Reviewed by Don Higginbotham | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 60.4

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Reviewed by Don Higginbotham | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 60.4 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

The Valley Forge Winter: Civilians and Soldiers in War. By WAYNE BODLE. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv, 335. $35.00.) Reviewed by Don Higginbotham , University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
One might ask why we need another volume on Valley Forge when there are already a half dozen or so monographs on the subject that have been produced in the last several decades, most of which are lively and even exciting reading. All of them, however, to varying degrees, focus too narrowly on the drama of the Valley Forge encampment itself and fail to look at the winter and spring of 1777–1778 in terms of its far-reaching impact on the army, the nearby states, and civil-military relations. Most of these accounts exaggerate the army's travails and portray the months along the Schuylkill River as a kind of transforming experience that saved the American Revolution. One of the most absurd tales to come out of the Valley Forge lore has George Washington down on one knee, praying in the snow, a mythical scene that has appeared on two different United States postage stamps. The pictorial and literary iconography also portrays an army endlessly hungry and sick, shivering around campfires, and occupying drafty huts made of green timbers. All this grim scenery is portrayed against a backdrop of wilderness, with no nearby farms or towns.	1
Wayne Bodle's Valley Forge Winter is an excellent book by a scholar who has written extensively on the Middle Colonies and served for some years on the staff of the National Park Service at Valley Forge, where he participated in preparing research reports that provided him with much information that appears in these pages. Bodle rescues Washington and his comrades in arms by looking at Valley Forge in the context of a nine-month campaign that began with British General Sir William Howe's invasion of Pennsylvania in the fall of 1777 and American reversals at Brandywine and Germantown. Even serious historians are often content to abandon a detailed account of the war in the Middle Colonies at this point. It is supposedly enough to say that Howe and his redcoats spent a comfortable winter in Philadelphia, the patriot capital, while the beaten, demoralized Continental army retired to Valley Forge and suffered unmitigated misery until the following spring brought warmer weather, new recruits, and a revitalization of the army as a fighting force thanks to the labors of Friedrich von Steuben, the now-famous Prussian drill master.	2
The Bodle version goes something like this. Neither Washington nor Howe was quite certain when and how the campaign of 1777 would end during the roughly two months following the Battle of Germantown on October 4. At times, it seemed that both generals were spoiling for another major engagement. American generals had fought more effectively in the Pennsylvania campaign than has been acknowledged, and some were eager to go after Howe again. There was no consensus on the American side as to where the army should spend the winter or what it should do. American generals were hardly of one mind about these matters, nor were the civilian leaders of Pennsylvania or the members of the Continental Congress. In the end, Washington made the decision, and it seemed to be one that American officials everywhere could accept. If some leaders would have had the army retire to the interior for the cold-weather months, others would have liked to see them it somewhat active in the field. Washington took something of a middle position in opting for Valley Forge. It was a rugged location, well suited to repelling an enemy attack. It was also close enough to Philadelphia, twenty-odd miles away, to keep an eye on Howe and to intimidate many locals from trafficking with the British, although illegal trade with the enemy remained a problem. Bodle hardly denies that tensions existed between the army and Congress, but he correctly emphasizes that the presence of a committee of Congress in the camp for a lengthy period enabled Washington and his officers to get their vie ws across to the congressmen, who sympathized with the army and returned to the parent body and worked with some success to see a number of Washington's concerns seriously addressed.	. . .

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