Valley Forge

Questions on this topic? Just ask!

Between December 19, 1777, and June 19, 1778, the American Continental Army camped on about 2,000 acres of ground in a Pennsylvania community called Valley Forge, approximately twenty miles northwest of Philadelphia. While there, approximately 11,000 men under the command of General George Washington constructed light shelters and defensive earthworks, endured a harsh winter, trained, and executed rigorous military drills. Initially ignored by historians, the Valley Forge story was "rediscovered" during the mid-nineteenth century. Romantic Era authors emphasized the hardships of the encampment and caused it to be adopted as a national symbol of perseverance and sacrifice resulting in eventual triumph. Citizens joined efforts to preserve the campground where monuments and reconstructions were built during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to interpret the story.

No battles were fought at Valley Forge, but historians acknowledged the encampment as a turning point in the American Revolution because the troops overcame many deprivations and went on to fight. Documentary records indicate that the winter was not particularly severe, but exposure to the elements combined with the camp's poor sanitation led to significant losses from disease. Certain regiments were also poorly clothed, making many men unfit for duty. In one letter, George Washington mentioned a lack of shoes so severe that the men's "marches might be tracked by the blood from their feet," a phrase that permanently linked the powerful image of bloody footprints to the Valley Forge encampment (Washington to Barrister, pp. 284–293).

Just days after his men marched into Valley Forge, it seemed to Washington that mutiny was imminent when the soldiers, faced with short supplies, began chanting "no meat," and "no bread, no soldier." Washington intentionally invoked the strongest possible language in his most famous letter from Valley Forge, warning Congress that his army would "starve, dissolve, or disperse" if the politicians failed to adequately supply it. A committee appointed by Congress to inspect conditions at the camp arrived during another supply crisis in February, and Washington succeeded in achieving the military supply system reforms he desired.

Another reason historians consider Valley Forge a military turning point is the transformation made by Inspector

General Friedrich von Steuben. He drafted a training manual and initiated a system of standardized military training that turned a group of diversely trained men into a more efficient fighting force. In 1777 Washington had essentially taken command of a new army because some men's terms expired and new recruits arrived, leaving him with only a small core of veterans. Washington began their training, but von Steuben took over in March 1778, introducing drills to a small model unit before imposing them on the entire army. The army's heroic suffering, its perseverance, and its renewed strength made Valley Forge a legendary symbol of American character.

Most Americans of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries tended to be rather indifferent to their Revolutionary War history. Only when veterans of this conflict began dying off, and later, during the Romantic Era of the mid-nineteenth century, Americans transformed the mundane tale of soldiers suffering and surviving the rigors of the winter camp at Valley Forge into an inspiring legend in which virtue triumphed after sacrifices were made. The American fascination with Valley Forge intensified in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when an increasingly industrialized society populated by a growing number of foreigners seemed to threaten American values. The resulting Colonial Revival Movement was a period of artistic and cultural renewal lasting approximately from 1880 to 1940 when Americans looked nostalgically back to the Colonial and Revolutionary periods of the nation's history and were inspired to collect and reproduce antiques and preserve and restore old buildings and places of historic importance, such as Valley Forge.

In 1850 Henry Woodman wrote a series of letters for a regional newspaper about his youth at Valley Forge that helped spread the encampment's fame. In 1877, interested citizens formed an organization to celebrate on a grand scale the centennial of the army's exit from Valley Forge and to preserve the modest house that had served as Washington's headquarters. A Pennsylvania state legislator lobbied to establish a state park at Valley Forge, resulting in the creation of the Valley Forge Park Commission in 1893. This committee researched the encampment and used appropriated funds to purchase the land where the army had camped and the soldiers had constructed their earthworks. Governor Samuel Penny-packer appropriated additional funds for roads and historic markers early in the twentieth century.

States and patriotic organizations soon decorated the grounds with monuments, a trend culminating with the 1917 dedication of the National Memorial Arch funded by the U.S. Congress, making it the nation's gift honoring the historic importance of Valley Forge. Later in the twentieth century, when the popularity of Williamsburg inspired other historical reconstructions, the Valley Forge Park Commission instituted a project intended to evoke the military encampment at Valley Forge with a number of restorations and reconstructions, most notably replica log huts representing the structures that had housed the soldiers. On July 4, 1976, President Gerald Ford signed a bill into law making Valley Forge a national park. In the early years of the twenty-first century, the park service began working with a private organization to form a model public/private partnership to build the Center for the American Revolution at Valley Forge.

While visiting Valley Forge in 1828, antiquarian John Fanning Watson wrote, "On those hills, were miserably hutted the forlorn hope of the country in its day of most gloomy peril." In his 1860 book titled The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, Benson Lossing opens his chapter on Valley Forge by stating, "There, in the midst of frost and snows, disease and destitution, Liberty erected her altar; and in all the world's history we have no record of purer devotion, holier sincerity, or more pious self-sacrifice, than was there exhibited" (vol. 2, p. 125). Valley Forge has come to symbolize American perseverance, faith, courage in adversity, and willingness to sacrifice for freedom, aspects of the national character poignantly illustrated by war.

Bunker Hill Monument; Flags; Lafayette's Tour; Monroe's Tour of New England; Revolutionary War Veterans; Washington, George.

Bodle, Wayne. The Valley Forge Winter: Civilians and Soldiers in War. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002.

Lossing, Benson J. The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, 2 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1860.

Treese, Lorett. Valley Forge: Making and Remaking a National Symbol. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.

Trussell, John B.B., Jr. Birthplace of an Army: A Study of the Valley Forge Encampment. Harrisburg, PA: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1976.

Washington to John Banister, April 22, 1778, in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799, vol. 11, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1934.

Watson, John Fanning. Trip to Valley Forge and the Camp Hills. Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1928.

This is the complete article, containing 1,161 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).