Morristown, 1779

The cold snap we've had in New York the past few days has actually been something of a reassurance. Others may grumble, but cold weather puts a skip in my step. I enjoy the bracing East River wind on my cheeks and the tears that well up when I first step out my door onto Front Street to face the blast of cold from the water. It makes me think perhaps the world is not out-of-whack after all. Winters are supposed to be cold. We live in a temperate zone; we should feel it.

As anyone who lives here knows, New York can get downright cold. I think it must have something to do with the water all around us and how the buildings appear to amplify the wind, forcing it down the canyons and corners so you never quite escape it no matter which way you turn or up what street you scamper. The wind seems to be always there, right in your face.

One thing a cold front does is force me to reflect on winters past to compare what we are going though with what we have already experienced. For me, one recent winter stands out. The winter of the transit strike in 2005, while perhaps not the coldest, stands out for sheer inconvenience and the camaraderie of shared suffering that sprang up amongst New Yorkers. I'll never forget how my heart went out to those poor souls forced to cross the city's bridges on foot day after day in the bitter cold. As for me, I enjoyed the long walk up the Bowery and Park Avenue to my office. I liked dressing for the weather, pulling my suit trousers over a snug pair of long-johns and because of the strike, no one was expected to make it into the office on time so I was able to savor those long, cold walks.

All this, however, was put into perspective the other day as I read accounts of the sufferings of George Washington's troops during the miserable winter of 1779/80. The book, Rebels and Redcoats, by Scheer and Rankin (World Publishing Co., Cleveland, 1957), tells the history of the American Revolution through first-person accounts, letters, journals, etc, from participants on both sides of the conflict. In 1779, Washington camped his army around Morristown, New Jersey (see image below), near enough to keep an eye on the British in New York, but well protected by intervening mountains and rivers.

Generally, however, when we think of the winter-time miseries faced by the Continental soldiers it is Valley Forge, in 1777/78, that comes to mind. But, Morristown, two years later, was in many respects much worse. All the logistical problems faced at Valley Forge were also present at Morristown--the unshod soldiers, the lack of food, fickle state governments recalling their local militias. But we remember Valley Forge, and rightly so, because that was the year when things looked most bleak for the rebellion. That winter was the nadir of the struggle. After Valley Forge, the tide of the conflict finally turned in favor of the Americans. The army that marched out of Valley Forge in the Spring of 1778 was a cohesive force, well-trained and hardened by the adversity they faced, ready to meet the British who had been living it up in snug Philadelphia twenty miles away. Then, France declared war against Britain and made the conflict global, compelling the Empire to defend outposts in India, the Mediterranean, and the West Indies. So, while individual soldiers might freeze and die in the winters that would follow Valley Forge, the rebellion itself would not and independence was only a matter of time, and perseverance.

But Morristown in 1779 would test that perseverance because the winter that descended on the land was by far the worst in memory. From the first of December, when Washington established camp, there was unrelenting bitter cold and almost daily snowfall. On that first day the troops began building their own shelters, log huts made from the surrounding green oak and pine trees but until those huts were completed, the men lived in what few tents they had. As at Valley Forge, many of the soldiers were without shoes or hats. Those without tents slept in crude burrows in the earth. But soon the ground was so frozen as to make digging almost impossible.

Dr. James Thacher, a physician from Barnstable, Massachusetts attached to the Continental army, described the snow and cold this way, "No man could endure its violence many minutes without danger of his life. Several marquees (large field tents) were torn asunder and blown down over the officers' heads in the night and some of the soldiers were actually covered while in their tents and buried like sheep under the snow." And, "the soldiers are so enfeebled from hunger and cold, as to be almost unable to perform their military duty or labor in constructing their huts."

By early January the snow at Morristown measured, according to Dr. Thacher, "from four to six feet in depth." The snows continued until late March. General De Kalb described it as being, "...so cold that the ink freezes on my pen, while I am sitting close to the fire. The roads are piled with snow until, at some places they are elevated twelve feet above their ordinary level."

But to me, the most amazing fact is that the Hudson River froze completely across and to such a thickness that the British were able to transport artillery over it. The British garrison on Staten Island was supplied by sleigh and once a troop of cavalry rode from there to the Battery. As someone who has closely observed New York harbor for many years, I find this last astounding. Even on the coldest winters the harbor has never frozen. The most I have seen in 16 years is sheets of ice forming around the edges of piers or isolated patches floating in the river, giving a slightly thick, viscous appearance to the surface of the water. But frozen solid? Never.

So, while the British were enjoying sleigh rides on the Upper Bay and the hills of Staten Island, Washington and his men were freezing and starving in the woods of New Jersey. The provisioning problems that had bedeviled the army at Valley Forge were perhaps even worse at Morristown, as hard as that might be to imagine: Washington's army in 1779 was now larger and had many more mouths to feed; the Continental currency--in which soldier and officers were paid and supplies were purchased--was worthless; central New Jersey, after years as the primary battlefield of the war, was not the bread-basket it had been, and finally, massive snowdrifts often blocked the roads to Morristown, delaying what little supplies there were. To make matters worse, Congress seemed no longer able to provide for the army. Congress had became a shell of its old self and the new law of the land, the Articles of Confederation, gave the supreme power to the states. The great voices of the first and second Continental Congress were gone: Franklin and Adams were in Europe, Jefferson was governor of Virginia, and Hancock, Washington, and many others were fighting the war. This meant Washington increasingly had to appeal to the individual states for provisions for his troops.

Joseph Plum Martin, a private from Connecticut who had enlisted as a 15-year old three years prior, described the food situation at Morristown this way, "We were literally starved. I do solemnly declare that I did not put a single morsel of victuals into my mouth for four days and as many nights, except a little black birch bark, which I gnawed off a stick of wood, if that can be called victuals."

Remember, many of the men were without shoes. It was said you could track the Continental Army by following the drops of blood left in the snow by unshod feet. Some of those who had shoes were forced to look on them as a source of food. Martin writes, "I saw several...men roast their old shoes and eat them, and I was afterwards informed...that some of the officers killed and ate a favorite little dog that belonged to one of them."

Through it all, Washington suffered with his men. He could have returned to Mount Vernon for the winter. In the gentlemanly world of 18th century European warfare it was customary for hostilities to cease in the winter months allowing high-ranking military officers to go home. Many of the British officers sailed home for the winter and General Gates, the second highest ranking Continental general, spent that winter at his home in Virginia, as did several other of Washington's commanders. At the very least, Washington could have chosen to winter in Philadelphia, but he stayed with his troops, encouraging them, all the while writing a stream of never-ending letters imploring Congress and the states to provide food and clothing for his starving and threadbare army.

It is important to note that Washington worked without pay, winter after freezing winter. When he reluctantly accepted the position of Commander-in-Chief from his colleagues in Congress in 1775, he specifically stipulated he would do so without pay saying in his remarks on the floor, "As to pay, sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress that as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to have accepted this arduous employment at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not wish to make any profit from it: I will keep an exact account of my expenses...that is all I desire."

Eventually, Washington's pleas for help for his starving army had gone unheeded long enough and he was forced to turn to long-suffering New Jersey, essentially taking over administration of the state himself and dividing it into military districts, each of which was compelled to provide food and other provisions. The Continental currency being pretty much worthless, Washington knew he was essentially taking food and clothing without recompense. He reminded his requisitioning officers to be as gentle as possible, "...delicately let [the local magistrates] know you are instructed, in case they do not take up the business immediately, to begin to impress the Articles called for... This you will do with as much tenderness as possible to the Inhabitants."

It is easy to descend into hagiography when describing Washington, and many have (see image at left, which shows him calling on a friend for help), but what you learn when you read the letters and journals of the soldiers and officers who served under him, even the writings of his enemies, is that he was almost universally revered by his contemporaries. In the Spring of 1776, just a few months after Washington took command of the army, one young New Englander, in a letter home, called him, "the greatest man in the world." Suffice it to say that wealthy Virginia planters were not class of people usually admired in New England. After his campaign of delaying actions in New Jersey in 1777, a British observer, Nicholas Cresswell, had this to say about him, "Washington is certainly a most surprising man, one of Nature's geniuses, a Heaven-born general, if there is any of that sort...He certainly deserves some merit as a general that he...can keep [the British army] dancing from one town to another...Washington, my enemy that he is, I should be sorry if he should be brought to an ignominious death."

In his own letters you can see Washington's humanity. The Marquis de Lafayette, only twenty-two at the time, was sitting out the winter of 1779/80 in France with his bride. He and Washington had by now formed an almost father-son, friendship. Washington had no natural-born children of his own; although he did adopt Martha's children from her previous marriage. In response to a letter from Lafayette in which the newly-wed playfully admits he has, "a wife who is in love with you," Washington jokingly writes back, "Tell her...that I have a heart susceptible to the tenderest passion, and that it is already so strongly impressed with the favorable ideas of her that she must be cautious of putting love's torch to it, as you must be in fanning the flame."

Washington is so present in the American consciousness today we actually ignore him or, worse, stifle a yawn when we hear of his exploits. "Yes, yes, Washington," we say to ourselves, "truly a great and noble man; now where did I put that fascinating book about Jefferson (or Adams, or Madison, or Hamilton...)?" He is like oxygen, ever-present but unheeded and under-appreciated. And yet, I've surprised myself these past few days that the more I read about him, the more impressed I become. Apparently, I am not alone in wondering at this conversion of opinion. I am reminded of a story my father once told me many years ago when I was in high-school. He knew a thing or two about military history and was always telling us stories about military leaders but this one stayed in my mind in part because he used another historian's words to make his point. I can't remember the words exactly but it was in response to my question as to who was the greater general, Robert E. Lee or Washington. "I remember," my father said, "asking Douglas Southall Freeman, the great Lee historian, what his next project would be. He told me he had decided to write a biography about 'the second-greatest Virginian' by which he meant Washington. When I saw him several years later," my father recounted, "I reminded him of our conversation and he told me that after several years of research and writing he was now convinced that 'not only was Washington the greatest Virginian, he was the greatest American'."

When I reflect on that miserable winter in Morristown in 1779--how Washington was able to keep his army together in the face of it, to find them food and clothing, to inspire them to undertake yet another year of inconclusive campaigning and, by the force of his example, to keep the ideals of the Revolution alive when others in the country were losing their will or engaging in profiteering and graft--I can't help but agree.