[Transcript]
Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion.
Episode 1.7: The Slog of War: 1778-1781
We left off last week in January 1778. George and his army troops were in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania for the winter, and he had written to Martha to ask her to join him for this third winter of the war.
Martha left Mount Vernon shortly after the birth of Jack and Nelly’s second child, Patty, and she arrived in Valley Forge in early February 1778. Obviously Jack and Nelly stayed behind, now with two little girls to take care of. It was a good thing too, because the winter of 1777-78 was brutal. Martha had to deal with excessively bad weather during her journey.
The weather caused her and the 18 slaves traveling with her to spend the night at an inn on Brandywine Creek, and by the time they woke up the next morning, snow had made the road completely impassable for the carriage.
So Martha, never one to let a major obstacle get her down, hired a sleigh to transport her, the slaves, and all of her supplies from Brandywine to Valley Forge. Presumably it took many trips to get everything to camp.
The men cheered when Martha arrived, because that meant the fighting was paused for a while. It was literally the only thing they had to cheer about. Conditions in Valley Forge were deplorable. In letters to Congress, George said that without better provisioning, “this Army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these three things. Starve—dissolve—or disperse, in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can.”
He later described the hellish first few weeks at Valley Forge, “men without clothes to cover their nakedness, without Blankets to lay on, without Shoes, by which their Marches might be traced by the Blood from their feet….Marching through frost & Snow, and at Christmas taking up their Winter Quarters within a day’s march of the enemy, without a House or Hutt to cover them till they could be built & submitting to it without a murmur.”
Things were bleak. Some of the diaries of Continental soldiers have survived. Helen Bryan quotes one particularly vivid account in her book, Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty. “December 14…The Army which has been surprisingly healthy hitherto, now begins to grow sickly from the continued fatigues they have suffered this Campaign…I am sick…Poor food—hard lodging—Cold Weather—fatigue—Nasty Cloaths—nasty Cookery—Vomit half my time—smoak’d out my senses…Here all Confusion—smoke and Cold—hunger and filthyness….There comes a bowl of beef soup—full of burnt leaves and dirt, sickish enough to make a Hector spue….December 21 preparations are made for huts…Provisions Scarce…my Skin and eyes are almost spoil’d with continual smoke. A general cry through the Camp this Evening among the soldiers, ‘No Meat! No Meat!’ —the Distant vales Echo’d back the melancholy sound ‘No Meat! No Meat!’”
It was so bad that the soldiers had to resort to mixing a little flour with water and cooking it on a hot stone among the ashes of the fire. They called them “ash cakes.” Thankfully firewood was plentiful because they were surrounded by woods.
Besides near starvation and lack of clothing and shoes, illness was also running rampant through camp. Smallpox, dysentery, and putrid fever were the worst of it, but the cold, wet weather also brought on bouts of rheumatism. Horses died because there was nothing to feed them, and their corpses rotted in the open air. There were very few houses in Valley Forge, and the ones that were there were claimed by the officers. The men had to build their own huts to sleep in, 12 men to a hut. George was holding the Army together through sheer force of will, and constantly haranguing Congress for more supplies.
This was the state of affairs when Martha arrived in February. If anyone ever doubts that Martha Washington loved her husband, just tell them about the time she voluntarily joined him in the filthy, pestilent winter camp at Valley Forge.
George had taken up residence in a small house with lots of fireplaces, but not a lot of space. There was one reasonably sized room on the ground floor that was George’s office, and the sitting room for receiving guests. There was no dining room, so squeezing in 15-20 aides and officers every afternoon for dinner was a real problem. George eventually had a separate log cabin structure built where they could hold dinners.
George spent most of his day with his aides and generals. They all dined with Martha at three in the afternoon, and then they went back to work. Martha had work too. She organized a sewing circle with the other ladies in camp, including Kitty Greene and Lucy Knox. They would knit socks, patch torn garments, and make fresh shirts. They would then go around to the huts and deliver the clothing items to those in most need. With 12,000 men in camp, there was no way a small group of women could knit or sew fast enough to clothe them all.
Martha had brought a number of provisions such as ham, salt herring, and dried fruit with her to Valley Forge. In addition to distributing clothing, she would also sometimes deliver a bowl of soup or some other treat to the soldiers in the hospital. She also sat and prayed with the soldiers, especially the ones who knew they were dying and nothing could be done.
Dinners at Valley Forge could not have been more different than the elaborate meals served at Mount Vernon in the early days of their marriage. Instead of multiple courses and six different kinds of meat, they merely had a piece of salted fish, a few potatoes, and spring water.
Dances and balls were out of the question in the cramped and miserable quarters of Valley Forge, but on George’s 45th birthday, Martha managed to find some musicians and organized a concert. On other nights, the officers and their wives would gather with the Washingtons in the log cabin dining room and sing and drink tea.
They also enjoyed several plays put on by the younger officers. As a true sign that Congress has always been full of men with terrible ideas, they had forbidden theatrical performances during the war, and had passed a resolution threatening to dismiss any soldier who attended a performance. As if they could spare the men. Knowing how counterproductive that resolution was, George gave permission for these performances to help with morale.
There was one very fortunate thing about that winter in Valley Forge, and that was the sheer laziness of General Howe. If you recall, Howe and the British Army were occupying Philadelphia. They had plenty of lovely houses to occupy, lots of food to eat, and a glittering society to enjoy. They were only about 20 miles from Valley Forge, and we’ve seen the sad state that the Continental Army was in. If Howe had bothered to march on Valley Forge, he could have obliterated the Continentals and probably ended the revolution.
Helen Bryan is blunt when describing Howe’s winter of 1778. “He was having a splendid time that winter in Philadelphia and preferred to spend the cold months there enjoying the company of his mistress, Mrs. Loring, the wife of one of his officers. It has been said no patriot could have done more than Mrs. Loring to prevent a British attack when the Continental Army was at its most vulnerable and that America has yet to acknowledge her invaluable contribution to the cause.”
As winter turned to spring, the food situation in Valley Forge improved. There was a run of shad in the Schuylkill River that kept the camp fed for several days. And then the local farmers were persuaded to set up a market of sorts where the men could purchase food. This was a mild improvement for the farmers, because the soldiers had been stealing what food they could before this. But the payment was made in Continental scrip, which was borderline worthless.
The army was also getting better at actually being an army, instead of a ragged collection of farmers and townspeople with muskets. This was thanks to Baron von Steuben, a Prussian soldier who arrived in camp shortly after Martha did. He was essentially serving as a drillmaster, running drills with the troops and whipping them into fighting shape. (Not literally whipping them, of course.)
On May 10, 1778, George received very welcome news: France had recognized the United States as a country and had entered into official treaties of commerce and alliance. France had been secretly supporting the Americans ever since the Declaration of Independence back in 1776. France and England had been enemies going back centuries, and after losing to Britain in the French and Indian/Seven Years War, France was looking for a way to undermine Britain in any way it could.
France had been selling gunpowder and ammunition to the Americans since the beginning of the war, and it’s thought that the American victory at Saratoga could not have happened without French aid. By signing a treaty with the United States and declaring war on Britain, France was now helping the Americans out in the open. One major advantage France could bring to the war was their navy. Britain’s navy was huge and world-renowned. America had no navy. French ships could now bring the battle to the British on the seas while the Americans fought them on land.
George ordered a day of celebration on May 11. The treaty was read aloud to the assembled troops, the King of France was praised, there was a military parade and drill, and then an evening of celebration. The army could not have been more excited. One officer wrote, “I was never present where there was such unfeigned and perfect joy as we discovered in every countenance. The entertainment concluded with a number of patriotic toasts attended with huzzas. When the general took his leave, there was a universal clap, with loud huzzas, which continued till he had proceeded a quarter of a mile, during which time there were a thousand hats tossed in the air. His Excellency turned round with his retinue and huzzaed several times.”
The British were considerably less excited to hear that they were now also at war with France. Worried about defending against the French navy, they decided to concentrate their forces in New York, which meant pulling out of Philadelphia. Sir William Howe resigned as commander, and he sailed home to England later that month. Sir Henry Clinton was now the commander of the British forces in America.
On June 9, 1778, Martha left Valley Forge to return to Mount Vernon. On June 18, the British abandoned Philadelphia and marched toward New York. Within the hour, the Continental Army marched into Philadelphia and reclaimed the city.
The American troops skirmished with the rear guard of the British troops all the way across New Jersey, and mounted an attack at Monmouth Courthouse on June 28. Proving that an army is only as good as its generals, the Continental Army had a plan for their attack, but General Charles Lee, who was leading the advance, retreated instead of pressing forward. George had to use his usual organizational skills to form the retreating Americans into enough of a force to stop the now-advancing Brits. When the fighting stopped, it was clear that the British forces had much higher casualties than the Americans, but it wasn’t a definitive victory. The British troops slinked off in the night, and that was the end of that.
Congress returned to Philadelphia on July 2, just in time to celebrate the second anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Back at Mount Vernon, Martha turned to her usual summer activities of trying to get the house back into shape after her long winter and spring absence.
While she had been away at Valley Forge, Jack had been elected as a delegate to the Virginia General Assembly, he and Nelly had purchased a property called Abingdon, which was about 12 miles north of Mount Vernon, and Nelly was pregnant again.
France entering the war on the side of the Americans didn’t have the immediate effect that everyone had hoped it would. French ships under the command of Admiral d’Estaing arrived in New York in July, but the sound was too shallow for the ships to reach the city where the British were encamped. An attempted attack on the British at Newport, Rhode Island was thwarted by bad weather. The French flagship was damaged, and d’Estaing insisted on sailing the fleet to Boston for repairs. Once back in fighting shape, the French left the New England area altogether and headed south to the West Indies to fight against the British there. Both England and France had colonies and sugar plantations in the West Indies, so even though it had nothing to do with the United States, it was part of the war as far as the European powers were concerned.
By the fall it was clear that the war was not going to magically be over in 1778, and that George would spend another winter encamped with his army. In early November George sent one of his deputies to Mount Vernon to accompany Martha to Philadelphia. We don’t have a detailed account of her travels like we do for the prior year when she traveled to Valley Forge, but she didn’t reach Philadelphia until December 17, so there must have been bad weather and possibly other problems along the way.
George and the army had made winter camp in Middlebrook, New Jersey. The conditions were much, much better than at Valley Forge. They were on the Raritan River, and maintaining a supply chain from Philadelphia to Middlebrook was reasonably easy. There also were mountains nearby, with plenty of wood for fires and for building log cabin huts for the men. Several rooms in a large house were secured to serve as headquarters, and there was plenty of flat land for Baron von Steuben to continue drilling the troops.
George joined Martha in Philadelphia on December 22, and they spent the next several weeks in that city. George’s main reason for being in Philadelphia was to talk Congress out of an idiotic plan to invade Canada, which was something the French wanted to do but served no real purpose.
On January 6, 1779, George and Martha’s 20th wedding anniversary, they attended a ball at the home of Samuel and Elizabeth Powel. They hadn’t been together for their anniversary since the first winter of the war in Cambridge in 1776.
After finally convincing Congress not to invade Canada, George and Martha left Philadelphia on February 2 and went to Middlebrook to join the rest of the army in winter camp. They lived in a brand-new, two-story house that was thankfully much more spacious than the previous winter’s headquarters. The winter of 1778-79 was also fairly mild, weather-wise. Food wasn’t exactly plentiful, but the situation was not as dire as the year before. A typical dinner with the General and Lady Washington was likely to be ham and roast beef, some greens or beans, and maybe even apple pie if the cook was amenable.
While Martha was still in Middlebrook with George, Nelly gave birth to another daughter on March 21, 1779. They named her Eleanor Parke Custis, and in typical confusing fashion, decided to call her Nelly. So now we have Nelly and baby Nelly on the scene.
The rest of the spring was relatively quiet, but in early June, the British finally moved up out of New York City and were sailing up the Hudson River. Martha left Middlebrook for Mount Vernon, and George led the army into upstate New York to protect West Point and other key locations on the Hudson.
When Martha returned to Mount Vernon, she took over the care of baby Nelly. All of Nelly’s pregnancies and births had been hard on her, and this one seems to have been particularly difficult. Months after the birth she was still not well enough to take care of the baby.
Martha still hoped to bring her niece Fanny to live with her at Mount Vernon—you’ll recall this is her sister Nancy’s daughter, and she had promised to bring up the girl properly after Nancy died. But between taking care of baby Nelly and the ongoing war and her annual visits to winter camp, it just was never the right time to bring Fanny to northern Virginia.
The war still wasn’t going great, despite the involvement of the French, and also the Spanish, who had entered the war as an ally of France. The Brits captured two important garrisons along the Hudson River. New Haven, Fairfield, and Norwalk, all in Connecticut, had been burned to the ground by British troops.
In the fall of 1778, Savannah, Georgia had been taken by the British. In October 1779, the French Admiral d’Estaing and the French fleet attempted to retake Savannah, but failed and retreated to the West Indies once again.
It was by now assumed that Martha would join George in the winter camp, wherever it would be. In an effort to avoid the difficult, snowy travels of years past, they began preparations in November. Martha returned baby Nelly and her nurse to Jack and Nelly at Abingdon and set out for New Jersey in late November. Winter quarters were to be in Morristown, where they had also spent the winter of 1776-77.
Martha only made it as far as Philadelphia in early December before the weather made the continuation of her journey impossible. That winter was one of the snowiest on record. Twenty-six storms hit the Atlantic states that season, and six of them qualified as blizzards. It was also bitter cold, with temperatures dropping well below zero. The Delaware River froze over in December and stayed frozen until March. Baltimore Harbor froze over, and for the only time in recorded history, New York Harbor (which is very deep) froze over. The British were able to ride across the Hudson River on horseback.
Martha and George were forced to spend Christmas apart because she was still stuck in Philadelphia. She finally made it to Morristown right around New Year’s Eve. The camp brought back memories of Valley Forge two years prior. Still not enough food, still not enough clothing. It had taken the men the whole month of December to build log cabins to house themselves, due to all the snow. It’s a miracle that the whole army didn’t just give up and go home.
The Washingtons were housed in another too-small house. It was called the Ford House, and Mrs. Ford remained in the house along with her servants. So two sets of servants were trying to use one kitchen. George and Martha used one of the upstairs bedrooms, and all of his aides shared the other upstairs bedroom. Mrs. Ford and her children lived downstairs in the parlor, and George used a small downstairs room as his office. It was cramped, to say the least.
Martha found it more difficult than usual to cheer up George that winter. This was the fifth winter of the war. There were no major accomplishments to point to, and the French had not proved very useful. The persistent shortages of food and clothing, despite George’s constant begging to Congress to send supplies, was wearing him down. On December 15, George had written to Congress, “our prospects are infinitely worse than they have been at any period of the war….unless some expedient can be instantly adopted a dissolution of the army for want of sustenance is unavoidable.”
When things looked bleakest, George was able to convince the governing body of the county, called the Freeholders, that they needed to help. It actually seems that he threatened them, telling them that if they couldn’t convince the local farmers to sell the army all the cattle and food they had, he would declare martial law and seize it at gunpoint. Things were desperate. Thankfully, the Freeholders came through. The locals helped to clear the roads that were covered in between four and ten feet of snow so that the cattle could be herded to the camp. And the farmers sold all the food they could to the army, even though they were paid in nearly worthless Continental scrip. George had saved his troops and held them together, yet again.
Meanwhile, after her arrival, Martha did what she had been doing every winter. She organized sewing circles to help provide the men with socks and shirts, she organized dinner parties with the officers and their wives, and she tried to keep George’s spirits up.
Spring didn’t do much to improve the army’s condition. It wasn’t snowing anymore, but there was still no food. Several small mutinies occurred, but they were suppressed by the officers and didn’t spread to the army at large.
In May 1780, Charleston, South Carolina fell to the British. The port of Charleston, all the ships there, all the weapons there, and the entire southern army were now in the hands of the enemy. In good news though, the British attacked the northern army twice in June at the battles of Springfield, but the Continentals won both battles.
Martha left Morristown in mid-June to return to Mount Vernon. George headed north to West Point, which he feared the British were preparing to attack. A fresh French fleet had arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, bearing 5,000 French troops under the command of the Comte de Rochambeau. Another fleet with 2,000 French troops was promised, but they never made it, being blockaded by the British before even leaving France.
Martha made it back to Mount Vernon in mid-July and was far too tired to travel south to Eltham to see her family. Jack and Nelly were mourning a pair of twin daughters that had been born sometime in 1780. None of the biographers mentions their names, but they became sick shortly after birth, and they both died.
The war continued going badly in the second half of 1780. Horatio Gates was defeated by the British under Lord Cornwallis at Camden, South Carolina. The loss was so bad that he was relieved of command and replaced by Nathaneal Greene. West Point was nearly lost when General Benedict Arnold turned traitor and attempted to hand it over to the British. He escaped after his treachery was discovered, and West Point remained in American hands.
Martha left Mount Vernon again in November, after only being home for about four months. George had established winter camp in New Windsor, New York. Martha stopped in Philadelphia and stayed for at least several days. Thankfully she didn’t get snowed in like the year before, and she arrived at camp in mid-December, 1780.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the winter of 1780-81 was another hard one. Not enough food, not enough clothes, another terrible winter, but with less snow. Martha settled into her usual routine of sewing circles and entertaining guests at headquarters.
The British sent a fresh batch of troops to New York, commanded by the traitor Benedict Arnold. They headed south to join with Lord Cornwallis, who was laying waste to the Carolinas and coastal Virginia. The Americans fighting in the south had the advantage of mild winters. They could forage for food and live in the forests. They engaged in something like guerilla warfare against the British troops—attacking small contingents of the enemy and then melting away into the wilderness.
In January 1781, the Americans won a small victory at Cowpens, South Carolina. And then later in the spring, Nathaneal Greene beat the British at the battle of Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina. These victories were enough to sustain the Americans’ spirits, and also keep the French in their corner. In April 1781, Cornwallis marched his troops into Virginia.
George sent some of his northern troops south to help Greene defend against Cornwallis. He put them under the command of the Marquis de Lafayette, a young French nobleman who had joined the American cause years before the official treaty with the French and who was a bit of a surrogate son to George.
Martha intended to return to Mount Vernon in May, but she suffered a severe gallbladder attack and was bed-ridden for five weeks. She finally left the camp in mid-June. Upon returning to Mount Vernon, she was able to meet her first grandson. Nelly had finally given birth to a boy on April 30, 1781. They named him George Washington Parke Custis, and he was called Wash or Washy. He and his nurse joined Martha at Mount Vernon, along with baby Nelly (who was now about two years old) because the elder Nelly was once again suffering from a difficult childbirth and unable to properly care for the younger children.
On September 9, 1781, something very exciting happened at Mount Vernon: George returned home for the first time in six years. When he had left for the Second Continental Congress on May 4, 1775, no one expected that it would be six years before he would be back. This was only a short visit though. He was marching his army south to meet up with Greene and Lafayette to confront Lord Cornwallis, who was near Yorktown, Virginia.
Jack and Nelly hurried over from Abingdon with their two elder daughters, Betsy and Patty. This was George’s first opportunity to meet his four grandchildren. (Technically they were his step-grandchildren, but he never made that kind of distinction.)
Martha reveled in the opportunity to show proper Virginia hospitality to the military officers and aides who accompanied George. With all the food stores of Mount Vernon at her disposal, she was able to present meals far superior to anything they had eaten in the various winter camps.
George and his entourage left Mount Vernon on September 12, 1781. They were headed for Yorktown, where a decisive event was about to take place. And that’s what we’ll cover next week!
Thanks for listening to this episode. It was produced by me. The music is by Matthew Dull. Ratings and reviews are the best way to help the podcast grow, and I’d love it if you took one minute to leave one, thanks!
