[As we get
closer to what some
are predicting will be another rough winter, a series AmericanStudying
significant winter events from our history. Leading up to a special weekend
post on Pearl Harbor!]
On how a
desperate American winter can help us remember two crucial aspects of history.
Between December 1777 and June 1778,
George Washington and the Continental Army spent a long and destructive winter at
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Having
experienced a series of losses and retreats over the prior months, highlighted
by the decisive October loss in the Battle of
Germantown, the army was in rough shape when it arrived at Valley Forge,
and the subsequent weather and less than ideal conditions didn’t help: almost
2500 soldiers would die by the end of the encampment, and another contingent
led an aborted mutiny (known as the
Conway Cabal) to overthrow Washington’s leadership. But the spring news of
a newly signed alliance
with France buoyed spirits, and newly energized—and well-trained by the Prussian
Baron Friedrich von Steuben—the army retook
Philadelphia within days of leaving the encampment in June.
It’s a great
American story for a variety of reasons, but I would especially emphasize two
aspects of history that it can be difficult to remember and of which Valley
Forge certainly reminds us. For one thing, there’s the striking and undeniable
contingency of all historical events, no matter how inevitable they seem in
retrospect. If a few more soldiers had joined the Cabal, or more had died, or
von Steuben had not been able to travel from Prussia, or any number of other
individual details had gone differently, the history not only of Valley Forge,
but of the Revolution and of America itself, would likely have changed
dramatically. Earlier this year Adam
Gopnik wrote eloquently in The New Yorker
about “what history generally ‘teaches,’” namely “how hard it is for anyone to
control it, including the people who think they’re making it.” No American
figures better fit that latter designation than the
Founding Fathers, and perhaps none of them better “the
Father of Our Country”—but Washington was as subject to contingency as any
of us, as Valley Forge demonstrates.
As I wrote in this
post on 12 Years a Slave, there’s
another element to history that it can be even harder to remember than its
contingency, however: the humanity present in every moment. While it might be relatively
easy to keep in mind the overall, shared humanity of all historical actors, I
would argue that it’s often extremely difficult to recognize and engage with the
specific humanity of individuals experiencing historical events (perhaps doubly
so for famous such events). But the brutal details of that winter in Valley
Forge—details that led Washington to express
his concern to Congress that, “unless some great and capital change
suddenly takes place, … the Army must inevitably starve, dissolve, or disperse”—are
impossible to ignore, and force us to think about the men (and
women) who experienced those brutal conditions day in and day out. Whether
their survival and eventual triumph makes them heroes depends on your
perspective on that complex concept; but it certainly represents an impressive
and inspiring human and historical story.
Next
AmericanWinter tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other winter events you’d highlight?
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