Shoeless into Valley Forge

The story, from several sources

This account blends Rothbard’s chapter with the other sources listed below and has not yet been separated into Rothbard’s own account and the fuller story. Read Rothbard’s chapter 41 for his account.

By December 1777 Washington had lost Philadelphia and his army needed a place to sit out the winter. He wanted Wilmington, where supplies were plentiful, the weather mild, Delaware and Maryland could be guarded and his boats could harass British shipping. His officers agreed. But Pennsylvania howled at the thought of the British army ravaging the countryside, and at Wayne’s suggestion Washington, in Rothbard’s words, weakly and unfortunately chose the icy slopes of Valley Forge, twenty miles from the British in Philadelphia. Generals Varnum and de Kalb were fiercely against wintering in this desert. On December 19 the army marched in, short of food and water, poorly sheltered and terribly short of shoes and clothing. Private Joseph Plumb Martin remembered it as a forlorn condition: no clothing, no provisions, and as disheartened as need be. The men’s first job was shelter, and by squads they put up log huts, each 14 by 16 feet. Disease spread like wildfire, foraging parties on both sides stripped the farms around, and by spring desertions had cut the army to five or six thousand men. Nathanael Greene, made quartermaster general in the emergency, scraped together and confiscated enough provisions to last the winter. More than 2,000 men died.