The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [115]
George Washington knew that he could simply seize clothing from Americans wherever he found it. Congress had given him dictatorial powers in 1776, since rescinded, and in September 1777 the Pennsylvania State Assembly authorized him to take whatever clothing and supplies he needed from the inhabitants living in the southeastern region of the state. He refused to do so, reminding the state assembly and Congress that martial law was unthinkable to him. He would find another way.
He slowly solved the problem by replacing the key men in charge of the army’s supplies. Washington convinced Congress to streamline the quartermaster and commissary departments. He arranged for an excellent administrator, Jeremiah Wadsworth, to be named head of the commissary and the commander in chief ’s right hand man, General Nathanael Greene, became head of the quartermaster’s department and ran it from Valley Forge. Within a month, the crisis ebbed. Wadsworth completely reorganized the department, reduced the corruption within it, and expanded the search for food into the far reaches of each state. Greene tightened up the organization of the quartermaster’s department and hired hundreds of new wagon drivers, all civilians, to expedite the delivery of clothing and other supplies.
Unable to procure needed meat in the Valley Forge area to feed his starving troops, Washington sent Generals Wayne and Greene on several foraging expeditions in New Jersey and later ordered officers to disperse throughout the middle Atlantic states to find cattle and bring them to Valley Forge. His scouts located considerable numbers of cattle on farms as far away as Maryland and Massachusetts and brought them several hundred miles to Valley Forge, through inclement weather, down narrow, uneven dirt roads, and over streams and rivers. They also managed to drive every herd except one past the British. The cattle drive, a tenacious undertaking, saved the army.
The state governments that so many cursed at Valley Forge did assist the army, even though it took a long time to do so. Colonel William Shepard wrote a heartfelt plea to the Massachusetts legislature complaining that his destitute men lived “barely above a state of want” at Valley Forge due to the inaction of clothing procurers back home. The legislature not only ruled the procurers negligent but ordered the immediate production of new clothing for the troops. Governors in other states ordered clothing for their regiments in the winter camp.21
Lt. James McMichael, the poet, was despondent about life in camp throughout the clothing crisis and all of the other disasters of the Valley Forge winter. He missed his wife. On February 2, he wrote a poem that reflected the woes of any soldier who was homesick for the woman he loved. In it he explained that although he preferred to be with her, as a patriot he had to remain in the army and try to survive the brutal winter.
The lieutenant finished his poem, put it down, then picked it up and with his quill added something else that seemed to come directly from his heart to his wife:
Dear creature I must from you go
But yet my heart is filled with woe
I wish you in my absence may
Have all the bliss love can display
Your Jamey must stay in the wars
And try the labors of bold Mars
But yet I hope before I die
In your sweet bosom I shall lie
There whilst I am in your dear arms
Resting secure from war’s alarms
This will our absence recompense
By the sweet joy at love’s expense
The sicknesses of Valley Forge began to claim his friends, sending McMichael into more depression. One lieutenant whom he knew was killed by another officer in a duel. His friend Captain John Speer, who had fought with valor in several battles, died of a fever on February 8 and McMichael attended his funeral. That night he wrote a poem praising his friend’s service to his country and reminding anyone who read it that patriots all went to heaven.
McMichael’s journal