When the committee came to White Marsh, Washington told the members how nearly naked and how ill-shod his troops were. When the committee inquired if a large body of militia could not be called out to give him added strength for an attack on Philadelphia, he asked his Generals for their views, with full assurance of what their answers would be. The commanders pointed out that the season was too far advanced to summon militia from distant States and that, even if the men reached the camp, it was doubtful “whether they could be furnished with provisions and forage, and brought to act in concert with the regular Army.” Committeemen questioned and consulted and informed Congress that, in their opinion, a winter offensive was “ineligible.” The Army should take up winter quarters where it would “be most likely to overawe the enemy,” protect the country and find provisions and shelter. In like understanding of unhappy realities and long disregarded needs, the committee endorsed Washington’s proposals for improving the corps of officers and for assuring the continued service of leaders qualified to “introduce that order and discipline amongst the troops so essential to the military character.”
Congress was not content to accept the committee’s findings without the papers on which the report was based. By resolves of December 19 the Delegates called for these documents. The facts might not satisfy the element critical of Washington but they were a final answer to those who looked at the actual condition of the Continental Army vis-á-vis Howe’s. Congress did not have to rely on Washington’s interpretation only. The testimony of all the senior officers was the same: strategical mistakes and tactical blunders had been made but none of these meant as much as the fundamental inferiority of the Army in almost every thing fighting men required. At bottom, the issue was not that of supplanting Washington but that of supplying him where he and his officers decided they would post the Army.
Warm argument and sharp division arose over the selection of winter quarters, because the extent of the area open to British depredation might depend on the distance of the American camp from Philadelphia. If Washington’s divisions were close to the city, they would be exposed to surprise, an excessive price to pay for reducing by a few square miles the district exposed to British pillaging. Conversely, if the Army were remote, it would not be able to deal with parties that might improve British rations by stripping bare a prosperous countryside. A related subject of discussion was whether the forces should or could requisition quarters in nearby towns and villages, which already were overcrowded with refugees from Philadelphia. The Council and Assembly of Pennsylvania sent Congress a vigorous remonstrance in which they pointed out the danger of exposing lower Jersey and that part of Pennsylvania east of the Schuylkill. The Pennsylvanians maintained, also, that many families had fled from Philadelphia and had so crowded nearby towns that soldiers could not be quartered there. Before this paper reached Congress or came to Washington’s hand the choice of a campsite had been made—a wooded region on the south side of the Schuylkill, eighteen miles northwest of the occupied city, at a place called the Valley Forge.
The area into which the Army was to move a week before Christmas 1777 formed a crude right-angle triangle that covered the Fatland Ford, about four and a half miles north and slightly east of the scene of the “Paoli Massacre.” A few redoubts and a line of entrenchments would consolidate the hills and high ground into a strong defensive position. Thick woods would offer fuel and logs for the construction of quarters. Streams would supply water in abundance. A few scattered dwellings and farm buildings were the sole man-made facilities of which the Army could avail itself. Most of the precinct was windy and forbidding hillside. On that bleak and comfortless soil the troops must camp in their tattered tents until axemen went into the woods, felled trees and brought in logs that must be raised and roofed and made into cabins which the soldiers were to fit with hearths and chimneys.
The shortage of provisions continued and rapidly became worse. Some brigades had a small amount of salt pork issued them December 21 from a Commissary in the last stages of collapse. Then provisions gave out entirely. Many soldiers got nothing and, in their mounting misery, made loud complaint. A sombre chant was repeated endlessly in the tents of one regiment after another till the long hillsides rang with the wail, “No meat, no meat.” Although officers were able promptly to put an end to this defiance of discipline, they warned Headquarters they might have more trouble unless the men were fed.
By strained effort enough food was brought up overnight to permit an issue, but early on December 22 Washington was aroused by news that a British force had left Philadelphia and was moving towards Derby on what appeared to be a foraging expedition. When he ordered the Army made ready to march against this column he received a report the like of which never had come to him in the two and a half years of his command: the troops could not stir from their camps. Washington was compelled to send this alarming dispatch to Congress:”. . . unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place . . . this Army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these three things. Starve, dissolve or disperse, in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can. . . .” As he put this on paper his wrath mounted against those who had sought to prevent the occupation of quarters in Pennsylvania towns nearby: “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 or snow without clothes or blankets. . . .”
Previously, at every twist of the revolutionary struggle, some essential of successful war had not been available; at Valley Forge everything was lacking. The Army might freeze before it starved; and if it found shelter and food, the shortage of clothing and footgear would keep it from taking the field. The fault was not with the place but with equipment and supplies.
Little had been accomplished either by Congress or by most of the States to collect garments. Congress and the Commander-in-Chief had been compelled to say in plain words that the Clothier General could not meet the requirements of shivering thousands. This had been followed by a pessimistic committee report to Congress on what might be expected from importation. New inquiry into the competence of the Clothier General’s management, a summons of that harassed individual to Headquarters, the assurance that officers would join him in trying to find new supplies, the dispatch of representatives to Boston—these were four only of numerous desperate moves of December. So low was the stock of clothing near the end of the year that after some of the veterans of the nine original Virginia regiments offered to continue in service if the bounty was doubled and the promised clothing was allowed them, Congress had to tender money instead of garments. From “Head Quarters, Valley Forge” on the last day of a dreadful year, Washington compassed the misery of thousands in a single exclamation: “Our sick naked, our well naked, our unfortunate men in captivity naked!”
Thus, at the beginning of 1778, the Army was witnessing one of the strangest of races, a contest between the axes of the men building huts and the harsh wear-and-tear on the remaining garments of those who still had sufficient clothing to permit outdoor duty. The huts had to be finished speedily, or nakedness would be fatal to the Army. Sickness increased with exposure. Although hospital huts were built early and in what was believed to be sufficient number, they soon were overcrowded with miserable men who died fast or, if they survived, received little attention. In spite of all exertion, it was the middle of January when the last of the troops were under roof. Even then they did not always have straw to take the chill from the earthen floor of their huts. Thousands had no bed covering. The shortage of blankets had become so critical that when Virginia troops reached the end of their term of enlistment, Washington had to order taken from these men the blankets, belonging to the Army, that would have made their bivouacs endurable on the long road home.
Part of the blame rested on the shoulders of Quartermaster General Mifflin, who had not maintained his office at Headquarters from the time the Army h
ad entered Pennsylvania. Washington had himself tried to give a measure of supervision to the department but had not been able to devote to the task time to get the best performance from Mifflin’s deputies. Washington should have called on Congress to replace Mifflin or insist that the Quartermaster General discharge the duties of office. Instead, his amiability had led him to hope against hope for some betterment until, in this respect, he was unjust to his troops.
Food, of course, was the absolute essential—and food, more than even clothing or blankets or straw, was lacking at Valley Forge. Commissary General Trumbull was an able and diligent man, but he had been sick for months and in New England, with the result that his department, like that of the Quartermaster General, did not have the daily supervision of an experienced and competent head. The Commissary was in a condition so tangled that Washington did not attempt to assess blame for the scarcity of provisions, now approaching famine. “Fire cakes” frequently were all the half-naked men had to eat in their overcrowded, smoky huts. Early in the New Year most of the regiments had to be told the Commissary could issue no provisions because it had none, none whatsoever. After this second period of fasting had become almost intolerable, some flour and a few cattle reached camp. Meagerly after that, a half-allowance of meat or of bread was issued daily, until about the beginning of the second week in February, when winter fired all its siege guns. The bombardment by the gray skies was so overwhelming that no teams could reach camp. All reserve provisions were exhausted—to the last thin cow and the bottom slab of pork in the one remaining barrel. A week and more passed before any flesh was available for the men in the ranks. As Washington, intensely anxious, walked through the camp during that dreadful week he heard an ominous chant—”no pay, no clothes, no provisions, no rum.”
Washington expected the disintegration of his forces or open mutiny and desertion en masse—alternatives so ruinous that they frightened even those members of Congress who had appeared skeptical concerning the breakdown of the Commissary. The most stubborn-minded Delegates were shaken from their persistent confidence in the dual system of purchase and supply they had set up in 1777. Fundamental changes were projected. If possible, Congress must have again the services of Trumbull, from the date of whose departure, Washington said, the Army had lived precariously. Time would not wait on deliberation.
These were desperate hours. Washington continued to watch and to warn. “A prospect now opens,” he said February 17, “of absolute want such as will make it impossible to keep the Army much longer from dissolution unless the most vigorous and effectual measures are pursued to prevent it.” He had been inclined to suspect that mutiny was near; thereafter it looked as if the alternative would prevail—that the Army simply would fall apart as the men left their huts and scattered in quest of food. They would have to walk because, even if they were disposed to steal the horses, the animals that had survived the lack of forage were too few and too feeble to carry them far.
The men exceeded the faith of their officers in them. They neither mutinied nor marched away. Desertion actually diminished when the shortage of provisions was most depressing. The troops had confidence in Washington and they deserved everything that John Laurens implied when he spoke of “those dear, ragged Continentals whose patience will be the admiration of future ages. . . .” Nathanael Greene was privileged to pay tribute and to relate the climax of the story as it concerned part of his command:
MAP / 13
CAPE ANN TO BALTIMORE:
PRINCIPAL TOWNS AND HIGHWAYS, 1775-1778
MILITARY LIFE
Such patience and moderation as they manifested under their sufferings does the highest honor to the magnanimity of the American soldiers. The seventh day [without rations] they came before their superior officers and told their sufferings in as respectful terms as if they had been humble petitioners for special favors; they added that it would be impossible to continue in camp any longer without support.
Through the worst of the ordeal, even in the dreadful third week of February, Washington retained outwardly his unshaken composure as the days of late winter dragged by and concern over provisions was aggravated by a hundred problems. His was the task of planning for the victorious long life of an Army that might die of starvation the very next week. He had, fortunately, the companionship of Martha who lighted the long evenings and directed the Spartan entertainment at Headquarters. Simple as were the diversions in officers’ quarters, they were in heartrending contrast to the life of the soldiers. As his duties multiplied, Washington used increasingly a staff he now was free to augment as he saw fit. Col. Alexander Scammell, the new Adjutant General, proved competent, but he had to confess that his duties were intolerably heavy.
Washington, while laboring to prevent the starvation of his men, was busy with the hard, anxious administration of the Army and with plans for making it better able to face its foe. Reforms were advanced through a committee of Congress that had been named at his instance to discuss with him and recommend to other Delegates such changes in organization as its judgment and the counsel of officers suggested. Most of these committeemen came to camp and remained there during part of the period of hardship—a most fortunate circumstance because it gave them an understanding of what Washington had to endure. The four supreme needs, as Washington saw them, were strengthening of the officers’ corps, assurance of recruits for the infantry, improvement of the cavalry and better organization of the Quartermaster’s, the Commissary and other weak departments.
The plea for a reorganization of the Quartermaster’s Department included the assertion that the principal post should be filled by a man of military training. Reports and parliamentary maneuvering of the usual sort delayed action but ended in the conclusion that Philip Schuyler would not be acceptable as Quartermaster General and that Mifflin was unwilling to resume the duties. Mifflin, in fact, had left his post on the Board of War and had quit York, where Congress was now meeting, in a huff because, he affirmed, he was falsely accused of seeking to displace Washington. The ablest man available for the post appeared to be Nathanael Greene, who was most reluctant to accept but at length was prevailed upon to do so. No similar man was procurable immediately for Commissary General. Trumbull’s letters showed him to be unhappy and in ill health. His Deputy of Purchases, Jeremiah Wadsworth of Massachusetts, was the man who seemed most likely to succeed, but election was delayed.
The draft of militia for twelve months, as recommended by the General and approved by the committee, involved politics and public sensibilities that frightened every time-server in Congress, but it was endorsed in its essentials. Because two months of the year had passed when the Delegates voted, they decided that needs for 1778 would be met if the draft were effective for nine months from the time the recruits reached the prescribed rendezvous. The design for the organization of larger cavalry regiments was not questioned but was postponed temporarily, along with other details of the “Establishment of the American Army.”
Partial reorganization was effected, and the miseries of Valley Forge were endured while Washington was having an extraordinary adventure in command. General Conway had returned to camp late in December from York, where he had spoken, to quote Lafayette, “as a man sent by heaven for the liberty and happiness of America.” The Marquis observed, half humorously, “he told so to them and they are fools enough to believe it.” At York and everywhere else that politicians gathered, they still were talking of the difference between Washington’s apparent failure and Gates’s manifest success. Washington’s early resignation was predicted; Gates, Conway, Mifflin or Lee, on release, were put forward as his successor. Lafayette was shocked to observe the dissension in Congress and hear—as he wrote Washington—that “stupid men who without knowing a single word about war, undertake to judge you, to make ridiculous comparisons. . . .”
Washington explained his difficulties to Lafayette and, while the committeemen of Congress were in camp, he disclosed to them the conditions that were paraly
zing the Army. John Harvie, a Virginia member of the committee, waited until he was alone with Washington and then said earnestly, “My dear General, if you had given some explanation, all these rumors would have been silenced a long time ago.” Washington’s answer was a question: “How could I exculpate myself without doing harm to the public cause?” He did not ask this in vain of Harvie or of other discerning members of Congress. They understood. Henry Laurens, now President of the Congress, wrote his son, the General’s aide: “In [Washington’s ruin] would be involved the ruin of our cause. On the other hand his magnanimity, his patience will save his country and confound his enemies.”
Washington’s patience was a virtue that had limits which already had been passed with Conway. The Commander-in-Chief had concluded that ambitious pretensions and incredible self-esteem made the Irish-born Frenchman an “incendiary” who would not hesitate to stir up dangerous contention and to set comrades against one another. The rank and the office of the new Inspector General were to be regarded; Washington would work as best he could with those men Congress assigned him. Personal relations were another matter. Conway was a personal enemy and must be faced.
This was the situation when Conway called at Headquarters to pay his respects. He was received with flawless, cold courtesy—the “ceremonious civility” which Washington had once described as tantamount to incivility. Conway came again and had precisely the same treatment, such a reception, he protested later, “as I never met with before from any General during the course of thirty years in a very respectable Army.” As if to avoid unnecessary personal contact, Washington next sent Col. John Fitzgerald to inquire what methods Conway proposed to employ in the new office of Inspector General. The Frenchman replied, December 29, with an explanation of his plan to prepare models, together with printed rules and regulations and, meantime, to begin the verbal instruction of officers and NCOs from each regiment. This was followed by the statement that the rank of major general was “absolutely requisite” for the discharge of the duties. Conway went on: “. . . if my appointment is productive of any inconvenience or anyways disagreeable to your excellency, as I neither applied nor solicited for this plan, I am very ready to return to France where I have pressing business, and this I will do with the more satisfaction that I expect even there to be useful to the cause.”
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