And, with the long delay occasioned by the obstinate defence of the Chew house, the elements themselves seemed to be arrayed against the Americans. The fog became so dense that the men could not see each other a few paces apart, and only the spurts of red flame ahead betrayed the whereabouts of the enemy. The Continental troops grew bewildered; aids were unable to find the officers to whom they were sent with messages from the commanders. There were shoutings and reiterated commands in the fog, but the files did not know where their officers stood and became bewildered and unmanageable.
General Washington’s plans were disarranged. The Americans had fought bravely and, without doubt, were on the eve of a decisive victory. But an alarm was created—the tramp of a regiment of American troops brought up from the rear was thought to be the approach of a flanking force—and the men who had fought so tenaciously during the day retreated in disorderly confusion.
Added to the general depression caused by this defeat was the fact that half the Maryland militia was reported to have deserted before the battle. It was the beginning of that awful winter when naught but the extraordinary virtues of George Washington himself kept the semblance of an army together. The American forces were rapidly becoming a disorganized mob, and the fault lay with Congress, which numbered in its group few of the really great and unselfish men who had once met in Philadelphia to approve of and sign the second greatest document in our history.
The period had now arrived when men of the second rank had come to the front in charge of the uncertain affairs of the struggling Colonies. Dr. Franklin was in Paris and John Adams joined him during the winter, for the purpose of watching Silas Deane, who was a bitter foe of Washington, and had sent over the infamous Conway to hamper and embitter the great man’s very existence. Jay, Rutledge, Livingston, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson were employed at home, and Hancock had resigned from the governing house. Samuel Adams was at home in New England for most of that winter; and men much the inferior of these had taken their places—men who lacked foresight and that loftiness of purpose and love of country which had, earlier in the war, kept private jealousies and quarrels in check.
Without an organized quartermaster’s department, the soldiers could not be properly clothed or fed, and the warnings of Washington were utterly disregarded by Congress. The troops began to need clothing soon after Brandywine, and by November they were still in unsheltered camps without sufficient clothing, blankets, or tents. Hadley Morris, suffering with the rank and file, saw them lying out o’ nights at Whitemarsh, half clad and without protection from either the frozen ground or the desperate chill of the night air. Forts Mercer and Mifflin had fallen, and there was little cheer brought to these poor fellows by the news that Burgoyne had actually surrendered to General Gates and that the British army of invasion which had started so confidently from Canada was utterly crushed.
December came, and snow followed frost. The British were snug and warm in the “rebel capital.” Well fed, well clothed, spending the time in idleness and amusement, the invaders were secure of any attack from the starving, half-clothed men who, with Washington at their head, crawled slowly over the Chester hills toward the little hollow on the bank of the Schuylkill. There was gold in plenty at the command of General Howe, and for this gold the farmers about Philadelphia were glad to sell their grain. And who can blame them for preferring the good English gold to the badly-printed, worthless currency issued by the American Congress?
The ten redoubts from Fairmount to Cohocksink were stout and well manned. There was little danger of the Continentals attacking them, for the hills were already whitening with the coverlet of winter. The river was open, supplies and reinforcements were on the way from across the ocean, and the British had nothing to fear. So they gave themselves up to ease and merriment. And fortunate for the cause, then trembling in the balance, that they did so, for had they then conducted the campaign against Washington’s starving troops with vigor, the “rebellion” would never have risen in history to the dignity of a “revolution”!
CHAPTER XVII
A PERILOUS MISSION
To-day, after the passing of a century and a quarter, the Chester hills are much as they were on that chill winter’s day when the straggling lines of ragged, almost barefooted men marched along the old Gulph road. It is a farming country still, and although the forest has been cut away, in places the woodland is now as thickly grown as then. Here and there along the route the admiring descendants of those faithful patriots have erected monuments to their name; yonder can still faintly be defined the outlines of the Star Redoubt; there stands the house which was the headquarters of General Varnum, who commanded the Rhode Island troops; to the left of the road as one travels toward Valley Forge, is the line of breastworks running through the timber, which has been felled and grown up thrice since the axes of the Continentals rang from hill to hill.
One night they rested on the toilsome march near the old Gulph Mills, where the road passed through the deep cut between wooded heights: then on again, the various brigades separating and following different roads to the places assigned them. But the roads were, many of them, ill-defined, the timber was thick, the fields rugged. Little wonder that Baron de Kalb described the site chosen for the winter quarters of the American army as a wilderness.