The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [111]
Some locals gouged the army, selling what little food they had at high prices, refused to sell on credit, or simply refused to sell at all. The food shortages became a chronic crisis that winter. Jedediah Huntington wrote to his brother in Connecticut that the soldiers “live from hand to mouth.”26 Following another food shortage in mid-February, an assistant in the commissary told his boss that the army had been without beef for five days and that there was no sign of any cattle on their way. “We have been driven almost to destruction,” the officer said of the starvation.27
The food crisis would continue throughout the winter and into the spring, as would the medical and clothing shortages, threatening the existence of the army. Inflation spiraled once again as American paper money depreciated in value and word of the awful winter brought recruitment to a standstill. There was continued friction among officers and even a failed conspiracy among some officers and members of Congress to replace George Washington as commander in chief with the newly famous Horatio Gates. And, on top of all that, the British army was just twenty miles away in Philadelphia and might attack at any moment.
Chapter Twenty
“THE SOLDIERS OF OUR ARMY ARE ALMOST NAKED . . .”
Lieutenant James McMichael: The Poet
The road to Valley Forge began just before dinner on September 2, 1777, for Lieutenant James McMichael of the Pennsylvania State Regiment, now renamed the Thirteenth Pennsylvania Riflemen. On that day McMichael’s regiment camped near Wilmington, Delaware. The men were told to prepare for battle because the British Army, on its way to Philadelphia, appeared to be marching toward nearby Christiana, a village in the northern part of the state.
The armies did not encounter each other there but at Brandywine
Creek, south of Philadelphia, on September 11, 1777. McMichael and his regiment were under the command of General William Maxwell and given the assignment of guarding Chadd’s Ford, one of several shallow fords that the enemy could use to cross the creek.
The main attack was made by Lord Cornwallis and Howe with seventy-five hundred men three and a half miles west, at Birmingham meeting house, following a flanking maneuver the Americans did not anticipate. Washington’s information was faulty, too. He had no idea as to the number of troops and cannon he had. Washington didn’t even know the location of the meeting house. The maps given him were not complete either, and the terrain looked different from Washington’s spyglass than it did on his maps.
There, men under General John Sullivan and later Nathanael Greene could not hold back the English attack.1 Throughout the assault, which came at 4 p.m. and lasted several hours, Washington and Lafayette rode back and forth, rallying all of the men in the area. Lafayette was shot in the thigh and the commander in chief was constantly exposed to fire.2
General Wilhelm Knyphausen’s Hessians attacked Chadd’s Ford around 4:30 p.m. They crossed Brandywine Creek easily and tore into the American defenders, including McMichael, on the other side. It was a hot fight in the afternoon and McMichael knew that he and his men were in trouble from the moment it commenced.
We took the front and attacked the enemy at 5:30 and being engaged with their grand army we at first was obliged to retreat a few yards. We then formed in an open field, where we fought without giving way on either side ’til the [sun] descended below the horizon. It then growing dark and our ammunition all but expired, we ceased firing on both sides . . . This day for a severe and successive engagement exceeded all I ever seen. Our regiment fought at one stand for about an hour with an incessant