Washington [253]
As in previous winters, Washington was appalled by the lack of patriotism displayed by private citizens. He did not want to imitate British precedent and force nearby residents to house officers, but voluntary offers were not forthcoming. He reprimanded men who plundered food or livestock from local farms and warned his soldiers that “a night scarcely passes without gangs of soldiers going out of camp and committing every species of robbery, depredation, and the grossest personal insults. This conduct is intolerable and a disgrace to the army.” 55 On the other hand, he privately confessed that he felt powerless to stop this marauding.
Then on January 2, 1780, thick snow began to descend on Morristown, accompanied by fierce winds, and continued steadily for four days. It was a blizzard of such historic proportions, said James Thacher, that “no man could endure its violence many minutes without danger of his life.”56 Four feet of snow blanketed the winter camp and drifted to six feet in many places, sealing off the army from incoming supplies and compounding the misery of men shivering in their bunks. Before the winter was through, the Morristown encampment would be pounded by a record twenty-eight snowfalls. It would qualify as one of the most frigid winters on record, so severe that New York Bay crusted over with ice thick enough for the British to wheel cannon across it. Because the ice formed land bridges, Washington meditated a surprise attack on the British garrison at Staten Island. The plan was for 2,500 men under Lord Stirling to cross over from New Jersey, destroy British supplies, and carry off sheep and cattle. Washington, who must have dreamed of reliving the Delaware crossing on Christmas Night 1776, grew so enamored of this plan that he worried the cold snap would end, thawing the ice. The plan was shelved when the British picked up intelligence about it, eliminating the element of surprise. Washington promptly confiscated the caps and mittens issued to men who were to conduct the raid. The British were cooking up their own surprises. In February a British raiding party of three hundred men on horseback crept up stealthily on Morristown in an apparent plot to kidnap Washington. When they couldn’t traverse the deep snow, they turned back and abandoned the plan.
As a howling blizzard swirled around the Ford mansion, Washington filed a dreary report with Congress: “Many of the [men] have been four or five days without meat entirely and short of bread and none but on very scanty supplies.”57 Horror stories abounded of ill-clad men gnawing tree bark or cooking shoes or dining on pet dogs. Washington said his men were eating every kind of horse food but hay. As at Valley Forge, they were starving in the midst of fertile farming country, adding an extra dimension of tragic gloom to their suffering. As Greene lamented, “A country overflowing with plenty are now suffering an army, employed for the defense of everything that is dear and valuable, to perish for want of food.”58 Even forced requisitions didn’t alleviate the abominable situation. As late as April 12 Washington bewailed the perilous scarcity of food: “We have not at this day one ounce of meat, fresh or salt, in the magazine,” and he didn’t know of any carts loaded with meat rolling toward Morristown.59 Further aggravating matters was the fact that his army hadn’t been paid in months. Alexander Hamilton, never one to shy away from strong opinions, probably spoke for many soldiers when he wrote, “We begin to hate the country for its neglect of us.”60 The winter wasn’t a complete loss for Hamilton, who met and fell in love with his future wife, Elizabeth Schuyler, the daughter