General Howe did not need the Doan Gang or any other Loyalists to know that Washington and his army were wintering a mere 23 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Following the brief skirmish near Whitemarsh, Gen. Cornwallis’s scouts had shadowed the Continentals all the way to Valley Forge. Howe, however, was less likely to have understood the American army’s nearly crippled condition. As it was, the British were facing their own supply travails. Despite Gen. Armstrong’s complaints, his Pennsylvania militiamen on the east side of the Schuylkill had done a fair job of slowing local produce that was being slipped into Philadelphia. Howe’s quartermaster reported that his storehouses were stocked with enough to feed the army for only about the next 100 or so days. More ominously, ice was beginning to form on the Delaware, meaning that the 15,000 British troops cooped up in Philadelphia would soon be cut off from Adm. Howe’s supply ships. With Washington distracted by the construction of his cantonment, Gen. Howe seized the opportunity to mount a large foraging expedition.
Beginning on December 20, American intelligence officers began delivering daily communiqués to Washington’s headquarters regarding British maneuvers—construction crews digging entrenchments leading out of Philadelphia, engineers hastily throwing up a pontoon bridge over the Schuylkill west of town, hundreds of horses blanketed and saddled on the city common. These were followed by a report that 1,000 Redcoats had crossed the Delaware into New Jersey to sweep away patriot resistance in order to establish a temporary farmers’ market. Nearly simultaneously, close to 100 wagons accompanied by a small contingent of Hessians forded the Schuylkill and ventured some five miles southwest of the city, where they loaded the carts with hay from fields near what was then called Derby, now the borough of Darby, Pennsylvania. In one baleful missive, the commander of an American scout team shadowing this caravan bemoaned the fact that he did not have enough men to ambush such an easy target. Washington convened his aides and generals to discuss the enemy movements. Something was afoot. But what?
The Americans received their answer two days later, on the morning of December 22, when 8,000 Crown troops led by Gen. Howe himself crossed the Schuylkill over the temporary bridge. The enemy, marching in a slender column that stretched for four miles, was again moving in the direction of Derby. When the empty wagons in the van of the train reached the Derby farmsteads, the rear of the detail fanned into protective wings flanking the scythe-wielding threshers. This time the British were not only gathering hay, but sweeping up the cattle that grazed in the surrounding marshes. Whether such a large force would strike north for Valley Forge after the foraging expedition Washington could only guess. In any case, with the enemy but 20 miles south of his encampment, he had to somehow respond. This proved problematic.
In addition to the burgeoning rolls of American sick and wounded, nearly 3,000 soldiers at Valley Forge had been declared unfit for duty because they were missing shoes, clothing, weapons, or some combination thereof. It was against this shortfall that Washington issued his General Orders for December 22: his brigade commanders were instructed to choose from each of their units eight officers and 50 infantrymen in fighting trim “fit for annoying the enemy in light parties.” Each of these hit-and-run units, perhaps one tenth of Washington’s total force, was to be issued several days’ worth of rations and 40 rounds of ammunition before marching south. Confusion ensued.
Most of these skirmishing companies snaking out of Valley Forge had tentative orders to report to Gen. Lord Stirling, who days earlier had ridden from Valley Forge to combine the Pennsylvania militia pickets and Dan Morgan’s riflemen into a unified force under his command. But the officers in charge of these disparate units now being sent to join Lord Stirling were also given ambiguous instructions to engage any British they encountered en route to their rendezvous. The result was an obvious rupture in the chain of command. Several of the companies simply headed off on their own, while many of the Continentals who managed to link up with Lord Stirling arrived at his camp with no sense of their mission and, despite Washington’s instructions, no rations whatsoever.
Upon first impression, neither Lord Stirling nor Col. Morgan was optimistic as to the new arrivals’ usefulness or purpose. Morgan in particular viewed their lack of provisions as merely adding a greater burden to the field force, and predicted that if any of these companies did manage to engage the British, two Americans would be captured for every enemy soldier cut down. Unsure of what to do, Lord Stirling pointed most of these new men toward Derby and in essence instructed their commanders to do their best to fall on any light cavalry patrols venturing forth from Howe’s main foraging party. As the bulk of the men in the Crown column had been ordered to hold their line in order to protect the hay gatherers, the American general assumed there was little chance of a major encounter.
Dan Morgan considered this a saving grace. But he and Lord Stirling, by now accustomed to working with the undisciplined militiamen, had underestimated the seasoned regulars who had arrived as reinforcements. Dispatches soon began reaching the two officers describing American skirmishers giving as good as they got, swarming enemy horsemen and chasing them hither and yon while inflicting heavy casualties and taking prisoners. Initially surprised by these reports, the two commanders began to reconsider their strategy. Morgan sent out riders with orders for the American companies to consolidate under his banner. The next morning he and Lord Stirling marched the entire force to the nearby village of Radnor, where they incorporated another regiment of Pennsylvania militiamen into their command. Still, the Americans remained too few to face the British in a head-on engagement. But perhaps, Lord Stirling felt, his orders to harass the enemy could now be accomplished with more vigor.
In Derby, Gen. Howe also faced a decision. His scouts and spy network had followed Lord Stirling’s movements, and he was aware that his force outnumbered the Continentals at Radnor. But, as at Whitemarsh, he was not tempted to engage. In what was becoming a pattern, he kept his troops close to his threshers and cattle drivers until it became clear to Washington that the British had no intention of moving on Valley Forge. Howe’s inaction opened another opportunity. With so many Crown troops tied up gathering provisions, large swaths of the countryside to the north of Philadelphia had been left unattended. Lord Stirling sent riders to Valley Forge with instructions to return with as many wagons as possible. He then dispatched his own foraging parties. In exchange for Continental certificates of seizure, these men gathered a fair amount of cattle and sheep as well as several carts of clothing, blankets, and even baskets of dried persimmons.
Clothes, meat, and fruit—Washington was delighted. Only that morning he had informed Henry Laurens that his commissaries contained “not a single hoof of any kind to slaughter and not more than 25 barls of flour.” Despite the unexpected bounty, he continued to remain wary of Howe’s intentions, and dashed off a note to Lord Stirling reminding him that his paramount assignment was to continue to track the British movements. It was sage advice, for Howe, even as his force denuded the fields around Derby, ordered a regiment on an all-night quick march to within seven miles of Radnor. It was only a feint, but it was timed perfectly. When farmers in the area were spooked by the sounds of a vicious thunderstorm they mistook for cannon fire, they panicked. Rumors rapidly spread that Crown forces were marching on their farmsteads. Within hours the farmers sent a procession of overstuffed wagons streaming toward Philadelphia on the justification that it was better to receive seven shillings for a pound of butter or 16 shillings for a bushel of potatoes than to allow the Crown forces to descend on their larders like locusts.
The thin line of Pennsylvania militiamen who had not joined Gen. Lord Stirling had little hope of stemming this tide. And even after Washington’s intelligence officers reported that the British stab toward Radnor was merely a ruse to inspire exactly the hysteria that ensued, it was too late to halt the civilian stampede. Oddly enough, the anxious farmers’ parade of provisions heading toward the city produced an unexpected boon for the Continentals. With so much traffic on the roads, Armstrong’s men were able to confiscate substantial amounts of goods that would have typically slipped by them.
As reports detailing these events trickled into Valley Forge, Washington absorbed each new development with an equanimity that his aides considered conspicuous even for their unflappable commander in chief. What they did not know was that from the moment he had discerned that the enemy intended no assault on his encampment, the seeds for another grand offensive were germinating in his mind.
♦ ♦ ♦
It is difficult to overestimate the impact the previous year’s Christmas raid on Trenton had on the psyche and morale of the Continental Army and its commander in chief. Certainly what Washington termed the “victorious defeats” across the intervening 12 months—at Brandywine, at Germantown, at Fort Mifflin and Fort Mercer—could not dull the luster of that marvelous memory. Nor was it lost on Washington that the most glorious celebration of the anniversary would be to stage a replication. As his longtime aide Tench Tilghman wrote to Lord Stirling, “I wish we could put [the British] in mind . . . of what happened this time twelvemonth.” Given the insouciance with which Howe’s troops were ransacking Philadelphia’s inner suburban belt, the idea that another surprise attack was beginning to cohere in Washington’s mind is far from remarkable.
Washington intended to begin the engagement with a ruse of his own. On Christmas Eve, Lord Stirling’s and Dan Morgan’s combined forces, already in the area, would fall on the left flank of the British column at Derby as if they were the point movement of a major assault. Washington assumed that Gen. Howe would naturally attempt to quick-time the bulk of his force back to Philadelphia while leaving several detachments, most likely his light horse, to screen his retreat as well as cover the Schuylkill’s northern fords. Then, while the 6,000 Crown troops who remained in Philadelphia under the command of the Hessian general von Knyphausen rushed to cover Howe’s fallback, a Continental shock corps of some 4,000 men advancing in two columns—between 50 and 60 men and eight officers drawn from each regiment—would dash to capture the British ramparts north of the city. Once these battlements were taken, the right column of Americans would rush south along the Schuylkill to seize the four ferry crossings and destroy any temporary bridges, stranding Howe’s rump army on the west bank of the river and cutting him off from von Knyphausen.
The left wing of the shock corps, meanwhile, would penetrate Philadelphia proper, free the American prisoners of war, and demand von Knyphausen’s surrender “under promise of good Quarter in case of compliance, and no Quarter if opposition is given.” As Continental artillerymen turned the captured British cannons on any of His Majesty’s ships berthed in the harbor, Gen. Armstrong’s Pennsylvania militiamen would recross the Schuylkill to the west, join Gen. Smallwood’s regulars rushing up from Wilmington, and reinforce Lord Stirling’s attack. Howe and his troops, their backs to the Schuylkill, would be left with no choice but to surrender or be swept into the river.
Even if Washington viewed the battle plan as “a work which depends more upon secrecy and dispatch than Numbers,” it nonetheless flew in the face of a hard-and-fast military dictate of the era—that is, an attacking force should always be at least double the size of the defenders. Moreover, the daunting metrics only complicated the scheme. A victorious outcome, after all, hung not only on Washington’s correct reading of Howe’s tactical thinking, but upon several and various moving parts all working in conjunction—a set of tumblers clicking into place and locking the Continental Army into a commitment that might well end the war, or destroy the revolution. Washington did not need to be reminded that his strategy at Germantown had relied upon similar intricacies of balance and symmetry. Such was the agenda’s mutability that the commander in chief eschewed his customary habit of convening a war council. Instead he decided to put out feelers to a small coterie of confidants via one of his most trusted advisers, Gen. Sullivan, who was presently overseeing the construction of a bridge to span the Schuylkill on the northern outskirts of the Valley Forge encampment.
When Sullivan arrived at Washington’s headquarters tent the commander in chief laid out his proposed operation, which included Sullivan commanding the right wing of the shock corps. He then asked Sullivan to circulate through camp and gather feedback from a select few of his fellow general officers. In the meantime, Washington also shared his thoughts with Gen. Lord Stirling. Since Lord Stirling would be the sacrificial lamb in the attack, Washington felt he was owed an explanation. Finally, he conferred with Gen. Knox, whose artillery would be the key to the assault on the city’s northern bastions; Washington had to be certain that his guns were fit to take the field. Knox told him that the cannons could indeed be prepared for immediate transport. But he expressed his doubts that the troops were in similar readiness.
Within hours Sullivan returned with correspondingly tepid reactions. Several of the generals cautioned that only if the British were to move on Valley Forge would such a major battle be worth the risk. Others preferred bypassing Philadelphia altogether and instead concentrating an all-out assault on Howe’s right flank, not only to sever the Redcoats’ escape route across the Schuylkill, but also to block any reinforcements pouring out of the city. General Greene’s thoughts were perhaps the most frank. He well knew the near-messianic fervor with which Washington sought to drive the British from Philadelphia, no matter how well hidden behind a facade of executive sobriety. But he reminded Washington that only a month earlier, while chasing Cornwallis across New Jersey, he had counseled the commander in chief about the danger of “consulting our wishes rather than our reason.”
If anything, Sullivan’s synopsis of the numerous opinions was personally heartening to Washington, although professionally dismaying. Washington’s general officers were willing to follow him onto any field of battle, even to Derby, with ragged, hungry, and outgunned troops, to attack a strong British contingent. But few could muster much enthusiasm for the action. Even Lord Stirling, as prickly as a Highlands thistle, was skeptical if willing.
In the end, Washington heeded their advice and decided to stand down. It was indeed, as his biographer Chernow put it, “sometimes better to miss a major opportunity than barge into a costly error.” Yet the dearth of documentation regarding this Christmas Eve attack makes it difficult to discern just how serious the commander in chief was about the proposal. Some historians argue that Washington, his naturally aggressive temperament at odds with his adopted Fabian strategy, viewed the Continental Army as in such dire straits that he was willing to risk its survival on long odds rather than see the force disintegrate from a lack of food and supplies. Others, more conspiracy-minded, suggest that he viewed an attack on Philadelphia as an ultimate make-or-break political moment. The enemy’s presence in America’s capital city was an affront to his own personal honor and reputation, and an assault would result in either a stunning victory or a catastrophic defeat that would shock the Continental Congress into finally recognizing his army’s acute distress. Still others, such as the usually sobersided historian Wayne Bodle, wonder if the “sugar-plum reveries” of Washington’s battle plan were an outgrowth of nostalgia for the glories of Trenton enhanced by “a holiday induced overindulgence in hemp or Madeira at Headquarters.” For the record, there is no indication that marijuana had filtered into the winter cantonment.
As the aborted project disappeared into the churn of history, a heavy snow began to blanket Valley Forge. It would continue for three days, the worst blizzard of the season thus far. It was during this Christmas whiteout that Washington transferred his headquarters to a small fieldstone cottage hard by the confluence of the Schuylkill and Valley Creek.I Known as the Isaac Potts House, or Potts House, the dwelling belonged to the eponymous Quaker whose family’s gristmill and ironworks had been destroyed by the British two months earlier. Potts had rented the two-story structure to his late brother’s wife, to whom Washington paid 100 pounds in Pennsylvania currency for her inconvenience while she left to live with her brother-in-law. The structure consisted of two ground-floor rooms, three upstairs bedrooms, a detached kitchen, and a rough basement and attic. While his personal guard began construction of their own cabins close by, Washington, his staff, and their servants moved in. On any given day, 18 to 25 people were squeezed into the cramped, musty quarters that for the next six months would serve as the de facto capital of the United States.
Meanwhile, on the afternoon of December 25 the troops of the Continental Army filed from their half-built huts and tattered tents like weakened animals emerging from their burrows. Many with their feet wrapped in rags, they hunched past barefoot sentries standing on their hats to receive a Christmas dinner of burned mutton and watery grog. The scrappy holiday meal was courtesy of a small flock of sheep Gen. Lord Stirling’s foragers had delivered to camp. It had been the standard practice of the commander in chief to order a gill of rum distributed to each soldier on special occasions. On this holiday Washington’s commissary officers used the last of it to mix the grog.
Washington spent the evening picking over a small meal of mutton, veal, potatoes, and cabbage with several officers and aides, including John Laurens and Lafayette. The latter, “adapted to privation and fatigue,” remarked in his memoirs on the “simple, frugal, and austere” repast. There was no Madeira, much less hemp.
That night a Continental soldier from Connecticut’s 7th Regiment known to posterity only as Jethro was found dead in his tent. His skin was as cold as the dirt floor on which he lay, and a crude autopsy attributed his death to a combination of malnutrition and exposure. This was the initial fatality recorded on the rolls at Valley Forge. It would be but the first of many such shrieks from Casca’s bird of night to echo through the winter encampment. That Jethro was one of the hundreds of freed black men at Valley Forge who had enlisted to fight for the cause of American liberty injects an even more tragic note.
I. Though Washington’s pledge to live in his tent until all huts were completed was sincere, he soon discovered that operating from a crowded “marquee” was not the most efficient way for a commander in chief to conduct operations.