Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
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Source: July 1939 Volume 2 Number 3, Pages 54–55

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

Franklin L. Burns

Page 54

Part III. The main camp at Valley Forge

Had the outcome of White Marsh been less fortunate, the encampment of the Continental Army during the winter and spring of 1777-1778 would not have been at Valley Forge but, in all probability, deep in the rugged hills somewhere between Lancaster and Reading, leaving open to the depredation of the enemy much of the rich agricultural and industrial region of Pennsylvania.

The selection of Valley Forge confined Howe to sporadic incursions in a greatly restricted area and to something like a state of siege not unlike the situation of Gage in Boston during the beginning of the war. Notwithstanding the suffering of the troops here due to the disarrangement of the commissariat during the early days of the encampment and the Army's lose of more men than in any battle of the Revolution, the position could not have been improved upon for offense or defense.

Let not the reader be deluded by a mental picture of a camp of wretched humans shivering in idleness around open and smoky camp fires. The winter was of average mildness, the huts snug and warm, and from first to last the camp was one of intense and constant activity. It is related that Captain John Davis of Wayne's brigade, whose home was within the picket line, had leisure to visit his house on one or two occasions only during the encampment. Those men toiled for a cause they believed just. What men of courage, fortitude, and endurance could do, was done.

The fortified main camp included two lines of defense. Tho outer line was defended by ten brigades of Continental troops of which Muhlenberg's brigade occupied the extreme left next to the river. Woodford's brigade occupied the extreme right and guarded the approach to the gorge between Mt. Joy and Mt. Misery. The immediate rear was secured by Du Portail's brigade and there were troops posted near Moore Hall to defend the ford.

The approach to Sullivan's bridge was secured by a breastwork with four cannon, manned by 250 Continentals, and since no military camp is ideal without a safe line of retreat, this was secured in the rear by three roads, the Nutt, Yellow Springs, and a wood road over Mt. Misery, all easily defended.

The inner line, on Mt. Joy, was very nearly impregnable save near the center to which there is a gradual and almost imperceptible rise. In the event of a frontal attack in which the outer line was forced to give ground, a trap was set between the Washington and Star redoubts. In this the troops stationed upon the heights above the river could have subjected the enemy to a destructive enfilading fire and converted the glade, the only feasible approach to the inner line, to a shambles.

Nothing seemed to be overlooked by the French engineer, even to the John Moore and Mordecai Moore forts in advance of the outer line, to cover the "blind spots" in the terrain. All thirteen of the States were represented in the personnel, of which the Pennsylvania regulars and militia furnished the larger unit.

The picket posts in Tredyffrin were at the Valley Friends' Meetinghouse, Stone Chimney (at the northwest corner of the Swedesford and Baptist Roads), Reese's Corner (near entrance to the Chesterbrook Farm), Captain John Davis' house (now the residence of Mrs. Laird), and probably at or near the terminus of the Mill road on the Yellow Springs Road. Ado Latch once indicated the south western corner of the field opposite the Stone Chimney picket as the spot where a sentinel was found frozen to death.

Page 55

Each post consisted of from 18 to 20 men, a sufficient number to admit six men and an officer two hours on and four hours off patrol. The beat was of sufficient length to connect the sentinels on either side and to form a cordon around the camp, as much as to prevent desertion as to keep out intruders. These pickets had rail and fodder shelters where the men, when off active duty, could sit beside a fire.

Stedman, the English historian, has censured the British commander for not posting 2,000 men opposite Sullivan's bridge, a like number in the narrow defile along the Schuylkill in the rear, and making a frontal attack with 6,000 men, intimating that the Continentals would, in all probability, have been destroyed. His remarks approach the arm-chair strategy of any period, especially the present. Howe, however, recognized the strength of Washington's position and with a vivid remembrance of the slaughter of British troops at Bunker Hill and of the Hessians at Red Bank, lay supinely in Philadelphia while the great American Commander, aided by the genius of his German Inspector General Von Steuben, welded the patriot forces assembled at Valley Forge into a most effective marching and fighting machine never thereafter defeated by an equal number of the enemy.