Ever since the war started, Washington had saved his laments for Congress, even though much of the real power resided with the states. But he was reluctant to appeal to the states, lest he seem to circumvent Congress or violate military subordination to civilian control. Now, in desperation, he began to issue circulars to the states, which gave him license to rail against the rickety political structure that hampered his army. That November Congress had completed drafting the Articles of Confederation, creating a loose confederacy of states with a notably weak central government. Dreading the hobgoblin of concentrated power, states shrank from levying taxes and introducing other measures to aid the federal war effort. Washington was dismayed that the states now shipped off their mediocrities to Congress while more able men stayed home “framing constitutions, providing laws, and filling [state] offices.”22 A leitmotif of his wartime letters was that the shortsighted states would come to ruin without an effective central government. Increasingly Washington took a scathing view of lax congressional leadership.

The Christmas dinner at Valley Forge was an austere one for Washington and his military family, who shared a frugal collation of mutton, potatoes, cabbage, and crusts of bread, accompanied by water. The liquor shortage produced the worst grumbling among the officers. Sometime around the Battle of Brandywine, Washington had lost his baggage, with its complement of plates, dishes, and kitchen utensils, and he now made do with a single spoon. He experienced no self-pity, however, so woebegone was the comparative plight of his men. On the last day of the year, he compressed the suffering of Valley Forge into a single piercing cry: “Our sick naked, our well naked, our unfortunate men in captivity naked!”23

What made Valley Forge so bitterly disenchanting for Washington was that selfishness among the citizenry seemed to outweigh patriotic fervor. In choosing winter quarters at Valley Forge, he had surmised, correctly, that the surrounding countryside possessed ample food supplies. What he hadn’t reckoned on was that local farmers would sell their produce to British troops in Philadelphia rather than to shivering patriots. Some of this behavior could be attributed to blatant greed and profiteering. But prices also soared as the Continental currency depreciated and an inflationary psychology took hold. Holding a debased currency, the patriots simply couldn’t compete with the British, who paid in solid pounds sterling. “We must take the passions of men as nature has given them,” Washington wrote resignedly. “. . . I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism . . . But I will venture to assert that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone.”24 Washington presented a rare case of a revolutionary leader who, instead of being blinded by political fervor, recognized that fallible human beings couldn’t always live up to the high standards he set for them. Though often embittered by the mercenary behavior of his countrymen, he tried to accept human nature as it was. He believed that many Americans had expected a speedy end to the conflict and, when the first flush of patriotism faded, were governed by self-interest. In 1778 there were far more political fence-sitters than in the giddy days after Lexington and Concord.

By late January Washington was so enraged about farmers engaging in contraband trade with the enemy that he issued orders “to make an example of some guilty one, that the rest may be sensible of a like fate, should they persist.”25 Many farmers tried to bypass restrictions by having women and children drive food-laden wagons to Philadelphia, hoping American sentries wouldn’t stop them. Nothing short of the death penalty, Washington insisted, would terminate this reprehensible practice. Finally, he saw no choice but to sabotage American mills turning out supplies for the enemy and sent teams of soldiers to break off the spindles and spikes of their water wheels. With a beef shortage looming, he had Nathanael Greene and almost a thousand men fan out across the countryside and confiscate all cattle and sheep fit for slaughter. As word of the operation spread, farmers hid their livestock in woods and swamps. Despite such draconian measures, Washington warned that his army still stared at starvation: “For some days past, there has been little less than a famine in camp. A part of the army has been a week without any kind of flesh and the rest three or four days.”26

At Valley Forge, Washington composed numerous screeds against American greed that make uncomfortable reading for those who regard that winter as a purely heroic time. Seeing the decay of public virtue everywhere, he berated speculators, monopolists, and war profiteers. “Is the paltry consideration of a little dirty pelf to individuals to be placed in competition with the essential rights and liberties of the present generation and of millions yet unborn?” he asked James Warren. “ . . . And shall we at last become the victims of our own abominable lust of gain? Forbid it heaven!”27 Washington himself could be a hard-driving businessmen, yet he found the rapacity of many vendors unconscionable. As he told George Mason, he thought it the intent of “the speculators—various tribes of money makers—and stock jobbers of all denominations to continue the war for their own private emolument, without considering that their avarice and thirst for gain must plunge everything . . . in one common ruin.”28

Besieged by critics, heartsick at the shabby state of his troops, and angry at congressional neglect and the supine behavior of the states, Washington refused to abandon his army and again deferred a visit to Mount Vernon. Martha did not arrive at Valley Forge until early February. Right before Christmas she had suffered the grievous loss of her younger sister and best friend, Anna Maria Bassett. Death had been omnipresent for Martha, who had now lost a husband, a father, five siblings, and three of her four children. Whether her second husband would survive this interminable war remained an open question. A touching condolence note to her brother-in-law, Burwell Bassett, shows that her mind was darkly tinged with thoughts of mortality. Anna “has, I hope, made a happy exchange and only gone a little before us,” she said of her sister. “The time draws near when I hope we shall meet, never more to part . . . I must [own] to you that she was the greatest favorite I had in the world.”29 She pleaded with Burwell to send his ten-year-old daughter Fanny to Mount Vernon. “If you will let her come to live with me, I will, with the greatest pleasure, take her and be a parent and mother to her as long as I live.”30 Bassett complied, and Fanny came to occupy a special place in Martha’s affections.

While wishing to join her husband at Valley Forge, Martha was temporarily detained at Mount Vernon by the birth of her second grandchild to Jacky’s wife on New Year’s Eve 1777. Though Washington understood the reason for her delay, he pined for her presence. The long winter journey on bumpy, frozen roads must have taxed Martha to the utmost. When she arrived at Valley Forge, the soldiers cheered her, but she was taken aback by her husband’s humble quarters, somber mood, and frayed nerves. “The General is well but much worn with fatigue and anxiety,” she confided to a friend. “I never knew him to be so anxious as now.”31

That Martha Washington was made of stern stuff soon grew evident as she pitched in with good-natured energy. One observer left this touching vignette of her at work:

I never in my life knew a woman so busy from early morning until late at night as was Lady Washington, providing comforts for the sick soldiers. Every day, excepting Sunday, the wives of the officers in camp, and sometimes other women, were invited . . . to assist her in knitting socks, patching garments, and making shirts for the poor soldiers when material could be procured. Every fair day she might be seen, with basket in hand and with a single attendant, going among the keenest and most needy sufferers and giving all the comforts to them in her power .32