirled a thousand hats in the air. Washington and his aides kept stopping, looking back, and crying “Huzzah!” in return.

It was a day of thanksgiving for having survived that long and horrid winter at Valley Forge.

A Winter at Valley Forge – Part I

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.
 

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.

The Death of George Washington

Two weeks short of the end of the 18th century and a little more than a month short of his 68th birthday, George Washington died on December 14, 1799. This week marks the 212th anniversary of his passing

Upon receiving the news of the death days later, President John Adams wrote this letter to the Congress:

Gentlemen of the Senate and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives:

The letter herewith transmitted will inform you that it has pleased Divine Providence to remove from this life our excellent fellow-citizen, George Washington, by the purity of his character and a long series of services to his country rendered illustrious through the world. It remains for an affectionate and grateful people, in whose hearts he can never die, to pay suitable honors to his memory.

Americans expressed their esteem of General Washington by participating in over 400 funeral processions and memorial services during 69 days of the “National Day of Mourning” which ended on February 22, 1800. Thousands of them wore mourning clothes for months. Throughout the capitals of the world, citizens were saddened to learn that this citizen of the world had passed from their midst. Napoleon ordered ten days of mourning throughout France.

Tobias Lear was Washington’s personal secretary and an eye witness to his last 30 hours of life. Lear’s account gives us these insights.

Washington had ridden out around 10 a.m. to inspect his farms on Thursday December 12th and didn’t return until after 3 p.m. The weather was cold – a mixture of snow, hail, and rain with temperatures around 28 degrees in a hard wind. Returning home, Lear asked Washington to frank some letters so they could be mailed. When finished, his dinner was waiting for him, which he took without changing out of wet clothes. Lear noticed there was snow hanging from his hair.

A heavy snow fell Friday. Washington had developed a “cold” and complained of a sore throat – quite possibly from his exposure the previous day. He did not venture out until the afternoon and then only to mark some trees between the house and the Potomac River that he wanted cut down to improve the view. By evening his voice had become hoarse though he made light of it.

Washington, Lear, and Martha retired to the parlor to read the newspapers that had been brought from the Post Office. After Martha excused herself around 9 p.m. to go upstairs, Washington continued to read and when he found articles of interest, he read them out loud to Lear, who noticed his voice was becoming squeaky. Otherwise, Washington was in cheerful spirits. When he retired to go upstairs, Lear suggested that he take something for his cold. Washington fobbed it off; "you know I never take anything for a cold. Let it go as it came."

Between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. Saturday morning Washington awoke Martha and told her that he didn’t feel well. He complained of the ague – a commonly-used 18th century medical term for conditions of fever, chills, and sweating. She wanted to summon a servant but he would not let her go outside lest she catch a cold. At sun up, Caroline, a woman servant, appeared to start the fires in house. Martha sent her immediately to fetch Lear who rushed to Washington’s bed chamber. He found Washington in a state of labored breathing and hardly able to utter a word intelligibly. He was able to tell Lear that he wanted Mr. Rawlins, one of the overseers of the plantation, to be sent for to bleed him. Lear complied and also sent for the family physician, Dr. James Craik. In the course of the day, Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick of Alexandria and Dr. Richard Brown of Port Tobacco were also summoned.

Eighteenth century medicine was pre-scientific and the rationale for phlebotomy was based on a belief that the blood of an ill patient was contaminated by morbid matter. If it was bled out, it would be shortly replaced by healthy blood to heal the patient. Further it was believed that the more acute the condition of the patient, the more blood had to be removed. The physicians of the day knew little about the true volume of blood in the body – believing it was twice the six quarts which the average male body holds – and they believed blood regenerated in hours instead of the weeks actually required. The noted physician of that time, Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, believed 80% of a man’s blood volume could be safely removed when in fact 40% can be fatal. Decades would pass before this practice would be discredited.

While awaiting the arrival of Dr. Craik, Lear mixed molasses, vinegar, and butter to soothe Washington’s throat, but Washington could not swallow it and further attempts caused him to convulse and suffocate.

Rawlins arrived and prepared to bleed Washington, though he was agitated to be called for such a task. “Don’t be afraid,” Washington assured him. The venesection, however, did not produce the blood volume Washington wanted removed and as he called for more, Martha intervened that bleeding might not be appropriate for her husband’s condition. Only a half-pint of blood was removed and Washington’s condition remained unchanged. The ever-resourceful Tobias Lear, seeing that Washington couldn’t swallow and hadn’t improved with bleeding, called for Washington’s feet to be immersed in warm water while he applied a “salve latola” to the neck – first by hand rubbing and then soaking a flannel scarf in it which was wrapped around Washington’s neck. Neither produced any relief.

Dr. Craik arrived and, after examining Washington, applied a blister of cantharidin to his throat. It was a mainstream medical practice of the day consisting of a poultice of Spanish fly beetle parts ground into powder which became a powerful skin irritant. The poultice intentionally produced blisters which were believed to have a medicinal effect. Craik also took more blood and made an inhalant of vinegar steam for Washington to breathe. When Washington attempted to gargle vinegar water, he almost suffocated and gagged up heavy phlegm. More bleeding and blister packs followed.

The other two physicians summoned, Dick and Brown, arrived around 3 p.m. After consulting among themselves, Washington was bled again and given an emetic of calomel (mercurous chloride) and tartar (antimony potassium tartrate).

Around 4:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon Washington asked his wife to retrieve two wills from his desk. One superseded the other, which he wanted burned. Lear was summoned to the bedside and Washington took his hand. "I find I am going, my breath cannot last long; I believed from the first that the disorder would prove fatal.” He asked Lear to arrange and record all of his military letters and papers and arrange his accounts and books since he knew more about the plantation’s affairs than anyone. He wanted Rawlins to continue recording his letters – a task he had apparently begun. Washington’s pain and breathing distress was increasing and Lear had to turn him on the bed several times so he could breathe.

About 5 p.m. Dr. Craik returned to the bed chamber and Washington said to him, "Doctor, I die hard; but I am not afraid to go, I believed from my first attack, that I should not survive it; my breath cannot last long.” Craik held his hand for a while and then sat by the fire in the chamber absorbed in grief.

Between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. the three doctors convened again at Washington’s bed and asked if he could sit up. They raised him but Washington said, "I feel myself going, I thank you for your attentions; but I pray you take no more trouble about me, let me go off quietly; I cannot last long."

Dr. Dick, the youngest of the three doctors, objected to more bleeding of the dying man and argued instead for a tracheotomy – a procedure in which an incision is made in the neck near the larynx or Adam’s apple. That would open a direct airway into the trachea. Tracheotomy is an old procedure dating back centuries but it hadn’t entered mainstream medical practice in Washington’s day. Years later Dr. Dick gave his rationale for proposing the procedure in a personal correspondence:

I proposed to perforate the trachea as a means of prolonging life and of affording time for the removal of the obstruction to respiration in the larynx which manifestly threatened speedy resolution.

But Dr. Craik, the senior physician and Washington’s family physician, vetoed the idea. Dr. Brown concurred with him. Craik was unmoved when Dick offered to be personally responsible for the outcome. Neither Craik nor Brown was concerned about their personal reputation in treating this particular patient. Rather, they may have been overly awed by the fact that this was George Washington, a man of international reputation as evidenced by the god-like esteem paid in foreign capitals when Washington’s death was announced. Moreover, as family physician, Craik would have been concerned that his 67-year old weakened patient would have to endure the pain of a ghastly emergency procedure of unproven efficacy without anesthesia. Even if the procedure succeeded in opening an airway, 18th century ignorance of antiseptic techniques would have likely led to infection of the wound site that would be every bit as life-threatening as Washington’s undiagnosed malady.

Poultices of wheat bran were applied to Washington’s legs and feet around 8 p.m. and more blister poultices were applied to his neck. The families – Martha’s grandchildren – were summoned.

Lear was called to the bedside again around 10 p.m. although Washington could barely speak. After several attempts, he managed to tell Lear, "I am just going! Have me decently buried; and do not let my body to be put into the vault less than three days after I am dead.” Lear nodded his understanding because his grief kept him from speaking. Washington looked at him again and said, "Do you understand me?" Lear replied that he did and Washington settled back on his bed pillow and said, “’Tis well.”

Years before Washington had revived a slave long thought dead and that experience haunted him for the rest of his life with a morbid fear that some day he might be buried alive.

Lear remained at the bedside holding Washington’s hand. His breathing calmed. At 10:10 p.m., Washington slipped his hand out of Lear’s to check his own pulse; his countenance changed, and he expired peacefully. Dr. Dick stopped the clock in the bed chamber to fix the time. Craik, who was sitting by the fire, came to the bedside. He confirmed that Washington was dead and closed his eyes.

While all in the room were fixed in silent grief, Martha Washington, who was sitting at the foot of the bed, asked, “Is he gone?” Lear could not speak and simply held up his hand instead. “'Tis well,” she said. “All is now over, I shall soon follow him! I have no more trials to pass through.” Indeed, three years later she followed her husband.

Thus departed the spirit of George Washington who 30 hours before was in robust health, leaving us to wonder how his body systems could have failed so rapidly.

Most modern diagnosticians would translate Washington’s symptoms – severe sore throat, hoarseness, cough, chills, breathing distress, difficulty in swallowing (dysphagia) leading to spitting or drooling, fever, loss of voice, and episodes of suffocation, in that progression – as symptoms of epiglottitis. Due to juvenile vaccinations, it is an uncommon affliction today but not so in the 18th century when it was fatal and untreatable with the methods of that time. If contracted today a hospitalization most certainly would be required, usually in ICU, and often needing intubation (breathing tube) because the patient would otherwise slowly asphyxiate as Washington did. Asphyxiation was likely the primary cause of his death. It is a frightening way to die and the fact that he could bear it with such resignation is remarkable.

The epiglottis is a stiff but still flexible piece of cartilage at the back of the tongue. It closes the trachea (windpipe) when food or liquid is swallowed to prevent either from entering the airway, causing coughing or choking. Epiglottitis is a severe inflammation of the epiglottis. The infection progresses rapidly and infiltrates the surrounding tissue, quickly causing that tissue to swell and obstruct the respiratory airway. It is acutely painful and causes the patient to struggle in breathing, swallowing, and speaking – all the symptoms Washington presented.

But a likely contributing cause of death was the amount of blood taken from Washington. Shortly after death, his body was carried downstairs and placed on the dining room table. He measured 6 feet and 3.5 inches. A man of his height and body mass probably weighed around 230 pounds, and from height and weight it’s probable that his total blood volume was about seven quarts. Adding up the various bloodlettings he suffered in his final hours – estimated to be about 82 ounces – Washington lost about 37% of the blood in his body within a 16 hour period, which is a remarkable blood loss for a critically sick patient. Tobias Lear described Washington’s final moments as “calm” which may have been due to the fact that he was entering a profound state of shock and hypertension brought on by blood loss.

Ironically, even as Washington lay dying, his friend and the colleague of his doctors – Dr. Benjamin Rush, a champion of bloodletting – was fighting the allegation of medical malpractice because of it. William Corbett, a Philadelphia journalist, had objected to Rush’s overzealous use of the practice, saying Rush had killed more patients than he had saved. Rush sued for libel and won on December 14, the day of Washington’s death.

In the weeks following Washington's death, the three attending physicians became embroiled in criticism which grew worse over the years. They were condemned for their reliance on bloodletting, one critic even going as far as to accuse them of murder.

And indeed, the doctors began to have second thoughts concerning their treatment of Washington’s condition. Dick had originally argued against bleeding and diagnosed that Washington suffered a "violent inflammation of the membranes of the throat" rather than Craik’s diagnosis of an attack of quinsy, an antiquated 18th century medical term for tonsillitis or strep. Dick’s diagnosis was essentially correct although he couldn’t have understood epiglottitis or its aetiology. Craik later mused that he had been inclined to consent to Dick’s recommendation for a tracheotomy before having second thoughts. Brown, writing later to Craik, had reflected on Dick’s diagnosis and treatment assessment, saying “I have often thought that if we had acted according to his suggestion when he said, 'He needs all his strength – bleeding will diminish it,' and taken no more blood from him, our good friend might have been alive now.”

However, it is unfair to hold Washington’s doctors to a higher standard than the medical practices of their day. From the perspective of 212 years later, we modern heirs of MRIs, laparotomies, and pharmacotherapies might condescend to treatments of beetle powders, blister poultices, purges with lethal mercury concoctions, and therapeutic bleeding. But Washington himself was an advocate of these practices and used them on himself, his wife, servants, and slaves. They were the therapies he knew and believed to be the best available, just as we today submit to invasive and mutilating surgeries, radiation treatments, and debilitating chemotherapy – practices that the beneficiaries of future therapies may deign to be marginally effective and barbaric.

Despite advances in modern diagnosis and treatment, we still don’t have a scientifically empirical understanding of the origin and progression of many diseases. Until we do, the practice of medicine will be more art than science, not unlike its application in Washington’s day