The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (91 page)

The woods afforded the materials for housing, and the soldiers fell to building huts almost immediately. Washington ordered that the camp be carefully laid out. Huts, fourteen by sixteen feet, were to be constructed of logs, roofed with "split slabs." Clay scaled the sides and was used to make fireplaces. Nails were not to be had of course, and the logs had to be notched. Each hut housed a squad of twelve men. Washington promised to share his soldiers' hardships until the first huts were completed and lived in a tent before finally moving into one of the few houses near by.
By January 13 the last of the huts were completed.
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Comtort did not abound inside the huts' walls. Many had only the ground for floors, and straw for beds was not readily available. Worst of all, the troops frequently had nothing to eat. At the time of their arrival the commissary seems to have contained only twenty-five barrels of flour -- nothing else, neither meat nor fish. During the days that followed the soldiers chopped down trees and put up huts with empty stomachs. At night, according to Albigence Waldo, a surgeon of the Connecticut line, there was a general cry that echoed through the hills -"No meat! No meat!" The troops added to this "melancholy sound" their versions of the cawing of crows and the hooting of owls.
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Imitating bird calls suggests that the troops' sense of humor saw them through the worst of their sufferings. They had their hatreds, too, and these also may have helped sustain them. One was firecake, a thin bread made of flour and water and baked over the campfire. Another was the commissaries who were supposed to provide food for the army. Waldo reconstructed a number of conversations along the following lines: "What have you for your dinners, boys?" "Nothing but firecake and water, Sir." At night: "Gentlemen, the supper is ready. What is your supper lads?" "Firecake and water, Sir." In the morning: "What have you got for breakfast, lads?" "Firecake and water, Sir." And from Waldo, the snarl. "The Lord send that our Commissary of Purchases may live [on] fire cake and water till their glutted gutts are turned to pasteboard."
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During three periods even firecake was largely lacking -- the last week of December, early January, and the middle weeks in February. The time in February was perhaps the worst, with Washington describing the troops as "starving" on February 6, 1778, and their condition as one of "famine" on February 16. By this time the soldiers had already endured two months of short rations; they were cold and many were sick.
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Washington felt their suffering and ate from a lean table himself. More important, he did his best to find food and to get it to Valley Forge. His best was carefully limited by a regard for the rights of civilians, scruples which did not put meat into the mouths of his soldiers. Members of Congress who learned of the hunger at Valley Forge urged Washington to seize the food his troops needed. Washington resisted such suggestions, recognizing that relief of his troops' hunger by such means would undercut the principles of the Revolution and the political support of the

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people. Instead he sent his commissary through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the upper South in search of provisions. At times he seized supplies, or purchased them with force as well as promises of payment, but in these cases he attempted to protect the sellers' interests as much as possible. For example, at least five hundred horses died during the winter from lack of feed. Washington ordered their replacement and sent troops to nearby farms. Their orders were to leave sufficient horses for the needs of the farmers, to give receipts, and to assess the value of those taken as fairly as possible. To guarantee fair compensation impartial referees were to be used, and the farmers were allowed a voice in choosing them and to be present when the value of the horses was established.
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Finding supplies was not easy, and moving them to the camp was sometimes even more difficult. With army horses and wagons scarce, civilians-merchants, drayers, and others -- had to be relied on, and these men, in business for themselves, frequently had better paying uses for their transport. Pork which had been purchased in New Jersey remained there to spoil for lack of wagons. In Pennsylvania, private contractors shipped flour to New England, where prices were better, while Washington's soldiers had short rations. And a number of farmers around Philadelphia preferred to sell to the British in the city, who had hard cash, than to accept Washington's promises of payment.
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With little to do except think of food and warmth, the soldiers at Valley Forge sometimes sought relief on their own terms. Desertions seem not to have exceeded the normal rate, which was bad enough, but the officers began to resign in such numbers as to alarm Washington. The soldiers who stayed did not have enough to do once their huts were built -- one of the weaknesses of the American army was a lack of systematic routine that comes in training and drill -- and some took to plundering nearby farms. The camp saw the usual coming and going, wandering soldiers who strayed here and there, and the bane of the army, those who fired their guns for the pleasure of the sound. Robbing the farmers who had little enough was more serious. Washington, who characterized it as "base, cruel, and injurious to the cause in which we are engaged," attempted to stop it by tightening discipline. Passes were required to leave camp, and soldiers found outside camp without them

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were confined. Washington also ordered that frequent musters were to be taken and instructed his officers to inspect their troops' huts more often. The indiscriminate shooters were to receive twenty lashes "on the spot," and only soldiers on duty were to carry arms.
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The troops' misery lay at the heart of the breaches of discipline. If the conditions of their lives could be improved, most of their excesses would stop. But without supplies of food and clothing not much more than repressing criminal acts could be done. Washington's orders suggest that he did not overlook many ways of maintaining discipline. Some were vital: bury the dead horses and the offal, the troops were told. Some were less important: stop playing cards and casting dice. Inspect the troops frequently, look into their huts, the officers were instructed.
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Undoubtedly these orders had some effect. The gradual recovery of a sick supply system had more. When the army entered Valley Forge its supply service was almost three years old. The service had changed since its inception outside Boston in 1775, but it had not improved. A commissary department existed to provide food for the bellies that an army supposedly moves on; a second department, under a quartermaster, had as its business the responsibility of supplying most other needs including clothing. For a time before 1777-78, Joseph Trumbull, as commissary general, gave excellent service. He resigned, however, when Congress reorganized the department and among other changes, took into its own hands the appointment of the commissary general's deputies. Congressional action made the commissary general's responsibility for supervision of the deputies' work virtually impossible, and Congress itself proved unable to do the job. The deputies, who actually did most of the purchasing and issuing of provisions, found in autonomy considerable opportunities for profiteering and graft. And those who resisted temptation could not begin to meet the army's needs without proper coordination and direction.
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William Buchanan succeeded Trumbulls as commissary general. He

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tried, failed, and went the way of Trumbull. Later in the winter of 1778, Congress, after being made to realize that the new system was a failure, reorganized the service once more and appointed Jeremiah Wadsworth to head it. The reorganized commissary now operated under an incentive system whose control was placed with its head. The commissary general now appointed his deputies, purchasing commissaries, and their subordinates, who were paid a percentage of their cash disbursements. The more food they provided the army, the more money they made for themselves. It was not a perfect system, but it established simple lines of authority, made supervision relatively easy, and fixed responsibility.

The quartermaster department endured a similar history of congressional intervention and recovered only when Nathanael Greene took over in March 1778. A set of incentives brought vigor to its operatives, who, as in the commissary, were brought under the control of the service's head. Greene, himself, was given considerable powers of appointment. For example, he selected his own forage and wagon masters, two key posts.

At Valley Forge in February, energy proved as important as organization in rescuing the army from near-starvation. Greene, under Washington's supervision, provided both energy and organization, sending foraging parties far and wide. Anthony Wayne crossed the Delaware into New Jersey near Goshen and foraged along the river. There he found hay in abundance but the livestock and horses to feed it to were sometimes difficult to discover, for farmers hid their cattle and horses in the woods. Wayne soon learned the tricks of the hunt, and before long his troops collected large numbers of animals. Receipts were given for the stock impressed, and Wayne believed that most owners were "reconciled" to the "policy, necessity and Justice" of the seizures. Whether Wayne followed Greene's orders not to give receipts to those who concealed their livestock is not known.
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Henry Lee went farther afield, into Delaware and the eastern shore of Maryland where the pickings were fat. In Delaware the foragers found more cattle than horses, and almost everywhere there was more hay than grain. The islands in the Delaware River may have contained more horses than most areas -- pasturage in meadows and especially marshes was good there. Greene himself scoured the islands and burned whatever hay he could not send back because of a shortage of teams and horses,