The complimentary festival given to General Howe on his departure, known as the Mischianza, took place May 18th, at the Wharton house.[936]
On the condition of Washington's camp at Valley Forge we have first the testimony of his own letters and those of his corespondents,[937] as well as that of sundry diaries and journals.[938]
The question of supplies as affecting the camp is considered in Stuart's Trumbull and Greene's Greene (ii. 48), this general being made quartermaster-general in March.
ATTACK ON MUD ISLAND.
From Galloway's Letters to a Nobleman, London, 1779. The leading published map of Delaware Bay and River at this time was one surveyed by Joshua Fisher, and published in London by Sayer and Bennett, 1775 and 1776. It was reproduced in Penna. Archives, 2d ser., vol. iii.; and maps based on them are in the Gent. Mag., July, 1779. There was a French edition issued in Paris by Le Rouge in 1777, which also made part of the Atlas Amériquain. Other charts are in the No. Amer. Pilot, 1776, and in the Neptune Américo-Septentrional, 1778.
There are plans for obstructing the river, in Penna. Archives, 2d ser., i. 749. Other maps of the river defences will be found in Sparks's Washington, v. 156; Irving's Washington (quarto), iii. 278; Smith's Delaware County, p. 321; Lossing's Field-Book, ii. 298; Carrington's Battles, p. 396.
There are preserved various orderly-books of the camp.[939]
There were efforts to reorganize the army during the winter. Congress had created a board of war in November, 1777 (Pickering, i. 187; Lossing, ii. 867). On Jan. 10, 1778, a committee of Congress was appointed to visit the camp and concert plans for the reorganization (Journals, ii. 401). A plan was drawn up by conference, and later adopted by Congress (Sparks, v. 525). Francis Dana wrote from the camp, Feb. 12th, to Congress, and the draft, found among the papers of Laurens, was printed in the Polit. Mag. (vol. i.,—1780), by which it was thought to appear that Howe could have destroyed the American army if he had had enterprise.[940]