Founding Myths (15 page)

 

“In the midst of frost and snows, disease and destitution, Liberty erected her altar.”

Valley Forge: March, 1777.
Drawing by

Felix Octavius Carr Darley, mid-nineteenth century.

 

There are two important components to the story. First, the cruel hand of nature. Without the blizzards and the bitter cold, there would be little to celebrate in this wintering of the Continental Army. Militarily, the encampment at Valley Forge was merely an interlude; in terms of battlefield casualties, those were the quietest months during the entire course of the Revolutionary War.
²

Second, patient suffering. Patriots were willing to endure extreme hardships, we are told, because they believed so strongly in their country. They were humble folk, not rich and arrogant like those British officers who lounged comfortably in nearby Philadelphia. Again, we like to see ourselves as David, doing battle with Goliath. The rebels, although outsized and outclassed, had
character.
They would do anything for the cause of freedom.

Both subplots are mistaken. Soldiers did not suffer silently. Routinely, they complained and pillaged; sometimes, they deserted; they almost mutinied. And the weather itself was hardly to blame. The winter spent at Valley Forge was milder than normal. By contrast, two years later, Continental soldiers survived the coldest winter in four hundred years on the eastern seaboard of the United States—and yet, strangely, that story is rarely told.

A LITTLE RESPECT

The Valley Forge story, in its traditional form, is disrespectful to the soldiers who endured years of hardships, endangered their lives, and in many cases actually died so that the United States could gain and retain its independence. To give these patriots the respect that is their due, we need not create idealized fantasies about how well they behaved themselves.

At Valley Forge and throughout the Revolutionary War, Continental soldiers demanded the food, clothing, and pay that had been promised them—and for good reason. Had they not tended to their own concerns and needs, they would not have been able to stay in the field and face the enemy. To appreciate this, we have to understand
who these men really were and how they came to serve in the Continental Army.

Although we might like to believe otherwise, the United States won its freedom with the help of hired gunmen. At the beginning of the war, in 1775, all sorts of people showed up to fight. Farmers and artisans, rich and poor, young and old—patriots came forth with uncommon zeal. But this could not last. By the close of 1775, farmers had returned to their farms and artisans to their shops. Since most people had businesses of their own to attend to, Congress found it difficult to induce recruits to fight for their country. “The few who act upon Principles of disinterestedness,” George Washington told Congress in September 1776, “are, comparatively speaking, no more than a drop in the Ocean.”
³

Reluctantly, the Continental Congress offered bounties to those who agreed to join the army. This helped, but it did not suffice. Starting in 1777, Congress fixed the number of companies that each state had to recruit for the Continental Army. States and towns, hoping to fill their quotas, added bounties of their own, but even that was not enough. Without sufficient volunteers, most communities resorted to a draft, but in those days, a draftee had only to produce a body, either his own or someone else's. Those with sufficient means, if called, hired those looking for work to fill their place. In this manner, the ranks of the Continental Army became filled with boys eager for adventure and men without property or jobs. These were the folks who hobbled into Valley Forge on December 19, 1777.

Civilians—those who had not joined up—showed no great love for either the Continental Army or the soldiers who comprised it. They feared standing armies in general (indeed, that was one of the major complaints they voiced against Great Britain), while they looked down upon the men who actually served in this one. As historian John Shy has observed, “The men who shouldered the heaviest military burden were something
less
than average colonial Americans. As a group, they were poorer, more marginal, less well anchored in society.”
⁴
The army became representative not of the American population, but only
of its lower orders: poor men and boys, laborers and apprentices, even Indians and former slaves.

This was not truly a citizens' army, as originally intended; it was far closer to the European model than Americans (both then and now) have chosen to admit. Many civilians at the time preferred to look the other way, ignoring rather than supporting the men who had become professional soldiers. Quaker farmers residing near Valley Forge had their own reasons to resent the fighting Presbyterians and Congregationalists, lads whose business it was to kill, while soldiers, on their part, grumbled about the “cursed Quakers” who were “no Friends to the Cause we are engaged in.”
⁵
Soldiers grew to resent the lack of support they received not only from the Quakers but from “Ye who Eat Pumpkin Pie and Roast Turkeys.”
⁶
Increasingly, the hired guns of the Continental Army saw themselves as a class apart.

At Valley Forge, it is often said, Baron von Steuben infused military discipline into the ragtag Continental Army. He turned farmers into soldiers. Although there is some truth in this, farmers became soldiers not only by marching to the commands of their officers, but also by developing a unique sense of identity, separate and distinct from all other Americans. They did indeed become a professional army, with all that that entails.

Ill prepared to support a permanent army, Congress allowed the Commissary Department to fall into a shambles. Food and clothing, much needed, never arrived. Congress, not the raw forces of nature, was accountable for the lack of provisions that caused the soldiers much grief.

Forced to fend for themselves, troops ventured forth from Valley Forge to pillage local civilians. John Lesher, who lived twenty-five miles away, complained that he was “no master of any individual thing I possess.” American troops, he said, “under the shadows of the Bayonet and the appellation Tory act as they please.”
⁷
Farmers were so discouraged that they threatened not to plant new crops. Years later, Private Joseph Plumb Martin admitted that “ ‘Rub and Go' was always the Revolutionary soldier's motto.”
⁸

At other times during the war, George Washington issued prohibitions against pillaging, but at Valley Forge he was forced to sanction the practice. Although he used the polite term “forage” rather than “pillage” or “plunder,” the commander in chief ordered soldiers to strip the countryside clean.
⁹
Farmers were stopped on their way to market, households were raided, and magazines were depleted of all provisions. Reluctant local inhabitants, accustomed to being paid real money for their produce, grain, milk, and meat, were given only notes of questionable worth. Private Martin recalled that he received orders direct from the quartermaster-general “to go into the country on a foraging expedition, which was nothing more nor less than to procure provisions from the inhabitants for the men in the army . . . at the point of the bayonet.”
¹⁰

Soldiers tended to their needs in other ways as well. Some simply ran away. According to the traditional tale, all men remained true; in fact, eight to ten men deserted daily from Valley Forge.
¹¹
On February 12, 1778, during a period of extreme shortages, Washington wrote: “We find the Continental troops (especially those who are not Natives) are very apt to desert from the piquets.”
¹²

The standard story ignores mutinies as well as desertions. On December 23, 1777, Washington reported that “a dangerous mutiny” two nights before had been suppressed “with difficulty.”
¹³
In February, Washington reported that “strong symptoms of discontent” had appeared, and he feared that “a general mutiny and dispersion” might be forthcoming if complaints were not actively addressed.
¹⁴
In April, Washington complained that ninety officers from the Virginia line had just resigned, others were following suit, and he feared for “the very existence of the Army.”
¹⁵
Although Washington might have been exaggerating for effect, it remains clear that suffering soldiers were not simply enduring their lot, silently and heroically—they were standing up for themselves. If the United States wanted an army, it would have to treat the soldiers better. Privates stated this emphatically by threats of mutiny or by simply running away. Officers threatened to resign, and many did. Actions such as these succeeded in arousing the
attention first of Washington, and then, through him, of Congress and state officials. Eventually the complaints of soldiers achieved some results, even if minimal. Had soldiers not voiced their discontent and acted accordingly, the army probably
would
have dissipated.

As the war dragged on, mutinies became a real cause of concern. The famous ones—uprisings within the Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey lines; the march on Congress on June 21, 1783; the aborted “Newburg Conspiracy”—represent only the tip of the iceberg. Firsthand accounts by both privates and officers reveal that resistance was the rule rather than the exception. Soldiers in the Continental Army repeatedly threatened to take matters into their own hands unless their basic needs were met.

The reporting of acts of resistance within the army undermines the illusion of patient suffering. Since soldiers in the Continental Army did desert in great numbers, and since mutinies were far more common than in any war this nation has ever fought against a foreign enemy, the traditional telling of the Valley Forge story requires turning a blind eye to official statistics.
Liberty!—
the book that accompanies the PBS six-hour documentary on the Revolution—announces point-blank that “desertions were relatively few” at Valley Forge.
¹⁶
Popular authors often dismiss the subject of mutiny by telling a story of George Washington and the “Newburg Conspiracy.” On the ides of March 1783, at his headquarters in Newburg, New York, the beloved commander in chief allegedly defused a movement among his officers to march against Congress with a simple offhand remark: “Gentlemen,” he is supposed to have said, “you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.” This, allegedly, was all it took to counter all mutinous or treasonous activities: “It moved the officers deeply, and tears welled in their eyes,” the story goes. “Again they felt a tremendous surge of affection for the commander who had led them all so far and long.”
¹⁷
So much for mutinies in the Continental Army.

To romanticize soldiers in an attempt to honor them dishonors them instead. Rather than denying or ignoring mutinies and desertions,
we should examine soldiers' grievances and how they responded to them. To this end, we have no better informant than Private Joseph Plumb Martin. Although Martin reported that he and others had made it through the Valley Forge winter by pillaging, their hardships did not end the following spring. Martin reported that two years later, in May 1780, “the monster Hunger, still attended us; he was not to be shaken off by any efforts we could use, for here was the old story of starving, as rife as ever.” Continental soldiers were forced to confront the most profound dilemma any American patriot has ever had to face:

The men were now exasperated beyond endurance; they could not stand it any longer. They saw no alternative but to starve to death, or break up the army, give all up and go home. This was a hard matter for the soldiers to think upon. They were truly patriotic, they loved their country, and they had already suffered everything short of death in its cause; and now, after such extreme hardships to give up all was too much, but to starve to death was too much also. What was to be done? Here was the army starved and naked, and there their country sitting still and expecting the army to do notable things while fainting from sheer starvation.
¹⁸

This is the real Valley Forge story, and it lasted for eight long years. It features poor men and boys who fought in place of those who were better off. When these soldiers failed to receive adequate food, minimal clothing, or the pay they had been promised, they were forced to weigh their options: Should they endure their hardships silently, grumble among themselves, or create a fuss? If all else failed should they mutiny or simply walk away? All alternatives were possible, none favorable. In addition to staving off hunger and fighting the enemy, soldiers had to deal with this unsolvable problem day by day.