Her selfless, devoted style reminded one admiring Frenchman “of the Roman matrons of whom I had read so much and I thought that she well deserved to be the companion and friend of the greatest man of the age.”33 By and large Martha Washington wasn’t overtly political, yet she shared her husband’s firm commitment to the cause, writing to Mercy Warren, “I hope and trust that all the states will make a vigorous push early this spring ... and thereby putting a stop to British cruelties.”34

The wives of several generals stayed at Valley Forge that winter—including the flirtatious Caty Greene, the amusing but increasingly obese Lucy Knox, and the elegant Lady Stirling, accompanied by her fashionable daughter, Lady Kitty—and tried to lighten the dismal mood. Washington was especially beguiled by Lady Kitty, who requested a lock of his hair. These women dispensed with dancing and card playing as inappropriate to such mournful times and settled for quiet musical evenings where people took turns singing; tea and coffee replaced more potent beverages. That February, on Washington’s forty-sixth birthday, a little levity was allowed as he was entertained by a fife and drum corps.

To relieve residual gloom several months later, Washington allowed junior officers to stage his favorite play, Cato, before a “very numerous and splendid audience.” 35 Written by Joseph Addison, this classic tale told of a Roman statesman, Cato the Younger, who had defied the imperial sway of Julius Caesar and committed suicide rather than submit to tyranny. No longer able to ransack British history for heroes, many patriots turned to classical history for inspiration. Ancient Rome in its republican phase provided uplifting examples, while its decline and fall into despotism offset them with cautionary tales. Washington identified with the stern code of honor and duty in ancient Rome, taking Cato as a personal model. He had seen the play performed several times in Williamsburg and he frequently quoted it. One of his stock phrases—“Thy steady temper . . . can look on guilt, rebellion, [and] fraud . . . in the calm lights of mild philosophy”—was plucked from the play.36 Other treasured epigrams included “ ’Tis not in mortals to command success / But we’ll do more . . . we’ll deserve it,” a commentary on the fickle power of fate and how we must acquit ourselves nobly despite it, and “When vice prevails and impious men bear sway, / The post of honour is a private station.”37 The rhetoric of Cato saturated the American Revolution. Two of its most famous lines, one from Nathan Hale, the other from Patrick Henry, derived from the play: “What pity is it / That we can die but once to serve our country” and “It is not now a time to talk of aught / But chains or conquest, liberty or death.”38

During this Valley Forge winter Washington conquered his initial misgivings about Lafayette and embraced him as his most intimate protégé. In late November, in Gloucester, New Jersey, Lafayette spearheaded a party of four hundred men in a surprise raid on a Hessian detachment, leading to twenty enemy deaths versus only one American casualty. Washington admired the Frenchman’s swashbuckling courage. No longer just another foreign nobleman to be tolerated, Lafayette was rewarded with command of a division. He knew he had attained a unique place in Washington’s heart. “I see him more intimately than any other man,” he boasted to his father-in-law. “. . . His warm friendship for me . . . put[s] me in a position to share everything he has to do, all the problems he has to solve, and all the obstacles he has to overcome.”39

Washington found irresistible this young Frenchman who saw him in such Olympian terms, but Lafayette was also canny and hardworking and constantly honed his military skills: “I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect . . . I do not talk too much—to avoid saying foolish things—nor risk acting in a foolhardy way.”40 Lafayette opened an emotional spout deep inside the formal Washington. Although he seldom showed such favoritism, Washington made no effort to mask his fondness for Lafayette. He did not fear the young French nobleman as a future rival and was convinced of his ardent idealism. When Lafayette and his wife had a son, they decided to name him Georges Louis Gilbert Washington du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette—for short, George Washington Lafayette. Lafayette vowed that the next child would be christened Virginia, prompting Franklin to quip that Lafayette had twelve more states to go.41

THE CONTINENTAL ARMY’S RISE from the ashes of Valley Forge owed much to a newcomer, Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin, Baron von Steuben, a soldier who liked to decorate himself with sonorous names. While Steuben could legitimately claim wartime experience, having served as a Prussian captain during the Seven Years’ War and on the military staff of Frederick the Great, the baron title was bogus. When, in the summer of 1777, Franklin and Deane in Paris sent him to America, they embellished his credentials to make him more acceptable to Washington; on the spot, the unemployed captain was puffed up to the rank of a lieutenant general. He agreed to waive a salary temporarily and serve only for expenses. In late February 1778 the self-styled baron with the fleshy nose, jowly face, and uncertain command of English (he resorted to French to make himself understood) showed up at Valley Forge, where his bemedaled figure made a huge impression. “He seemed to me a perfect personification of Mars,” said one private. “The trappings of his horse, the enormous holsters of his pistols, his large size, and strikingly martial aspect, all seemed to favor the idea.”42

As he strode about the camp, trailed by his greyhound, Steuben was taken aback by the misery everywhere: “The men were literally naked . . . The officers who had coats had them in every color and make. I saw officers . . . mounting guard in a sort of dressing gown made of an old blanket or woollen bedcover.”43 Well versed in military practice, Steuben writhed at the unsanitary conditions; horse carcasses rotted near men preparing food, and sick men mingled with the healthy. He instituted many necessary reforms, such as having latrines dug at least three hundred feet away from huts, then promptly filled and abandoned after four days of use.

Steuben’s advent came at an auspicious time. After the widespread fatalities at Valley Forge and the tremendous attrition among officers, Washington was nervous as he contemplated a resumption of fighting in the spring. Two hundred to three hundred officers had resigned since the summer. Washington needed a tough drillmaster like Steuben to instill discipline and ready his army for combat. Unlike the British, whose units moved in brisk, marching steps, the Continental Army had no uniform methods. Washington had long admired an army manual written by Frederick the Great, Instructions to His Generals, which may have predisposed him to value Steuben’s advice. Schooled in European courts, Steuben stooped to sometimes unctuous flattery with Washington, telling him that “your Excellency is the only person under whom (after having served under the King of Prussia) I could wish to pursue an art to which I have wholly given up myself.”44

As he introduced professionalism into this motley army, the mercurial Prussian performed wonders. Washington started out by assigning one hundred men to him to be trained for his headquarters guard; he accomplished it so expertly that Washington soon sent him more. Steuben taught the men new skills, including how to wield bayonets. “The American soldier, never having used this arm, had no faith in it,” recalled Steuben, “and never used it but to roast his beefsteak.”45 All day long he drilled men on the broad, open parade ground at the center of the encampment, teaching them to march and wheel in formation, to switch from line to column and back to line. All the while he tossed off a storm of profanities in French, English, and German and galloped about in “whirlwinds of passion.”46 Steuben was foul-mouthed and colorful, and the men were charmed by their strangely flamboyant new drillmaster.