Why Valley Forge Is More Important than Ever This Year
Some skeptics may wonder what we have in common with Washington and the half-naked soldiers who endured a winter of sporadic starvation in their log huts while the British army enjoyed the warmth and comforts of captured Philadelphia. We may be tempted to say patriotism united these Americans in ways we no longer understand.
Almost all the Americans of 2004 are patriots, but we don¹t always agree on the meaning of that word. Accusations are flying in all directions about our leaders, our national strategy. Surely, that sort of thing did not happen at Valley Forge? Yes, it did.
On January 18, 1778, an agitated army commissary, Colonel Ephraim Blaine of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, wrote to one of George Washington's aides that a "general officer" was heard saying in a nearby tavern that "General Washington was not the man people imagined and [was] by no means a great general." On the contrary he was "an old woman." Equally savage criticism came from Benjamin Rush, the most prominent physician in Philadelphia and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Rush sent an anonymous letter to the president of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens, claiming that any decent general could turn the army at Valley Forge into "an irresistible body of men." Washington simply was not up to the job.
Soon there was a movement in Congress led by a Massachusetts delegate, James Lovell, to replace Washington with the man who had won the battle of Saratoga in the fall of 1777, General Horatio Gates. Lovell sneeringly referred to Washington and his officers at Valley Forge as "men of leisure on the banks of the Schuykill." The president of Congress, a harried Henry Laurens, told his son John, one of Washington's aides, that he had just come from a session of Congress in which Washington was derided and mocked.
John Adams and other New Englanders talked and wrote of the danger of admiring one man (Washington) too much. Adams agreed with Benjamin Rush, who called for the election of new generals by Congress every year.
Fortunately, no one paid serious attention to this recipe for national disaster.
As the anti-Washington movement simmered, General Gates asked huge combative Colonel Daniel Morgan, whose regiment of Virginia rifleman had played a crucial part in the victory at Saratoga, if he would support him for commander in chief. Morgan replied: "Never mention that detestable subject to me again! Under no other man than Washington [will] I ever serve!" Laurens told a friend: "The ruin of Washington is the ruin of the army." The general¹s critics were reduced to surly silence.
While Congress bickered, the troops at Valley Forge starved. Cries of "No meat no soldier!" echoed through the camp. Who was at fault? Congress had reorganized the commissary department in the summer of 1777 and made a deplorable mess of it. Only when the politicians agreed to let Washington appoint one of his best officers, Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island, as quartermaster general did harmony and "victuals" return to Valley Forge.
What does all this mean? The Americans in Congress and in the army at Valley Forge were not demigods. Nor was Washington himself. He had made serious mistakes fighting the British in the fall of 1777. All these Americans were human, uncertain of the future and often as beset by doubts and animosities as the Americans of 2004. Fortunately, most of the men in the ranks ignored these faults. In spite of shortages of food and clothing, they persevered and urged their families to persevere with them.
Lieutenant Colonel John Cropper of Virginia asked his wife, Margaret, to be patient and "endure my absence with the same virtue and heroism you have done." In his letter, he enclosed "a plain gold ring, an exact fellow to which I have on my finger...as a sincere pledge of my faith & constancy." This public and personal commitment is the crucial message today's Americans can derive from Valley Forge. In the midst of a long uncertain struggle, we can profit from the countless examples of loyalty and courage that emerged from that troubled Pennsylvania winter of 1778.
No one has put the meaning of Valley Forge more succinctly than President Ford when he dedicated the site as a national park in 1976, "The patriots of Valley Forge...send us a single urgent message. Though prosperity is a good thing, a nation survives only so long as the spirit of sacrifice and self-discipline is strong within its people. If we remember this...when our tricentennial celebration rolls around, grateful Americans will come to this shrine of quiet valor, the forge of our Republic's iron core."
This article first appeared in the NY Sun and is reprinted with permission of the author.