There was no fresh meat there; no sufficient salted provisions. There were no cattle in the neighboring towns or States that could be spared for the army.
But they suffered in silence. They went half-clothed and hungry, but they did not desert.
“Nothing can equal their sufferings,” wrote one of an examining committee. Even the cannon was frozen in, and bitten by the frost were the limbs of those who were commissioned to handle them.
Had General Howe, whose army was dissipating at Philadelphia, led out his troops against the famine-stricken army in the Valley, what might have been the fate of the American cause?
The dissipations of the English army was one cause of its overthrow. That army had been reveling when surprised at Trenton.
With his men wasting and dying around him, shoeless, coatless, foodless, what was Washington to do?
At one of the dismal councils of his generals there came a counsel that made the hearts all quicken.
“Send to Connecticut for cattle. Let us appeal to Brother Jonathan again; he has never failed us.”
“I never made an appeal to Brother Jonathan but to receive help,” said the great commander.
The appeal was made. In his letter to Governor Trumbull, Washington said: