Major threat to the health of the army, and with the end of the campaign season, inoculation was ordered for those who had not already had the disease (see also disease AND epidemics). Of the 4,000 men who were inoculated against smallpox throughout the winter, only 10 died.
The bleakness of the situation at Valley Forge was brightened, however, by the arrival of Baron Frederick von Steuben, a Prussian army officer who volunteered his services to Washington and instituted a uniform system of drill. As various units were intermixed in the training process, a new sense of belonging to a truly Continental army developed, and the precision and skill the men acquired in the maneuvers on the field increased their morale and selfconfidence. In February, Martha Washington arrived from Virginia and set to work organizing the officers’ wives for darning, mending, and nursing duties, as well as overseeing various social activities. The onset of spring still found the army near starvation, and Washington organized foraging parties that particularly targeted Loyalist sympathizers. The soldiers took all they could find, but most of the surrounding farms had already been picked clean by scavengers from both armies. The sense of desperation finally began to ease in March, when a herd of 500 cattle was expected at the end of the month, and in April as the shad began running in the Schuylkill, providing fish for immediate consumption and, once salted and preserved, for later use. The weather was variable but gradually progressed from warm to hot. When the Continental army left its winter encampment on June 19, 1778, the conditions were a far cry from those that had greeted its arrival. The attitude of the men had changed as well. No longer the starved, naked, ill-trained disparate force they had been six months earlier, the soldiers who emerged from Valley Forge were a confident, cohesive unit with a renewed commitment to the war effort.
See also Revolutionary War.
Further reading: Wayne K. Bodle, The Valley Forge Winter: Civilians and Soldiers in War (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002); John B. B. Trussell, Jr., Birthplace of an Army: A Study of the Valley Forge Encampment (Harrisburg: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1983).
—Rita M. Broyles
World History
