As Christmas approached, even Washington became so disheartened that he feared that "this army must dissolve;"[384] and the next day he again warned Congress that, unless the Commissary were quickly improved, "this army must inevitably ... starve, dissolve, or disperse."[385]
Early in 1778 General Varnum wrote General Greene that "The situation of the Camp is such that in all human probability the Army must soon dissolve. Our desertions are astonishingly great."[386] "The army must dissolve!" "The army must dissolve!"—the repeated cry comes to us like the chant of a saga of doom.
Had the British attacked resolutely, the Americans would have been shattered beyond hope of recovery.[387] On February 1, 1778, only five thousand and twelve men out of a total of more than seventeen thousand were capable of any kind of service: four thousand were unfit for duty because of nakedness.[388] The patriot prisoners within the British lines were in even worse case, if we credit but half the accounts then current. "Our brethren," records Surgeon Waldo in his diary, "who are unfortunately Prisoners in Philadelphia, meet with the most savage & inhumane treatments—that Barbarians are Capable of inflicting.... One of these poor unhappy men—drove to the last extreem by the rage of hunger—eat his own fingers up to the first joint from the hand, before he died. Others eat the Clay—the Lime—the Stones—of the Prison Walls. Several who died in the Yard had pieces of Bark, Wood,—Clay & Stones in their mouths—which the ravings of hunger had caused them to take in the last Agonies of Life."[389]
The Moravians in Bethlehem, some miles away from Valley Forge, were the only refuge of the stricken patriots. From the first these Christian socialists were the Good Samaritans of that ghastly winter. This little colony of Germans had been overrun with sick and wounded American soldiers. Valley Forge poured upon it a Niagara of starvation, disease, and death. One building, scarcely large enough for two hundred and fifty beds, was packed with nearly a thousand sick and dying men. Dysentery reduced burly strength to trembling weakness. A peculiar disease rotted blood and bones. Many died on the same foul pallet before it could be changed. The beds were "heaps of polluted litter." Of forty of John Marshall's comrades from a Virginia regiment, which was the "pride of the Old Dominion," only three came out alive.[390] "A violent putrid fever," testifies Marshall, "swept off much greater numbers than all the diseases of the camp."[391]
Need, was there not, at Valley Forge for men of resolve so firm and disposition so sunny that they would not yield to the gloom of these indescribable months? Need, was there not, among these men, for spirits so bright and high that they could penetrate even the death-stricken depression of this fetid camp with the glow of optimism and of hope?
Such characters were there, we find, and of these the most shining of all was John Marshall of the Virginia line.[392] He was a very torch of warmth and encouragement, it appears; for in the journals and diaries left by those who lived through Valley Forge, the name of John Marshall is singled out as conspicuous for these comforting qualities.
"Although," writes Lieutenant Philip Slaughter, who, with the "two Porterfields and Johnson," was the messmate of John Marshall, "they were reduced sometimes to a single shirt, having to wrap themselves in a blanket when that was washed"[393] and "the snow was knee-deep all the winter and stained with blood from the naked feet of the soldiers,"[394] yet "nothing discouraged, nothing disturbed" John Marshall. "If he had only bread to eat," records his fellow officer, "it was just as well; if only meat it made no difference. If any of the officers murmured at their deprivations, he would shame them by good-natured raillery, or encourage them by his own exuberance of spirits.
"He was an excellent companion, and idolized by the soldiers and his brother officers, whose gloomy hours were enlivened by his inexhaustible fund of anecdote.... John Marshall was the best tempered man I ever knew,"[395] testifies his comrade and messmate.
So, starving, freezing, half blind with smoke, thinly clad and almost shoeless, John Marshall went through the century-long weeks of Valley Forge, poking fun wherever he found despondency, his drollery bringing laughter to cold-purpled lips, and, his light-hearted heroism shaming into erectness the bent backs of those from whom hope had fled. At one time it would be this prank; another time it would be a different expedient for diversion. By some miracle he got hold of a pair of silk stockings and at midnight made a great commotion because the leaves he had gathered to sleep on had caught fire and burned a hole in his grotesque finery.[396]
High spirits undismayed, intelligence shining like a lamp, common sense true as the surveyor's level—these were the qualities which at the famine camp at Valley Forge singled the boyish Virginia officer out of all that company of gloom. Just before the army went into winter quarters Captain-Lieutenant Marshall was appointed "Deputy Judge Advocate in the Army of the United States,"[397] and at the same time, by the same order, James Monroe was appointed aide-de-camp to Lord Stirling, one of Washington's generals.[398]