Within days of arriving at Valley Forge, troops constructed 1, to 2, log huts in parallel lines that would house 12, soldiers and women and children throughout the winter. Washington directed that each hut measure approximately 14 feet by 16 feet. Soldiers were instructed to search the countryside for straw to use as bedding, since there were not enough blankets for everyone. In addition to the huts, the men built miles of trenches, military roads and paths. General Washington and his closest aides lived in a two-story stone house near Valley Forge Creek.
Popular images of life at Valley Forge depict tremendous suffering from cold and starvation. A lack of organization, food and money shortages plagued the Continental Army throughout the first half of the seven-year-long revolution.
These problems exacerbated the harsh living conditions at Valley Forge, during the third year of the war. Some were even shoeless. Army records suggest that each soldier received a daily ration of one-half pound of beef during January , but food shortages during February left the men without meat for several days at a time.
Cold and starvation at Valley Forge were not even the most dangerous threats: diseases proved to be the biggest killer. Camp records indicate that two-thirds of the deaths happened during the warmer months of March, April and May when soldiers were less confined to their cabins and food and other supplies were more abundant.
The most common illnesses included influenza , typhus, typhoid fever and dysentery—conditions most likely exacerbated by poor hygiene and sanitation at the camp. In addition to the huts, the men constructed miles of trenches, five earthen forts redoubts , and a state-of-the-art bridge based on a Roman design over the Schuylkill River.
Once the bridge spanning the river was complete, the army made full use of the land north of the river as a vital supply link. The farms located on the north side provided forage for the Continental Army, the location of a camp market where farmers from this vicinity could sell their produce to the army, and the center for commissary operations.
The bridge connection also made the camp more secure as patrols could range the country to the north and east to check British movements and intentions in that quarter. Even though camp markets and the establishment of a center for commissary operations brought food and supplies into camp, the establishment of the winter camp so close to the British caused the men additional hardship.
Instead of being able to focus on building the camp and obtaining much needed rest, the troops had to expend energy on security operations. The men spent extra-long hours on duty patrolling, standing guard, and manning dangerous outposts near the city and the enemy. Perhaps the most notable suffering that occurred at Valley Forge came from a factor that has not been frequently mentioned in textbooks: disease was the true scourge of the camp.
Men from far flung geographical areas were exposed to sicknesses from which they had little immunity. During the encampment, nearly 2, men died of disease.
Dedicated surgeons, nurses, a smallpox inoculation program, and camp sanitation regulations limited the death tolls. The army kept monthly status reports that tracked the number of soldiers who had died or were too sick to perform their duties. These returns reveal that two-thirds of the men who perished died during the warmer months of March, April, and May, when supplies were more abundant. The most common killers were influenza, typhus, typhoid, and dysentery.
The army interred few, if any, of its soldiers who perished within the lines of the camp. Doctors dispatched the most serious cases to outlying hospitals, both to limit disease spread and also to cure those individuals who could be saved. The army buried the soldiers who died in these out-of-the-way care facilities in church graveyards adjacent to the hospitals. These scattered Southeastern Pennsylvania gravesites have never been systematically commemorated. The scale of the Valley Forge encampment was impressive.
The number of soldiers present ranged from 12, in December to nearly 20, in late spring as the army massed for the campaign season. The troops who came to camp included men from all 13 original colonies and regiments from all of them except South Carolina and Georgia.
The encampment brought together men, women, and children of nearly all ages, from all walks of life, of every occupation, from different ethnic backgrounds, and of various religions. Although most soldiers came from a Protestant background, Catholic and Jewish personnel also were among those in camp.
Civilians played a key role in the encampment. The local community was largely Quaker. Most of the nearby prominent farm and industrial families were members of the Religious Society of Friends. These persons and their Scottish, Irish, and German neighbors assisted the army to varying extents as their sentiments ranged in degree from staunch patriot to fervent Tory. Distressed and haughty New England officers in camp leveled their most impassioned complaints at the locals who did not appear to support the cause.
In spite of the resentment leveled at them, it was often the Quakers and other religious societies such as the Bethlehem and Lititz Moravians and the Ephrata Cloister members who rendered valuable assistance to sick soldiers while many citizens stood aside. Within this civilian climate, the army was able to stabilize its situation and concentrate on a much-needed training program. Valley Forge was demographically, militarily, and politically an important crossroads in the Revolutionary War.
Recent scholarship shows that a mix of motives was at play, particularly in the minds of men who enlisted in early Some of these men served out of patriotism, but many served for profit or individual liberty as in the case of enslaved, indentured, and apprenticed peoples , and many more were coerced, as most colonies, on the advice of Congress and pressure from General Washington, introduced conscription in As well, the participants had different values, and especially different ideas about what words such as liberty, equality, slavery, and freedom actually meant in practice.
Valley Forge provides a site for exploring this complicated story and examining the multiple perspectives of those involved there — from soldiers to citizens, officers to enslaved Americans, from women to American Indians — the encampment was a microcosm of a revolutionary society at war. Also important, the ideas and ideals held dear by Americans today were not forged at Valley Forge, but rather contested — not just between patriots and the British — but also among different Americans.
Valley Forge and the Revolution put the United States on a long road to defining those ideals in ways satisfactory to all — a process still in the making. Despite the difficulties, there were a number of significant accomplishments and events during the encampment. Because of its far-reaching consequences, the single most noteworthy achievement was the maturation of the Continental Army into a professional force under the tutelage of Friedrich Wilhelm Baron von Steuben.
At the same time he realized that American soldiers would not submit to harsh European-style regulation.
Von Steuben did not try to introduce the entire system of drill, evolutions, maneuvers, discipline, tactics, and Prussian formation into the American army:. I should have been pelted had I attempted it, and should inevitably have failed. The genius of this nation is not in the least to be compared with that of the Prussians, Austrians, or French.
Secondly, Valley Forge was far enough away from the rich farmland north of Philadelphia to prevent the army from becoming a burden on the local population. Lastly, Valley Forge was close enough to the occupied capital of Philadelphia for the Continental Army to keep an eye on the British and prevent any surprise attacks on settlements in the countryside. As Washington explained, if the army was farther away, then "many of our friends would be exposed to all the miseries of the most insulting and wanton depredation.
As his army marched into Valley Forge on December 19, Washington hoped that his officers and soldiers, with "one heart" and "one mind," would surmount the troubles that lay ahead of them. While Washington knew most of his men were fit for duty, he calculated that at least a third of them had no shoes. Many did not have a decent coat to protect against the constant rain that plagued the camp. Campaign piece on Valley Forge produced in partnership with Mount Vernon. Washington ordered his soldiers to build wooden huts for themselves, twelve by twelve feet each, and then search the countryside for straw to use as bedding.
He hoped this would keep them warm since there were not enough blankets for everyone. Even worse, his quartermaster reported that he had just twenty-five barrels of flour and only a little salt pork to feed the entire army. As Washington explained in a letter to Henry Laurens, the President of the Continental Congress, unless something was done quickly, "this Army might dissolve. Promising to "share in the hardship" and "partake of every inconvenience," Washington moved with his closest aides into a two-story stone house near Valley Forge Creek.
He complained of a "malignant faction," led by Horatio Gates , the hero of Saratoga , Thomas Mifflin, the nation's former Quartermaster General, and Thomas Conway, a French soldier of Irish descent, who had recently been named to the Board of War by Congress. Washington railed against the threesome, dubbed the "Conway Cabal" by later historians. Alerts In Effect Dismiss. Dismiss View all alerts.
History and Significance. The American Revolution Handbook. Administrative History of Valley Forge.
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