Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory

by Newt Gingrich

  She looked up at him with a smile, seeming almost diminutive as she stood before his towering height.

  He leaned over.

  “George,” she whispered, smiling mischievously, “later, when alone.” Sighing, he took the formal approach, removing his hat, bowing, and taking her right hand and kissing it. Then, ever so lightly, he kissed her on the lips.

  He straightened up, taking her hand.

  “Three cheers for His Excellency the General and Mrs. Washington,” someone offered, and rousing cheers went up from the men lining the street. She stopped, turned with a smile, and offered a formal curtsy in reply, which drew forth more cheers as she took his hand and together they walked back into the headquarters house, followed by officers and staff.

  Once the door was closed Sergeant Harris stepped out onto the walkway. Merciful God, there were several hundred men. He had been hoping the howling storm would have kept them in their huts; thankfully, the last of the huts had been completed only a few days ago.

  “Lads, by order of His Excellency, in celebration of the arrival of his fair wife, a bit of a treat out behind the barn, so get out your cups.”

  There was no need to urge them on. The men were already vaulting the fence, Peter and the honor guard breaking ranks to join in the rush.

  “Don’t tell anyone else!” a cry went up.

  At the far side of the barn, two ten-gallon barrels of corn liquor rested on a table, wooden bungs already driven into them. The men guarding the barrels, Harris could see, had already taken a liberal sampling.

  “All right, boys, no shoving. Line up, at least a drop for each of you, and for God’s sake don’t go running back to camp to tell anyone else, or there’ll be nothing but a lick of the tap for each of you.”

  It was hard to see in the storm, but he figured at least two to three hundred and ran a quick calculation, maybe a quarter gill per man at most. Peter was by his side and he nodded for him to man the other tap.

  “No shoving, now, no shoving!” Harris cried, half a dozen tin cups and mugs being pressed under his tap. He opened it.

  “One potato, two potato, that’s all!”

  Peter did the same ritual, more than a few cursing that he had held back.

  The men, laughing, surged around, holding up their cups with the precious few ounces, toasting Washington and his wife, damning the British, damning the cold, blessing Mad Anthony for having dug these barrels up from somewhere. It was soon quite the party, for after so much deprivation, even a few ounces of corn liquor went to the heads of many.

  As the last of the well-wishers of the staff withdrew, Martha Washington closed the door, then looked out the window, watching the celebration out behind the barn, occasionally obscured by the swirling snow so that the men seemed almost ghostlike as they danced around.

  She turned and looked back at her George. He was thinner, far thinner than when last she saw him. With his wig now off, his hair was visibly grayer, as were his features, cheeks hollow, eyes deep-set. Though he was smiling broadly, she sensed a deep inner sadness.

  This time she did let him kiss her and kissed him back. She held him tight for a long moment.

  “Thank God you are here,” he sighed. “It has been agony without you.”

  “And nothing but worry for me,” she replied, breaking his embrace and stepping back to look into his eyes.

  “And what is this I heard about you riding about the front line at Brandywine, getting more bullets in your jacket? You promised me you’d never do that again. I was sick with anguish, dreading the arrival of every post rider who came in.”

  He smiled that great self-confident smile she recalled so fondly and which had won her heart so many years ago.

  “Passion of the moment,” he replied.

  “Save your passions of the moment for me, dear husband.”

  He laughed softly and tried to step closer. “Just a moment, General Washington,” she announced, holding him back. “I must look a fright, and, besides, you know they are all just waiting in the next room.”

  “Mrs. Greene has planned a dinner in honor of your arrival,” he sighed. “Nothing fancy, to be certain. Plain fare, just salted pork, mixed with some dried apples and sauerkraut. It is all that we’ve scavenged of late.”

  He hesitated. “Better than what they have out there.” He nodded toward the frost-covered window.

  The storm, the worst of the season so far, was rising in fury, a regular nor’easter, as the New Englanders called it, again a reminder of a year ago before Trenton. But no marching army this time.

  “I’ve heard rumors,” she said, and returned to the window to look out.

  He didn’t reply.

  “How many are left, George?”

  “Just over eight thousand by this morning’s muster roll, of which near on to four thousand are listed as unfit for duty. We have over a thousand in hospital.”

  “You’ve lost weight, George, a full stone or more,” she announced, looking at him appraisingly.

  He shrugged, drawing closer to stand by her side.

  “General Wayne is starting to bring in food. We have almost a three-day reserve at the moment, thank heavens. For a while there, it was down to watery potato soup and not much else.”

  “We’ll soon see to that,” she replied a bit defiantly.

  He laughed softly.

  “So tell me. You concealed some smoked hams and sausages, plenty of greens, perhaps even a roasted lamb or two inside your carriage? Perhaps several bottles of my favorite Madeira?”

  She shook her head and could see that he had actually been half serious with his statement and was now disappointed.

  “George. We had to skirt around Philadelphia, pass near where you fought at Brandywine, and then go up to Lancaster before doubling back here. The poverty in the countryside is heartbreaking. Barely a farm that has not been despoiled by the armies. Word is, though, that at least the British are offering hard coin, and therefore most are hiding their food until enemy purchasing agents or foragers arrive. I heard the state government of Pennsylvania and its militia have been particularly harsh in reply, confiscating all goods if the family is proven to be Tory. Not even you have been doing that.”

  He did not reply. It was about what Wayne was doing right now, ranging farther afield every day with his foragers. If the family were known to be patriots, particularly if a son or father was with the army, they would only “purchase” half of what was in their barn, root cellar, and smokehouse. If Tory, it was nearly everything except their seed stock and enough food to get them barely through the winter.

  Wayne had to plan his raids like full-blown military exercises. If word leaked ahead of him as to which direction he was going that day, farmers would drive their cattle, pigs, and sheep into distant woods, clean out their smokehouses and bury the contents, and then stand there straight-faced and swear that thieves and raiders had hit them the day before. The warm spell of the last few weeks, though, usually left clues for Wayne’s trackers, who could follow the muddy paths left by the animals and the signs of freshly turned earth.

  Wayne would send scouts out several days in advance. One was particularly good at posing as an itinerant Methodist preacher. Once the “preacher” scouted out a likely source, a squadron of dragoons would ride ahead, blocking the roads, and then he and his wagons would sweep out before dawn. Every day they needed nine thousand pounds of meat on the hoof or smoked and cured; two tons of flour, be it wheat, rye, or oats, for the General Baker; any dried fruits and pickled vegetables; and vinegar and sauerkraut for the hospitals. Tools, especially shovels, were still desperately needed as the men turned to finally building the fortifications.

  Fall behind by even a few days and the army would again starve.

  “How are you feeding this army?” she asked.

  He sighed.

  “We’re getting by.”

  “As I came into the camp, George, I noticed quite a few women about, even some children,” and as she sp
oke she looked at him a bit strangely.

  Camp followers for armies were as old as history. But she and more than a few other wives of officers had preached that this was to be a new kind of army, an army of a new Republic, and if God’s blessings were to be sought, there must be at least some attempt at morality within the ranks.

  “They are all entered properly into the muster rolls. Nearly five hundred of them.”

  “On the muster rolls?”

  “It is all proper, my dear. They help in the regimental cookhouses and the army bakery, mend clothes, and nurse the sick.”

  “I should like to help, then, as well.”

  “Martha, the sick house…” He sighed. “It isn’t safe.”

  “If it is smallpox, I’ve had my inoculation.”

  “No, it’s worse. Typhus, galloping consumption,” he paused, “dysentery, and the flux.”

  “Still, come morning I shall do my part. I will. I must set an example here. Surely the other wives of officers are doing the same.”

  He didn’t reply. Some indeed already were helping with the most menial of tasks. More than a few, though, held themselves far aloof, seeing it as beneath their station. The thought of Martha tending to an infantry private dying of the flux—he did not like the idea in the slightest.

  “And the children. Isn’t it dangerous for them to be here?”

  He could only shrug.

  “Martha, for some, the entire family is here, husband and older son in the ranks. If the wife and younger ones stayed home they would starve; their homes already have been swept over by the war. I’ve ordered that women in the camp who do proper work are to receive half-pay. More than a few families with homes inside the British lines have been driven out by their Tory neighbors. They have no place to go but here. Children who help by bringing in firewood, tending to fires, or helping in the bakehouse, thereby freeing up a fit man to work on the fortifications, are receiving quarter-pay and rations.”

  “Proper work,” she finally said in reply, looking straight at him and then letting it drop. “I think I shall take a look about tomorrow and see where I can start to help.”

  She went up to a small mirror and gazed into it as she took off her winter bonnet. He helped her remove her cape, then motioned for her to step over to the fire, where she gladly extended her hands, rubbing them vigorously to take out the chill.

  “A cold ride this morning,” she said. “As you know, we had to swing wide by back roads to avoid Philadelphia. Lancaster was swarming with patriot families that had fled the city—there was barely a room to be found. These last ten miles were a nightmare, George. Empty farms, some of them burned-out, were looted clean. The guards you sent down to meet me said it was best not to identify who I was as we rode on.”

  She sighed, reaching around to rub her lower back.

  “I just wish I could get out of this awful corset. It is near to killing me.”

  “Later,” he said with a smile, which she returned.

  “But, as you said, they are waiting for us.”

  “They can wait a few minutes more. We have waited for these many months,” he replied.

  He opened a bottle of wine, warmed by the fire. It was a hearty port—a gift from Greene, whose wife had brought it along with her. They sat side by side, gazing at the fire, sipping quietly.

  It was such a flood of emotions for him. For at least this moment, all that was outside the room could be forgotten, the cold, the death, the defeats and misery. She was here by his side, her lavender scent filling the room.

  They sat alone for almost a half hour, just gazing at the fire as Martha told him all about Mount Vernon. How good the crops had been, the births, marriages, and deaths of the slaves at their plantation, and the wishes they had extended to him. He thought of Billy Lee helping in the next room to prepare their dinner. Away now from his family since the start of the war. Of course his wife could not come to join him for this winter. Again the vexing questions of what they were fighting for, and yet again the unintended duplicity of it, with those few simple words “all men are created equal.”

  His great fear when the British fleet had entered the Chesapeake was that they would at least send a few ships up the Potomac to raid, gather supplies, and of course burn out the plantation and home of the military leader of the Revolution. It was curious Admiral Richard Howe had not ordered that to be done. He could only consider it to be an act of civility on the admiral’s part, and he was thankful for it. So strange was this war. He was forced to fight it with every fiber of his being, to stand by, dispassionate, at least outwardly, as he watched his army disintegrating from starvation and disease while his enemies feasted and enjoyed the winter warm and safe in Philadelphia but twenty miles away. Wayne still seethed, and would forever seethe about what he and the survivors called the massacre at Paoli, though even General William Howe, Richard’s brother, had agreed to an investigation, pointing out through an envoy that the attack had gone on at night, with unloaded muskets, at bayonet point only, which rarely left room for surrender in the mad panic of such a fight. He added that very many men had indeed been taken prisoner and shown mercy.

  And yet those same men, shown compassion on the battlefield, were reportedly dying at the rate of upwards of a dozen a day for lack of food, heat, and medicine, locked up just a few short blocks away from where General Howe and Admiral Howe made their headquarters.

  Strange and cruel this war is. My farm is spared, and yet men starve. Officers exchange pleasantries and salutes under flags of truce, but in a vicious fight at night the wounded, begging for mercy, are bayoneted to death. On one day civilians, showing proper passes, are allowed to pass back and forth freely through the lines, and yet a day later their farms might be ravaged and destroyed, and in more than a few cases the owner whipped, tarred and feathered, then driven off his land if believed to be on the other side.

  He sighed, and Martha, knowing his ways, saw that he was lost in thought while staring at the fire. She fell silent, just reaching out to take his hand and hold it tight.

  He looked at her, smiled, and stood up.

  “God, how I have missed you,” he sighed, and this time she did melt into his embrace, the two sharing a passionate kiss, Martha then sighing and leaning against his chest.

  “We heard so many terrible things. Battles lost, rumors you were dead or captured, then this ugly gossip about Gates, Mifflin, and Conway trying to have you removed.”

  “You heard of that?” he asked, a bit incredulous, stepping back slightly to hold her at arm’s length.

  “George, the countryside is alive with the rumors.”

  “Those…” His voice trailed off. Martha could not even tolerate a “damn” coming from him, let alone what he was about to explode with.

  “I would have thought they were gentlemen enough to keep it private between us. If the countryside knows, then most assuredly the British know. If they know, it is only encouragement for them to wait us out rather than seek an engagement, as I hoped.”

  “Then it’s true?”

  “Yes,” he sighed, “it’s true.”

  “How dare they!” she announced indignantly.

  “Of course they dare. The facts are plain enough, my dear. Gates allegedly wins at Saratoga. He showed himself to be a poltroon last year when he refused to cross the Delaware in support of my attack and instead fled with Congress to Baltimore, there to lobby for position. He finally wrangled a command in the northern theater and laid claim to the victory that came but weeks after his arrival.

  “Colonel Morgan and others tell me that if the victory belongs to anyone, it is to our loyal friend, Benedict Arnold, who saved the battle at a crucial moment and, in so doing, was wounded in the leg so severely it was thought at first he would lose the limb. He is now recovering back at his home. Gates actually had him arrested for insubordination before that fight, but Arnold broke arrest and galloped to the front just at the moment Gates was ready to retreat. He rallied the men and led
them to victory.

  “But it was Gates who wrote the reports and all but galloped back to Lancaster and then York claiming the victory, glory, and praise.”

  He shook his head.

  “He is now head of this contemptible Board of War and had the audacity to send his lackey Conway to, as he said, ‘evaluate this army,’ which had all but been abandoned by Congress to fend for itself. Of course, all fault was laid here.”

  “Will they remove you, George?”

  He smiled.

  “We do have allies, my dear. God bless the Marquis de Lafayette. You will like him. He is like a son to me.”

  Feeling awkward, he fell silent after saying that. Martha had given birth to two children from her first marriage. But there had been no children for the two of them, and the reason for it was therefore obvious. It was a burden and disappointment that haunted him, and thus, some rumored, why he formed such close bonds with young men of promise, who in turn looked to him as if he was their father.

  Lafayette, it was clear to her, was obviously one of them.

  “Why do you bless this young Frenchman? I heard the armies are all but overrun with adventure seekers claiming high rank, and Congress is all too ready to hand out those ranks.”

  “This lad is different. He offered himself to me directly as a gentleman volunteer for my staff. He was everywhere and anywhere, almost a nuisance at times with his eager rushing about, but in time he proved himself. At Brandywine I gave him temporary command of a brigade and he led it with such élan and valor that the men and mind you those men were tough veterans, some in the ranks since Boston cheered him.

  “Now he is fighting a different battle. Perhaps one just as crucial, or even more so. He and others, of course, supposedly without my knowledge”—he paused and looked at her coolly as if to emphasize his point—“or yours, have embarked on a letter-writing campaign. He went so far as to write President Laurens directly, that if there was a change in command he feared that friends of his in France might construe such a move the wrong way and urge the king to withdraw all support. I am told that, reading between the lines of that letter, it was clear he would be the one to write to the king of France and then personally deliver what he’d written. Generals Greene and Stirling are doing the same. There has even been a petition from several Virginia companies.”