Valley Forge National Historical Park

Valley Forge National Historical Park - The Encampment Story Overview

Why Visit Valley Forge? Located 17 miles up the Schuylkill River from Philadelphia, Valley Forge is one of the most iconic parks associated with the American Revolutionary War. It was here where George Washington's Continental Army camped during the winter of 1777-78 after a series of military defeats cost the young army the use of their capital of Philadelphia. There was no "Battle of Valley Forge", unless we count a small skirmish that took place in September of 1777, long before the main Army got here (usually, we don't). The park witnessed little violence, and there are no details of troop movements, cavalry charges, bayonet attacks, or artillery bombardments. Note that the place is called a "National Historical Park", and not "National Military Park" or "National Battlefield". Valley Forge has since become an towering symbol of privation, hardship, hope and eventual success. As a name, it's so commonly known that even people who know very little about the Revolution know that it has to do with George Washington, his hungry army, and snow.

The Philadelphia Campaign - 1777

A year before the Valley Forge encampment, Washington's Continental Army had survived the darkest days of the entire war. A string of defeats in 1776 had almost completely crushed the army and any dreams of independence. In December 1776, Washington staged an 11th hour rally and defeated an enemy force at Trenton, and bested another British force at Princeton in January 1777. These victories produced nothing short of a miracle for the 6-month-old nation. Citizen soldiers began believing again, and the ranks of Washington's army swelled with new volunteers in the spring of 1777. The commander-in-chief put his generals to work drilling the new men. The British army, headquartered in New York, took their time in making plans for the year, not launching a major strike until July. General Sir William Howe boarded his men onto ships and sailed into the Chesapeake Bay, disembarking on the Elk River, in Maryland. Their target was the Patriot capital of Philadelphia. Washington hustled his men from New Jersey to the Brandywine Creek in lower Chester County PA, hoping to block the British advance. On Sept 11th, 1777 the Continental Army was defeated at the Battle of Brandywine. Although it was embarrassing defeat for the Yankee Doodles, the Americans were not demoralized, and hungered for another chance to engage the redcoats. The British gave the reeling Americans another hard knock at the Battle of Paoli a week later, resulting in more frustration for the Continental cause. Down, but not even close to out, Washington's soldiers mustered themselves up for some payback. In early-October, the American Army struck back at the British outside of Philadelphia in a surprise attack at Germantown. The assault was initially successful, and a rare sight heartened the Americans - the first redcoats they met ran away from them in panic! Sadly it was not to last, as British reinforcements arrived, the weather got worse, ammunition was exhausted, and several mistakes made by officers disjointed the American forces. The British gained the upper hand and held it, pushing the Americans back. For a third time in two months, Washington had to score a battle in the "loss" column, and had to concede that the British were going to hold Philadelphia for the time being. The days were now shorter and colder, the weather worsened and Washington was compelled to set up winter camp for his men. His bivouac would be Valley Forge.

Encampment for Winter

Up until the time armies started using motorized transport, wars were normally put on hold for the winter months. All heavy equipment like cannons and supply wagons were hauled by horses, donkeys and oxen, and feeding these animals in the wintertime was a full time job in and of itself. Armies normally did not move much during the winter, rather they'd send out small foraging parties hither and yon to buy, capture or commandeer needed foodstuffs. Washington's selection of Valley Forge as his campsite was an excellent choice. 17 miles up the Schuylkill River from Philadelphia, it was just far enough away that the British could not attack without marching at least one day out of the city.... and yet, it was also close enough to town to keep the British food-gathering parties from getting too far out into the countryside. Philadelphia might be British held, but Lancaster, Reading and York would not be. In the event of a British attack, the triangular shaped valley was impassible to the north (by the Schuylkill River), difficult to approach from the west (Mounts Joy and Misery), and very hard to attack from the South East (a wide open empty slope). The soldiers marched into camp on December 19th, 1777 and went right to work building huts. Washington awarded prize money to the first properly built 12 man hut in each brigade. The forests around the Valley quickly fell to the axes of the soldiers, and slowly but steadily, a log city erected itself on the hillsides. With no lumber, only timber, the going was slow, but most of the men were under roof within a few weeks. Given their recent defeats and the loss of their capital, the soldiers were understandably dismayed and grouchy, but they were not downcast and certainly not despairing. In fact, word had come in October of a great victory in upstate New York, at the battle of Saratoga. There, an entire British army had been taken prisoner, an achievement that few French, Spanish or Dutch generals had ever matched! Americans were truly showing some skill with the business of war. With every battle, they gained more experience, and with every struggle they improved as soldiers. They had been confronting the best and most powerful army in the world, and more and more often, they were holding their own against the King's heaviest blows. Circumstances however were about rain down even heavier blows on the American Army.

Mouths to Feed, Diseases to Fight

Food and supply

This was Washington's third winter of war, but the first time he commanded a force so large at a winter bivouac. In 1775-6, his army had been besieging Boston, with various detachments spread around for miles. The locals were very supportive of the Patriot cause, and supply was not a formidable challenge.

For the second winter, the winter of 1776-7, the army had shrunken to a tiny force of about 3,000. When this band of soldiers encamped in Morristown, NJ the few soldiers merely sought shelter in the homes and barns of the locals.

As the Continental Army went into winter quarters in December 1777, it had ballooned into a force of 10,000 men. Anywhere this army went immediately became the 5th largest city in America (Behind New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Charleston). Feeding this massive body of men was always a difficult task, and system for meeting it would break down spectacularly during the winter of 1777-1778. Several factors were to blame.

First of all Valley Forge was "out in the sticks". Unlike Morristown, Middlebrook, or Cambridge, Valley Forge was not a substantial town- it was an iron plantation, and one that had recently been destroyed by the British at that. This meant that shipments of food and clothing had to come from the depots of Reading, Lancaster, York and farther, a formidable journey fraught with danger and hardship for the drivers and teamsters. Gen. Thomas Mifflin had been the Army's quartermaster, but resigned to pursue a political career just before the Valley Forge encampment. Leaving just when his services would be needed most, Mifflin neglected to secure wagons, horses and teamsters for the exclusive use of the military. Washington's men would have to rely on private wagons for supply. Picture what would happen today if the US Army had to rely on UPS for shipments of their bullets, boots, belt buckles, and beans.

Not only that, but also most of these freelance drivers preferred to sell their services to the British rather then the Americans anyway. South East Pennsylvania was populated with many families that wished to remain free of conflict - or were pro-British. They did not willingly sell their goods or services to Washington's army. Even pro-American businessmen were sometimes pinched by the fact that the American army paid in continental scrip, not hard cash like the British. The scrip would be worthless if the Americans lost the war, and so selling to Washington's army was a financial risk, one that otherwise supportive patriots weren't always willing to take.

The Commander-In-Chief did have the authority to seize goods ... but Washington was always conscientious about trampling citizens' liberties, and was very reluctant to adopt a tyrant's tactics to support a war against tyranny. Historians still debate Washington's reluctance on this matter. No doubt it subjected his army to more privation, but there can also be little doubt that raiding the local inhabitants would have turned the local populace against the American cause, and into the arms of the British. And so, supplies of food, clothing and footwear remained inadequate.

General Nathaniel Greene was eventually put in charge of the quartermaster department, and his foraging expeditions into Maryland, coupled with general Anthony Wayne's cattle driving from New Jersey staved off absolute starvation of the Army.

Huts, Hygiene and The Sick

Washington's Army had no professional military engineers. When the huts were built in December and January, not enough thought was given to proper alignment and drainage of the structures. The only consideration when building the huts was the proximity and convenience to the defensive line. This oversight would cost many lives. Months spent in the huts turned them into germy, vermin infested pits of slops, stinks and pestilence. The soldiers were indifferent to hygiene, sometimes not bothering to make their way to the latrine when nature called. Trash sometimes collected in camp. When the cold of winter dissipated, the thawing began, and the huts became warmer and wetter, perfect petrie dishes for typhoid, typhus, influenza, and dysentery. These plagues worked their vile contagions on an army that was already malnourished, and the results were all too predictable. As soon as a soldier was revealed to be sick, he was removed from camp to avoid infecting his bunkmates, and transported a day's travel to army hospitals in Reading, Bethlehem, Lancaster and Ephrata. Ironically army hospitals only made the matter worse. They were soon overcrowded with suffering men who would soon die, but not before they infected almost everyone in the stuffed building. The possibility of being transferred to one of these places was a justly terrifying prospect for each soldier. In the six months of the Valley Forge encampment, 1800 US soldiers died of disease. Almost all of them perished not in camp, but in the far-flung hospitals. Most of them also died in the warmer months of March, April and May, and not the colder, earlier months. Washington lost nearly 20% of his army in this dreadful winter.

The Prussian and the French Into this under supplied, underpaid, undermanned, and under disciplined army came the man who would become one of America's great heroes. Frederich Wilhelm Augustin von Steuben had served upon the general staff of Frederick The Great, and was knowledgeable in the ways of discipline and military drill. He arrived with an entourage of professional aides in February 1778. Von Steuben was not above padding his resume a bit, advertising himself to George Washington as a Prussian general (really a captain), and a baron (he wasn't). But Steuben was also professional, a worker, and came with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin. Stueben disarmed his new employer immediately by offering to drill the Continental army free -of -charge, forsaking pay or rank until he had proven his merits to Washington. For Washington, who had had his fill of self-serving, pompous foreign born aristocratic generals, this was indeed a breath of fresh air. He eagerly brought Steuben aboard. That decision would pay handsome benefits.

Steuben, a master of drill, knew how to whip soldiers into shape. The only thing he didn't know how to do was speak English, unless one counts swear words. Steuben would write down his drill orders in German, which his aides would then translate into French. Washington's aides, Lafayette and Alexander Hamilton would then translate the French into English.

Not above getting his hands dirty, Steuben assumed the role of instruction sergeant, and personally drilled a model company of 100 soldiers, cursing them in 3 languages until they perfected the evolutions he wanted them to learn. These men then disbanded to their own regiments, and drilled their fellows in what they had learned. By May, Steuben's style had worked it's magic. Washington was overjoyed. Instead of a smorgasbord of 13 small independent armies, each with their own method of drilling, training, marching and fighting, his Continental Army now marched as one, with commands and discipline being uniform. The American Army, having already acquired lessons in combat, was now a formidable fighting force.

Into this transforming army came electrifying news, and the most brilliant rays of hope. King Louis XVI of France, eager to avenge France's losses in the Seven Years/ French and Indian War, signed a treaty with the young United States of America. The French had been impressed by the American victory at Saratoga, and by the American initiative shown at Germantown. They were now joining the war as an American ally.

The repercussions of this would swing the balance of the War in America's favor. For the luckless British, the American Revolution was now an expensive sideshow, one whose goals now needed to be balanced against the military menace the French posed. What for King George III had started as a police action against rebellious colonists, had grown into a war of attrition against an ever present, ever evolving enemy, and had now exploded into a world war, a global struggle that could threaten the very existence of the British Empire.

Back In The Fight

In June 1778, the British Army evacuated Philadelphia, fearful of a French fleet trapping the British fleet in the Delaware River. In Valley Forge, the Continental Army readied for action. More supplies had been coming in. Fresh shoes and clothes were distributed. Horses fattened and sleeked on the spring feed. New recruits made it into camp. And four months of von Steuben's training and drilling had the soldiers marching and forming smartly and with precision.

On June 19th, Washington's revitalized divisions marched out of Valley Forge, the dreadful winter behind them, and the Campaign of 1778 ahead. The prospects of victory had never been brighter, and the solders we once again eager to meet the Imperial forces. This they would do at the Battle of Monmouth, a victory for Washington and his men. There, the British would be dismayed to learn that the previous winter had not weakened the American army -- it had strengthened it. The Americans were more dangerous then they ever had been, and British victory, which only 6 months ago had seemed inevitable, was actually no place in sight, and never would be.

The time of the encampment at Valley Forge was a major turning point in Revolutionary War history, and the National Park preserves the story of why this is so. The park is available to explore by Auto Tour, horseback and foot.