mingled with great prudence and discretion.[1]
In a council of the officers, a great variety of opinions was expressed, as to the most eligible place for winter-quarters for the army. Washington, compelled to decide the question himself, fixed upon Valley Forge, as we have before stated; a deep and rugged valley, about twenty miles from Philadelphia; bounded on one side by the Schuylkill, and on the other by ridges of hills. The soldiers were too miserably deficient in suitable clothing, to be exposed to the inclement winter under tents merely: it was therefore determined that a sufficient number of huts should be erected, to be made of logs, and filled in with mortar, in which they would find a more effectual shelter.[2] The whole army began its march towards Valley Forge, in the middle of December: some of the soldiers were seen to drop dead with cold; others, without shoes, had their feet cut by the ice, and left their tracks in blood. After the most painful efforts, the troops at length reached their destined quarters.. They immediately set about constructing their habitations upon a regular plan. In a short time, the barracks were completed, and the soldiers lodged with some slight degree of comfort.
It is impossible, however, to express in words, the intense suffering which the army was called upon to endure at Valley Forge. Utterly destitute of almost every thing necessary to support life; tattered and half-naked; some few of the soldiers had one shirt; many only the moiety of one; and the greater part, none at all. Numbers of these brave men, for want of shoes, were compelled to go barefoot over the frozen ground. Few, if any, had blankets for the night. Great numbers sickened ; others, unfitted for service by the cold and their nakedness, were excused by their officers from all military duty, and either remained in
- ↑ It was in December, 1777, that Mr. Bushnell, the inventor of the American torpedo and other submarine machinery, set afloat in the Delaware a contrivance which frightened the British not a little. This was a squadron of kegs, charged with powder, to explode on coming in contact with any thing. The ice prevented the success of this contrivance, but as a boat was blown up, and some of the kegs exploded, the British, at Philadelphia, not knowing what dreadful affairs might be in the water, fired at every thing they saw during the ebb tide. For Mr. Hopkinson's "Battle of the Kegs," we refer the reader to Appendix II., at the end of the present chapter.
- ↑ It is not pleasant to put it on record, but the legislature of Pennsylvania, vexed at the loss of Philadelphia, found it in their hearts to complain of Washington going into winter-quarters. This drew from him some pretty plain words on this point: "We find gentlemen, without knowing whether the army was really going into winter-quarters or not, reprobating the measure as much as if they thought that the soldiers were made of stocks or stones, and equally insensible of frost and snow; and moreover, as if they conceived it easily practicable for an inferior army, under the disadvantages I have described ours to be, which are by no means exaggerated, to confine a superior one, in all respects well appointed, and provided for a winter's campaign, within the city of Philadelphia, and to cover from depredation and waste, the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. . . . . I can assure these gentlemen, that it is a much easier and less distressing thing, to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room, by a good fireside, than to occupy a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow, without clothes or blankets. However, although they seem to have little feeling for the naked and distressed soldiers, I feel superabundantly for them, and from my soul, I pity those miseries, which it is neither in my power to relieve nor prevent."
