I don’t recall this TV movie, but it was broadcast on December 3, 1975 when I was finishing up the first semester of my Freshman year at the University of Illinois. This would have been during finals, and doubtless I had other things on my mind than watching television at the time. Hard to believe this is all almost forty-six years in the rare view mirror. Days can pass slowly, but the decades seem to careen by.
The year 1777 saw Washington and the Continental Army being defeated in the battle of Brandywine, which led to the loss of Philadelphia, and then failing to take Philadelphia back in the battle of Germantown. However, appearances were deceiving. The British lacked the troops to hold on to Philadelphia long term, and Washington and his Continentals were showing ever improving ability in stand up fights against the main British army. With the American victory at Saratoga against the British invasion from Canada under General John Burgoyne, France decided to come into the War and one no longer needed to be a deranged optimist to believe that the Americans had a good chance to prevail.
However, Washington still had the problem of just keeping his army in existence. The army went into winter quarters on starvation rations. At Valley Forge Washington wrote, “that unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place … this Army must inevitably … Starve, dissolve, or disperse, in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can.” Some 2000 of Washington’s 12000 troops would die before the winter encampment ended, expiring from disease, little food and inadequate clothing.
There is an old tradition that Washington prayed in the snow at Valley Forge on Christmas Day. Certainly the wretched condition of the Continental Army in December of 1777, with a hungry winter beginning, would have driven commanders less pious than Washington to their knees. However, Washington was pious and prayed every day.
The tradition rests on this account of the Reverend Nathaniel Randolph Snowden, a Presbyterian Minister in Philadelphia who lived from 1770-1851 and who wrote the following:
“I knew personally the celebrated Quaker Potts who saw Gen’l Washington alone in the woods at prayer. I got it from himself, myself. Weems mentioned it in his history of Washington, but I got it from the man myself, as follows:
“I was riding with him (Mr. Potts) in Montgomery County, Penn’a near to the Valley Forge, where the army lay during the war of ye Revolution. Mr. Potts was a Senator in our State & a Whig. I told him I was agreeably surprised to find him a friend to his country as the Quakers were mostly Tories. He said, ‘It was so and I was a rank Tory once, for I never believed that America c’d proceed against Great Britain whose fleets and armies covered the land and ocean, but something very extraordinary converted me to the Good Faith!” “What was that,” I inquired? ‘Do you see that woods, & that plain. It was about a quarter of a mile off from the place we were riding, as it happened.’ ‘There,’ said he, ‘laid the army of Washington. It was a most distressing time of ye war, and all were for giving up the Ship but that great and good man. In that woods pointing to a close in view, I heard a plaintive sound as, of a man at prayer. I tied my horse to a sapling & went quietly into the woods & to my astonishment I saw the great George Washington on his knees alone, with his sword on one side and his cocked hat on the other. He was at Prayer to the God of the Armies, beseeching to interpose with his Divine aid, as it was ye Crisis, & the cause of the country, of humanity & of the world.
‘Such a prayer I never heard from the lips of man. I left him alone praying.
‘I went home & told my wife. I saw a sight and heard today what I never saw or heard before, and just related to her what I had seen & heard & observed. We never thought a man c’d be a soldier & a Christian, but if there is one in the world, it is Washington. She also was astonished. We thought it was the cause of God, & America could prevail.’ “He then to me put out his right hand & said ‘I turned right about and became a Whig.'”
If Washington indeed prayed for a miracle at Valley Forge, he got one in a most unusual form.
Friedrich Wihelm von Steuben was an impecunious former Prussian officer when he was introduced to Benjamin Franklin in 1777 in Paris. Von Steuben had fought bravely and skillfully in the Prussian Army during the Seven Years War, but was released from service at the conclusion of the war in 1763, and had since that time been unemployed as a soldier. He called himself a baron but had no right to the title. Franklin saw that there was a bit of the con artist in von Steuben, but he also saw that he was a talented and highly trained officer, someone who the Americans had great need of. Franklin wrote a letter of introduction to Washington for von Steuben in which he described the erst-while captain as a former Prussian lieutenant-general.
Unlike other foreign volunteers to come to America, von Steuben made a favorable impression on Washington and Congress by not demanding rank or pay. He simply wished to be placed to work as an unpaid volunteer. On February 23, 1778 he reported at Valley Forge, and quickly began to earn the title by which he is known to history: Drillmaster of the Revolution.
Von Steuben quickly realized that the rag tag Continentals needed to learn both discipline and drill. He also realized that these men were not professional soldiers fighting for pay, but volunteers fighting for the liberty of their nation. He would later write to a friend in Europe and explain that with the American soldier it was not only necessary to tell him what to do, but to explain to him why he should do it. He simplified the Prussian manual of arms, and picking a “model company” of 120 men chosen from every regiment at Valley Forge, began to drill them.
Von Steuben proved himself a very effective drill instructor. He used both profanity, when his limited store of English curses proved inadequate he would have one of his aides swear at the troops, and humor to underline what he was teaching the men. The results proved immensely successful. The men of the “model company” learned their lessons well, and quickly became drill masters for their units. Von Steuben had the men dig latrines and organized an efficient layout of the camp. He drilled the men extensively in the use of the bayonet. He transformed a near raw militia into a regular army. Washington was pleasantly amazed and had von Steuben appointed Inspector General of the Continental Army on April 30, 1778.
