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As 2012 draws to a close, breathless news reports
have interrupted regular TV programming with updates on the inability of
Congress and President Obama to avert a “fiscal cliff.” As problematic as this
is, however, this situation is not a threat to the American republic itself.
Such was not the case 235 years ago, when George Washington and the Continental Army settled into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Penn. The soldiers felt
far more than the general anxiety afflicting American taxpayers and the financial
market now.
From their commander on down, the patriot forces had
come to expect redcoat attacks when they were least anticipated. Such had been
the case three months earlier, at the Battle of Brandywine, when the British
had crossed a ford believed to be impassable and had surprised the inexperienced colonials from
behind. What they could not foresee, as Washington reached the site on the 19th
and directed his men to build huts immediately, was that, even before they saw
another redcoat uniform, they would suffer through some of the worst hardships
and death rate of the entire American Revolution.
The national park that now occupies the site of the
Continental Army’s third winter encampment is a kind of secular shrine for
Americans. Yet no major battle was fought here, and over time myths have
accrued as to what happened here.
I was disabused of one of these right at the visitor
center when I visited the park in late October. Like many people, my image of
Valley Forge consisted of patriot soldiers huddling close to fires as they
sought to stave off freezing to death. Yet a park ranger informed me that a
later encampment, the second one at Morristown, N.J., faced far lower
temperatures—the worst in a century.
In a way, comparatively warmer temperatures worked
to Valley Forge’s disadvantage. Solid snow and ice at Morristown enabled
crucial supplies to make it through, so that fewer than 100 deaths occurred. At
Valley Forge, though, thaws and rain created massive mud ruts that delayed the
shipment of desperately need food. Moreover, the mud exacerbated problems with
the army’s exposed latrines, spreading disease (typhus, typhoid, dysentery, and
pneumonia) throughout the camp.
The result: 1,800 enlisted men out of 10,000 died in
five months.
Had this been the entire story of Valley Forge,
however, the revolution—and with it, the United States—would have perished on
the spot. Valley Forge became so important to American history for three other
reasons:
11) It marked the beginning of French
involvement in the war. (The 19-year-old Marquis de
Lafayette and engineer Pierre L’Enfant—later, the architect of Washington,
D.C.—were stationed here, and the treaty of alliance between the U.S. and France was toasted before the end of the encampment.)
22) It represented the true birthplace
of the American Army. (An immigrant from Frederick the
Great’s vaunted Prussian Army, Baron von Steuben, arrived to train the
Continentals.)
33) It demonstrated why Washington was
the indispensable leader of the early republic.
(He might have been a weak strategist, but his organizational ability,
recognition of young talent, and persuasive appeals to Congress kept the
army intact at its nadir.)
Location was central to the camp’s existence.
Eighteen miles from Philadelphia, Valley Forge was close enough to the recently
captured patriot capital so that Washington could carefully monitor British
troop movements. At the same time, the rural village's high ground, Washington and his general
staff decided, would permit an adequate defense.
Contemporary Valley Forge would have seemed an
unimaginably strange place to Washington and his troops. Just beyond the range
of the 3,600 national historic park loom the highways and office parks
associated with this Philadelphia suburb. On the rainy day of my visit, joggers
made their way around the arc associated with Washington’s encampment. Tourists
of every conceivable ethnicity (including Asia) stopped and peered at the
plaques and statues along the way.
The park was quiet the day of my visit. Two hundred
and thirty-five years ago, it would have been a different story, as the air
would have been filled with the sounds of
men building huts that,
according to General Washington’s own specifications, could contain a dozen
soldiers each. (They were very busy with the building, since the
commander-in-chief had promised to award “the party in each regiment” that constructed
the huts quickest with $12 each.)
However, one point on the habitation’s map—Mount
Joy—would have seemed like an obscene joke. The name of another—Mount
Misery—would have been far more like it. It wasn’t only that the soldiers' diet of "firecake"
(a mixture of flour and water), often minus meat or bread, was tasteless and
unvaried. In addition, one-quarter of Washington’s troops were deemed “unfit for duty”—i.e.,
barefoot or badly clad. Area residents at the time were not pleased to find
Continental soldiers foraging for provisions on their land, seeing their fences
and woodlots used for shelters, and especially their livestock and grain
commandeered.
Under these dire conditions, Washington doubted he
could continue to field the army. “[U]nless some great and capital change
suddenly takes place... this Army must inevitably... starve, dissolve, or
disperse, in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can," he
warned Henry Laurens, president of the Continental Congress, only four days
after arriving at the encampment.
That the army did not collapse was due, in no small
measure, to the general himself. He persuaded a committee of the Continental Congress to
come to the encampment, where they could see for themselves the impact of the
food crisis on the men. That made them far more agreeable to Washington’s goal
of creating an American army whose members would not bolt and run at the first
opportunity (including pensions for soldiers).
The army that emerged from Valley Forge in June 1778
was considerably different from the one that entered it. They were better
trained, more self-confident, with a major European power as an ally—and united
by the privations they had endured.
(The photo I took accompanying this post depicts a replica
of one of the log huts built at Valley Force.)
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