Free Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory by William R. Forstchen, Newt Gingrich, Albert S. Hanser

had been hard at work forming numerous committees. No one was sure how many there were; the last estimate approached nearly two hundred. Some members of Congress served on twenty or more such committees.
    There were committees for recruiting, printing declarations, and handling recommendations for promotion. Increasingly, especially in the last few months, that usually meant that the ones promoted were not those recommended by him but rather by Gates, men who hung on Congress’s coattails, accompanying their general to meet with Congress after the triumph at Saratoga.
    There were committees to decide on their own pay raises, committees for the design of the money they printed to give themselves pay raises; they even had a committee to oversee the creation of more committees and, in a move of downright madness, a committee to oversee the supplying of the armies.
    The supply committee was actually two committees. One made appeals to the various state committees, which in turn referenced the requests to yet other committees. The other was tasked with gathering supplies directly for Washington’s army. That committee passed a resolution that granted him the power to seize supplies from “those disaffected with our gallant cause” but in the next breath admonished him not to antagonize the local populace and to win over the “disaffected.” The Continental Committee would appeal to the various state committees for those supplies that would be forthcoming when and where needed.
    Months ago, a delegation of patriotic citizens, horrified by the sight of their boys marching barefoot and ragged to what would be the Battle of Brandywine, had approached Congress, pledging to fund the building of a tannery in a safe location to manufacture shoes for all the armies in the field—but the government would have to provide the hides. The last Washington heard, that resolution was mixed in with all the other paperwork Congress had dragged with it to Lancaster and from there to York. The location where the tannery was to be built was still just an empty field.
    A month ago, with the onset of autumn, he had issued a direct appeal toCongress that his men were in rags; not one in twenty possessed a proper winter cloak, and nearly half of them were barefoot.
    The reply was a haughty one: A request had been sent to France for eight thousand uniforms, properly tailored and of sufficient weight for winter wear. The note should be in Paris by the end of the year, he was told, with uniform delivery expected by March; Benjamin Franklin would guide the request through the various French committees, get the uniforms loaded, and then run them safely through the British blockade. Meanwhile, he was told to look to local patriots for relief. Their task and obligation to him was therefore done, and the concern was now his, with the clear implication that they had fulfilled their duty to him, and that if his men were not properly clad it would be his fault.
    And now this final blow, the army’s arrival at Valley Forge two days ago.
    During the bitter march north, he had repeatedly promised his men that upon arrival they could set to making proper winter quarters. He had sketched 10 × 14 foot log cabins, ten men to a cabin, arrayed in neat, orderly streets, with regimental cookhouses and hospitals for the sick.
    When he arrived with the vanguard of the column, his heart felt a despair he had never yet experienced in this, the third year of the war.
    He was greeted by a barren, tree-studded plain. His choice of this low ridge had been made first with tactical requirements in mind. As an agricultural area, Valley Forge was a poor piece of land. At best, the cleared land could be used as pasture. Further west, or up toward Reading, the land was far richer, but it did not fulfill his desire to be close enough to Philadelphia in order to be able to strike swiftly if an opportunity presented itself. This was something he was already planning; the notes for the