Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory

by Newt Gingrich

  “Our lads are giving the bastards hell,” one of the men cried. The sergeant nodded in acknowledgment.

  “That’s the last of it, Sergeant.”

  Zebulon saw a soldier come out of the barn, holding a couple of geese up high, their necks already broken. Elsa stifled back a sob. One of the geese was indeed a pet. On summer days it used to follow their two girls around, honking loudly until attended to, hand-fed, and petted.

  “Burn it,” the sergeant announced.

  The men needed no urging. Inwardly Zebulon searched for a biblical reference as to how men were driven mad by the lusts of war, but the verse would not come to him nor comfort him when, within minutes, flames leapt heavenward, consuming the barn.

  The sergeant looked at him closely, drawing in his breath, heavy with the scent of corn liquor.

  “That woodlot yonder. The one the shot came from?”

  Zebulon did not reply.

  “You own it?”

  He was silent. A second later, the sergeant slapped him hard on the side of the head with the butt of his musket. Zebulon collapsed, knocked out by the blow.

  “Do you own it, damn you?”

  “Yes, it’s ours,” Elsa cried. “Now in the name of Christ please leave us alone.”

  “Your farm was harboring rebel traitors. And I lost my lieutenant. He was a fair bastard, he was, and let us have our fun at times. God knows what kind of officer we’ll be stuck with next, thanks to you. Most likely some preachy type who will tell us you Yankees are just like us and we got to be respectful of you.”

  He looked back at his men.

  “Burn the house.”

  The sergeant led his detachment away. As their home collapsed in flames, their neighbor Snyder and his wife came to help Elsa carry her husband back to the Snyders’ house, where they would be sheltered, at least for the moment, from the storm.

  Chapter Two

  Valley Forge, Pennslyvania

  Twenty-two Miles Northwest of Philadelphia

  Noon, December 22, 1777

  Heavy flakes of wet snow danced on the wind, intermingled with bursts of sleet and freezing rain as General George Washington, his hat pulled low against the chilled blast, rode slowly along the crest of the ridge where he had planned his defensive positions.

  Not a single spadeful of earth had been turned for the defensive line he had been promised would be constructed before his army arrived here. The slope was bare, open, and could easily be taken by assault. To hear a curse escape his lips was indeed rare, but for several long minutes he gave vent to oaths of rage and frustration.

  Weeks ago he planned for this place to be his fallback position if he could not drive the British out of Philadelphia. Twenty miles from the center of the city, it was close enough to keep watch, but far enough away that he would not be caught by surprise if they should sally forth.

  To the east and north, the Schuylkill River turned in a broad arc, providing flanking cover, and then twisted back down to the southwest to serve as an anchor point for his right flank as well. The ridge in front of the river was dominated by two heights, Mount Joy and Mount Misery, where he had laid out plans for sturdy redoubts. At the moment, he felt the latter was most aptly named.

  The site was chiefly wooded with secondary growth, the old forest cut back long ago to provide fuel for the nearby iron forge for which the ridge and valley below were named. The trees of the reemerging forest were well sized for easy felling and conversion into logs for huts and to serve as firewood.

  He had conveyed these plans to Congress weeks ago. He had been promised by the Congressional Committee for the Conduct of the War that militia would be roused to build the defensive lines and construct enough shelters to house his men, and that rations would be in place to feed them for the winter.

  Nothing, absolutely nothing had been done!

  Rage gave way to dejected silence as he rode across the empty plain. No fortifications, no shelters, and thousands of shivering men squatting, sitting, lying on the bare ground, crouched around sputtering fires. Only a few even rose to their feet as he rode past, so lost were they in their frozen misery.

  Rations had run out two days ago as they marched to this place. For the first time in this war, they had truly run out. In the past there had been some flour to be passed out to be fashioned into johnnycakes—nothing more than dough rolled out on a flat rock or frying pan—to be eaten half cooked, with perhaps several ounces of salt pork, usually spoiled. For the last two days, there had been nothing at all for any of them. As he surveyed the men, he felt a pang of guilt over the one-pound slab of bacon “acquired” somehow by his servant, Billy Lee, and shared with the men of his staff, along with a mixture of coffee and parched barley to wash it down.

  There were no tools for making their shelters as the storm increased its fury. At the break of dawn that morning, when word reached the ranks that rations had not yet arrived, hundreds of them crowed like birds, a signal in their ranks of their intent to fly away. And morning muster reports showed that indeed more than three hundred had walked off during the night.

  Washington contemplated the sheer failure of the promises made to him by Congress. Congress, of course, was utterly indifferent to its inability to deliver, and now blamed him for this debacle. It was a harsh denouement after a year of bitter disappointments.

  After the string of blazing victories this time a year ago, the great surprise at Trenton with eight hundred Hessians captured, followed a week later by a second battle at Trenton, then the rout of the British column at Princeton, he had driven the enemy clear back to the banks of the Hudson, and finally made winter camp twenty-five miles to the west of New York City at Morristown.

  At that time, spirits were high, although rations were short and the winter brutal. The victories and the dozens of successful skirmishes that drove the British garrison out of New Jersey, combined with the stunning words of Thomas Paine in his The Crisis, sparked new life into their cause. After laying in their spring planting, thousands rallied to join the ranks. New recruits came in believing that this would be the year that independence would be secured, and the last of the British and their Hessian hirelings would be driven from America’s shores.

  The news from the north had been heartening as well. He had little regard and virtually no trust for General Gates, who had all but betrayed him by refusing to cooperate in the opening moves of the Trenton campaign. Nonetheless, he had to concede that Gates had gone on to stall Burgyone in the wilderness of upstate New York. Gates’s persistence had forced the surrender of over seven thousand men in October: the worst defeat handed to the British Army in the last century.

  And yet, concurrent with the glorious news from the north, Washington’s own forces had been defeated at Brandywine, maneuvered out of Philadelphia. His riposte at Germantown had come within a hairsbreadth of victory but then disintegrated into yet another humiliating defeat. Other battles and skirmishes failed as well, including the humiliating and ghastly defeat suffered by Anthony Wayne at Paoli.

  Of course he must shoulder the blame for battles lost, but he sensed that something was most definitely afoot. Gates was lodged with Congress, appointed to head up the oversight committee, and he sensed that more than a few saw him as the new commander in chief, a position Gates obviously had sought since the start of the war.

  He could not denigrate Gates’s victory at Saratoga; in fact, he loudly applauded it, eager to extend his congratulation. But it was one thing to win a fight in the northern forests, against an enemy with overextended supply lines hundreds of miles long. It was an entirely different war here on the coastal plains. He could not give the rich lands and cities of the coast over to the enemy without making some effort of resistance, especially when the capital of their new nation was in the wager. He had to stand and fight, but he could never succeed with rabbles of militia, or men who signed for only six months and then went home.

  America, if it was to survive, needed a trained professional army
for this war, an army that could stand and face the dreaded volley fire of the best-trained army in the world. Increasingly, his light forces of riflemen were more than overmatched as the enemy formed their own light infantry companies into fast-moving strike forces supported by mounted riflemen.

  But no one in Congress seemed to listen. Valley Forge was the barren fruit of his appeals, and he could not help but wonder if this was the final setup for a failure.

  At this moment he did not care a whit for what Congress might do to him. But these men, merciful God, he cried inwardly, the suffering of those who sullenly gazed at him as he rode by was nearly more than he could bear. Brave men, who had fought by his side, risking all, were now dying from hunger, for want of a pair of shoes, for lack of even the rudest shelter to shield them from winter’s storms.

  Across the last year and half, since declaring independence, Congress had been hard at work forming numerous committees. No one was sure how many there were; the last estimate approached nearly two hundred. Some members of Congress served on twenty or more such committees.

  There were committees for recruiting, printing declarations, and handling recommendations for promotion. Increasingly, especially in the last few months, that usually meant that the ones promoted were not those recommended by him but rather by Gates, men who hung on Congress’s coattails, accompanying their general to meet with Congress after the triumph at Saratoga.

  There were committees to decide on their own pay raises, committees for the design of the money they printed to give themselves pay raises; they even had a committee to oversee the creation of more committees and, in a move of downright madness, a committee to oversee the supplying of the armies.

  The supply committee was actually two committees. One made appeals to the various state committees, which in turn referenced the requests to yet other committees. The other was tasked with gathering supplies directly for Washington’s army. That committee passed a resolution that granted him the power to seize supplies from “those disaffected with our gallant cause” but in the next breath admonished him not to antagonize the local populace and to win over the “disaffected.” The Continental Committee would appeal to the various state committees for those supplies that would be forthcoming when and where needed.

  Months ago, a delegation of patriotic citizens, horrified by the sight of their boys marching barefoot and ragged to what would be the Battle of Brandywine, had approached Congress, pledging to fund the building of a tannery in a safe location to manufacture shoes for all the armies in the field—but the government would have to provide the hides. The last Washington heard, that resolution was mixed in with all the other paperwork Congress had dragged with it to Lancaster and from there to York. The location where the tannery was to be built was still just an empty field.

  A month ago, with the onset of autumn, he had issued a direct appeal to Congress that his men were in rags; not one in twenty possessed a proper winter cloak, and nearly half of them were barefoot.

  The reply was a haughty one: A request had been sent to France for eight thousand uniforms, properly tailored and of sufficient weight for winter wear. The note should be in Paris by the end of the year, he was told, with uniform delivery expected by March; Benjamin Franklin would guide the request through the various French committees, get the uniforms loaded, and then run them safely through the British blockade. Meanwhile, he was told to look to local patriots for relief. Their task and obligation to him was therefore done, and the concern was now his, with the clear implication that they had fulfilled their duty to him, and that if his men were not properly clad it would be his fault.

  And now this final blow, the army’s arrival at Valley Forge two days ago.

  During the bitter march north, he had repeatedly promised his men that upon arrival they could set to making proper winter quarters. He had sketched 10 × 14 foot log cabins, ten men to a cabin, arrayed in neat, orderly streets, with regimental cookhouses and hospitals for the sick.

  When he arrived with the vanguard of the column, his heart felt a despair he had never yet experienced in this, the third year of the war.

  He was greeted by a barren, tree-studded plain. His choice of this low ridge had been made first with tactical requirements in mind. As an agricultural area, Valley Forge was a poor piece of land. At best, the cleared land could be used as pasture. Further west, or up toward Reading, the land was far richer, but it did not fulfill his desire to be close enough to Philadelphia in order to be able to strike swiftly if an opportunity presented itself. This was something he was already planning; the notes for the attack were locked safely in his secured footlocker. The plan was obviously based upon the success at Trenton almost exactly a year ago to this day.

  What greeted him at Valley Forge was worse than Long Island, worse than the desperate days before Trenton, when at least he had a plan and a target to strike back at, but also a secured base on the west bank of the Delaware beyond British reach and with some trickle of supplies coming in.

  Congress assured him that the proper committee from the Pennsylvania delegation had been informed of his intent to make his winter camp at Valley Forge, which, for reasons of security, had to be kept secret. This committee would rouse the local militia to bring in supplies, heads of beef, barrels of flour, and tools for cutting and shaping trees into the hundreds of cabins that had to be built quickly. They would have proper fortifications along with the shelters. In the retreat after Germantown, his army had lost a fair part of their baggage train and, with it, the siege equipment of heavy picks, shovels, axes, ropes for dragging, and wheelbarrows—what Caesar and the Romans had called the “impedimenta” of the army, the baggage that slowed an army down but was needed for their survival.

  What greeted him at Valley Forge was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  He stopped, unable to bear the sight. Listless, starving men hunkered down in the open around smoky fires, many of them too weak and sick to build shelters, even if proper tools could be found. They gazed at him sullenly; some showed their respect by standing and coming to attention, but many could not move.

  When he turned his mount to ride back, a cry rose up.

  “Meat, meat. We have no meat!”

  He could hear officers and sergeants yelling for the malcontents to fall silent, but the cry cut into his heart.

  Merciful God, what am I to do? Go back and lie? Go back and promise that by this time tomorrow herds of cattle and sheep and droves of hogs would be driven in? If only he could give them all just a single pound of meat for one meal. He needed at least twenty head of cattle a day, or three times as many hogs or sheep, and that meant not a single ounce wasted; everything—from innards and brains to boiled-out bone marrow—would have to be consumed. To give each of them but a pound of bread, he needed six tons of flour a day, and the bakehouses and cords of dried firewood to bake the loaves.

  He needed tons of corn, dried fruit, vinegar for the surgeons to clean the hospitals yet to be built, stout ale and broth to feed the sick, at least thirty pounds or more of good fodder per horse, at least fifty wagonloads a day for fodder, though he wondered if a single horse would still be alive in another few days. There were reports that artillery crews were killing off the weakest animals to eat them. Along the Guelph Road leading to this place, he had seen the frozen and butchered carcasses of more than one animal that had collapsed and within minutes had its flesh stripped clean from the bones by hungry troops. Even the bones had been scooped up to be boiled.

  It was worse than the nightmare retreat across New Jersey. The small cadre of men who had endured the campaign a year ago, and stayed on with the army, was now enduring another season of misery. Two winters in a row was asking too much of any man.

  And what am I asking of myself, he wondered, as he rode back toward his headquarters tent.

  “Meat, General! For God’s sake, where’s our food?”

  One of the men lay on his back and held his feet up in the air for him to see. His f
eet were black, swollen, and cracked; it was obvious that in a few more days the surgeon would take both of them off.

  “Is this my reward for standing with you since Long Island?” the man cried. His voice broke into sobs of anguish.

  Washington lowered his head so they would not see his own tears, and he rode back to the command tent, pitched in an open grove of chestnuts. Even nuts from the trees had already been scavenged by his hungry troops.

  As the storm increased its intensity, sleet slashed down on the melancholy landscape. The tree limbs glistened and the tent groaned under the weight of the ice. It would certainly not survive this storm; he made a mental note to send guards out to approach the nearby farmers with a request to rent their homes as headquarters.

  He had become quite firm on that issue. For Americans, this was a war for the hearts of a people who were indeed wavering after two and a half years of bitter fighting. To loot, to forage, and to take without asking only created yet more enemies to fight. It brought to mind the rejoinder of Henry V just before he hanged an old comrade for looting: that at times the gentler of souls gained the greater victory with the people who must endure the passing of armies.

  He came to a halt in front of his tent. A headquarters guard immediately took the bridle of his horse.

  “Thank you, Peter,” he whispered.

  The young soldier forced a smile. He was one of the men who had joined the headquarters guards before Trenton and then stayed on rather than return to his Jersey militia unit.

  Major Tench Tilghman, his aide-decamp, waited by the open tent flap. “Did the ride help at all, sir?” he asked. “No, it did not,” he replied wearily.

  Tench offered his general a tin cup of tepid coffee mixed with roasted barley. Washington refused; the guilt of having indulged in a meager meal of slightly rancid but tolerable bacon and coffee with his staff this morning still gnawed at him.

  “Have you thought of a reply, sir?” Tench inquired, as he sat across the conference table and motioned to the stack of correspondence. Atop it were the three letters, the cause of his explosive rage an hour ago. He had ordered the ever-present Billy Lee and the rest of his staff to stay behind as he stormed out and mounted to ride. They had waited nervously for his return.