Redoubt A the woods on the right side of the road leading from Valley Forge to Paoli; also, the redoubt on the left wing of the encampment (now near the Reading rail-road) is well preserved, the forest protecting it from demolition.
Here, after an arduous campaign of four months, during which neither party had obtained a decided advantage, other than good winter quarters at Philadelphia on the part of the enemy, the shattered remains of the American army * vainly sought repose. They had marched and countermarched, day and night, in endeavoring to baffle the designs of a powerful enemy to their country and its liberties; now they were called upon, in the midst of comparative inaction, to war with enemies more insidious, implacable, and personal. Hunger and nakedness assailed that dreary winter camp with all their progeny of disease and woe. Thither, as we have seen, the soldiers came with naked and bleeding feet, and there they sat down where destitution held court, and ruled with an icy scepter. The prevalence of Toryism in the vicinity, the avaricious peculations of some unprincipled commissioners, the tardy movements of Congress in supplying provisions, and the close proximity of a powerful enemy, combined to make the procurement of provisions absolutely impracticable without a resort to force. *** But few horses were in the camp; and such was the deficiency, in this respect, for the ordinary, as well as extraordinary occasions of the army, that the men, in many instances, cheerfully yoked themselves to vehicles of their own construction, for carrying wood and provisions when procured; while others performed the duty of pack-horses, and carried heavy burdens of fuel upon their backs. **** As the winter advanced, their sufferings increased On the 16th of February, Washington wrote to Governor Clinton, "For some days past there has been little less than a famine in the camp. A part of the army has been a week without any kind of flesh, and the rest three or four days. Naked and starving as they are, we can not enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery, that they have not been, ere this, excited by their sufferings to a general mutiny and desertion.
"The situation of the camp is such," wrote General Varnum to General Greene, on the 12th of February, "that in all human probability the army must dissolve. Many of the troops are destitute of meat, and are several days in arrears. The horses are dying for want of forage. The country in the vicinity of the camp is exhausted. There can not be a moral certainty of bettering our condition while we remain here. What consequences have we rationally to expect?"
"It was with great difficulty," says Dr. Thacher
* The whole number of men in the field was eleven thousand and ninety-eight, when the, encampment commenced. Of this number, two thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight were unfit for duty. The British army numbered thirty-three thousand seven hundred and fifty-six, of which nineteen thousand five hundred and thirty, composed of Britons, Germans, and provincials, were in Philadelphia.
** This shows the present appearance of the embankments. They are quite overgrown with chestnut trees of considerable size, and shrubbery. The redoubt was nearly an oblong square, with a division in the center. Its location is on the Paoli road, about half a mile from its junction with the highway leading from Norristown to Valley Forge.
*** Washington reluctantly used the power given him by a resolution of Congress, adopted a few weeks previously. Necessity compelled him to. He issued a proclamation, in which he required all the farmers within seventy miles of Valley Forge to thresh out one half of their grain by the 1st of February, and the remainder by the 1st of March, under the penalty of having the whole seized as straw. Many farmers refused to comply. They defended their grain and cattle with fire-arms, and, in some instances, burned what they could not defend. It must be remembered that nearly all the farmers in the vicinity of Valley Forge were disaffected toward the American cause. From these the resolution of Congress * empowered Washington to demand supplies. It must also be remembered that a fair price was to be paid for all supplies brought in, and therefore the non-compliance of those who resisted was from opposition to the cause.