u In this painting, George Washington is depicted standing between his ragged army on the right and the members of Congress sent to Valley Forge in January 1778 to ascertain the state of the Continental Army’s supplies.
l In the foreground of this engraving, three American soldiers (one without proper footwear) try to keep warm around a fire at Valley Forge while their comrades haul wood and stand sentry in the background.
T H E E L K S M A G A Z I N E
through his worn-out shoes, his legs nearly naked . . . his breeches not sufficient to cover his nakedness. . . .” Surveying his men’s condition, Washington wrote the Continental Congress, saying that “unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place . . . 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. . . .”
Not wholly trusting Washington’s reports on the condi- tion of the men at Valley Forge, the Continental Congress sent a five-man committee to the camp in January 1778 to investigate the army’s need for supplies. When the con- gressmen saw the situation for themselves, their skepticism evaporated. They wrote urgent letters to their home states stressing the importance of keeping the army from starva- tion and began working to reorganize the quartermaster and commissary departments, which were responsible for supplying the Continental Army with provisions. This would later prove to be a significant turning point for the army and its supply problems, but any sort of real relief was still some months away.
New Training
In the meantime, another turning point for the Continen- tal Army was near at hand. Although the army’s immediate problem was a lack of provisions, one of its long-term
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PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
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