Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: July 1939 Volume 2 Number 3, Pages 52–53

New light on the encampment of the Continental Army at Valley Forge:
December 19, 1777-June 21, 1778

Franklin L. Burns

Page 52

Part II. The morale of the Continental Army during the Pennsylvania campaign

Let us first consider the leadership of the opposing forces. That of the enemy was the vain and indolent Sir William Howe, who never seemed to have a logical objective, and who was incomparably inferior as a man and as a leader to our Washington, who had the love and confidence of his men.

Though Howe commanded a well-appointed army, the might of two of the greatest military nations of Europe, it is possible that he had lost forever some part of his morale at Bunker Hill, for, after that awful slaughter of his men, he never again voluntarily sent his troops in an assault against entrenched Colonials.

He had, however, one great personal ambition, which was the capture of the Capital of the infant Republic. Having failed in his drive across New Jersey, through the brilliant coup of Washington at Trenton and Princeton, he returned to New York to plan anew how he might take Philadelphia.

He listened to the captive Charles Lee, who proposed that the British try the back door entrance to the Capital via the Chesapeake Bay.

It may have been Lee's original object to offer a plan which would weaken the British army in NEw York by transferring a powerful force so far from its base as to be unable to cooperate with Burgoyne, who was a real threat.

About this time Lee addressed Washington with a request that his enclosed letter to Congress be forwarded. The enclosure contained an appeal that two or three gentlemen be sent to New York to whom Lee would communicate verbally that which he conceived to be of the utmost importance, and that Lord and General Howe would grant them safe conduct.

Congress directed General Washington to write a courteous note explaining why their members considered it improper to send any of their body to confer with him. Lee repeated his request with no better success and then wrote Washington a brief note unlike anything he had ever penned before.

"It is a most unfortunate circumstance for myself, and I think not less for the public, that Congress have not thought proper to comply with my request. It could not possibly have been attended with any ill consequences and might with good ones. At least it was an indulgence which I thought my situation entitled me to. But I am unfortunate in everything and this stroke is the severest I have yet experienced. God send you a different fate, Adieu, my dear general, Yours most truly and affectionately. Charles Lee."

The design of Lee's letters has never been explained. Having a foot in either camp, had he in contemplation a revelation of what he considered a successful counterplot to Howe's proposed invasion of Pennsylvania from the South?

At Brandywine the American army was outflanked but the British gained little more than the battlefield, and though they boasted that the Rebels ran away, they soon learned that

"He who fights and runs away will live to fight some other day."

The Americans rallied, refitted on the high ground above the Falls of the Schuylkill, now the Queen Lane reservoir, and marched out to the South Valley hills near what is now Frazer, to plant themselves squarely in front of the enemy who was obliged to attack. A battle was prevented by a continuous downpour of rain which dampened the powder, and again the Americans had to retire to refit, this time at the Warwick furnace.

Page 53

Let not the modern and effete humanitarian exclaim over the barefooted condition of many of the patriots in this retreat, for at that period many a farmer's boy almost had to be roped before he would submit to wear shoes or boots. Bare feet had advantages when up to the knees in mud, dragging cannon over the hills, and as for sleeping on the bare ground under a wet blanket, this was considered no hardship as late as the Civil War.

Yes, Howe took the Capital and allowed a hostile army to hover about it. (Grant, on the other hand, did not enter Richmond which had long been the objective of Union generals, but pursued Lee's army until it was obliged to surrender, thereby ending the Civil War.)

Germantown came next, a battle in which the American army was the aggressor, and which astonished all Europe. It failed immediately of its objective because of the lack of liaison between the attacking columns but eventually attained its purpose when the enemy abandoned Germantown for the City proper. The Paoli affair had not destroyed the American morale, Wayne's men shouted their battle cry, "Remember Paoli," and pushed boldly through the enemy's panic-stricken ranks.

Howe lacked the enterprise of Washington but he became annoyed by the Americans posted at White Marsh, so he marched out, looked over the position, deemed the Americans too advantageously situated and marched back to the City again, where the British army was practically besieged after their officers had boasted that they would drive the Americans over the Blue mountains. Washington had lost two major engagements and yet had won the campaign in so far as he had saved the main resources of Pennsylvania.

During Christmas week almost the entire British and Hessian army crossed the lower Schuylkill and posted advantageously on the hills between Darby and the river while the quartermasters foraged for hay. It had come to pass that almost the entire enemy force was required to protect its foragers from our outposts.

After the Barren hill fiasco of Howe, Grant, and Grey, a Hessian officer recorded:

"Washington, who in truth does not understand the game of war any better, but, as the common saying goes, often revokes, gained in this manner his previous advantages, which, however, means nothing when taken as a whole."

He said nothing of a lost morale.

The fiat of a recent compiler that the morale of the American Army was broken at White Marsh and Valley Forge does not mean that such was really the case. Here, it is true, the rank and file suffered for the want of proper clothing, especially for shoes, and, for a few weeks, from insufficient food, but the men never refused to march or to fight against the enemy. An Army that kept a numerically superior enemy confined within the fortified ground at the juncture of the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers could not have lost morale.

Once more, before the evacuation of the City, the American Army was drawn up some miles in advance of its entrenchments with faces of the men ever toward the enemy in a challenge to come out and fight, but the enemy instead of attacking, crossed the Delaware in full retreat. It was the British who had lost their morale when they fled across the sands of New Jersey to hide themselves in the Islands of New York harbor where their ships could protect them.

Morale: That mental state which renders man capable of great endurance, and the manifestation of courage in the presence of danger. Where was it more in evidence than at Valley Forge?