The First American Army by Bruce Chadwick

Author:Bruce Chadwick
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781402207532
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2007-01-14T10:00:00+00:00

VALLEY FORGE

Chapter Eighteen

THE HARSH ROAD TO A WINTER CAMP

The War

In the summer of 1777, General William Howe decided to capture Philadelphia—the new American capital city, home of the Continental Congress, and a major port. He was certain that the occupation of that city would be a major military victory that might just cripple the rebels’ willingness to continue the war. Howe took a force of fifteen thousand men down the Atlantic seaboard on two hundred sixty ships, sailed into the Chesapeake Bay, landed near what is now Elkton, Maryland, and marched north toward Philadelphia. There he engaged Washington’s main army at Brandywine and Germantown, near the city.

After those battles, George Washington’s force of nearly fourteen thousand soldiers, with their supply wagons and train of cannon, sought a camp for the coming winter while Horatio Gates’s northern army remained in Albany. Pennsylvania officials insisted that Washington’s army establish winter quarters near the Valley Forge, northwest of Philadelphia on the banks of the Schuylkill River. They wanted the army there to protect southeastern Pennsylvania from any British attack. Several generals recommended Wilmington, Delaware, towns in Pennsylvania, and communities in New Jersey. Washington, under intense political pressure from the politicians, chose Valley Forge.

There was no housing at Valley Forge and the soldiers were faced with the challenge of building a large city on meadows that could, when completed, house all fourteen thousand men, two thousand horses, several slaughterhouses, cattle pens, granaries, offices, parade grounds, privies, stables, wagon barns, blacksmith shops, and several hospitals. To house his men, Washington ordered the construction of log huts, sixteen by fourteen feet in size. Twelve enlisted men would live in each. Every hut had bunk beds for sleeping and a small fireplace in the rear. More spacious huts were built for officers. The cabins were built along neatly planned dirt lanes with soldiers from each state grouped together in their own neighborhoods. The encampment was so large that, in population, it was the fourth largest city in the United States.

The hut city was plagued with problems from the day the army arrived. The misery that the troops encountered there would test their endurance and courage like no other time in the Revolution and, perhaps, no other time in American history.

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