the army was really going into winter-quarters or not (for I am sure no resolution of mine would warrant the Remonstrance), reprobating the measure as much as if they thought the soldiers were made of stocks or stones and equally insensible of frost and snow; and moreover, as if they conceived it easily practicable for an inferior army, under the disadvantages I have described ours to be, which are by no means exaggerated, to confine a superior one, in all respects well-appointed and provided for a winter’s campaign within the city of Philadelphia, and to cover from depredation and waste the States of Pennsylvania and Jersey.  But what makes this matter still more extraordinary in my eye is, that these very gentlemen,—­who were well apprized of the nakedness of the troops from ocular demonstration, who thought their own soldiers worse clad than others, and who advised me near a month ago to postpone the execution of a plan I was about to adopt, in consequence of a resolve of Congress for seizing clothes, under strong assurances that an ample supply would be collected in ten days agreeably to a decree of the State (not one article of which, by the by, is yet come to hand)—­should think a winter’s campaign, and the covering of these States from the invasion of an enemy, so easy and practicable a business.  I can assure those gentlemen, that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside, than to occupy a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow, without clothes or blankets.  However, although they seem to have little feeling for the naked and distressed soldiers, I feel superabundantly for them, and, from my soul, I pity those miseries, which it is neither in my power to relieve or prevent.

It is for these reasons, therefore, that I have dwelt upon the subject, and it adds not a little to my other difficulties and distress to find, that much more is expected of me than is possible to be performed, and that upon the ground of safety and policy I am obliged to conceal the true state of the army from public view, and thereby expose myself to detraction and calumny.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Ford, VI, 259, 262.]

Mrs. Washington, as was her custom throughout the war, spent part of the winter with the General.  Her brief allusions to Valley Forge would hardly lead the reader to infer the horrors that nearly ten thousand American soldiers were suffering.

“Your Mamma has not yet arrived,” Washington writes to Jack Custis, “but ...expected every hour. [My aide] Meade set off yesterday (as soon as I got notice of her intention) to meet her.  We are in a dreary kind of place, and uncomfortably provided.”  And of this reunion Mrs. Washington wrote:  “I came to this place, some time about the first of February when I found the General very well, ... in camp in what is called the great valley on the Banks of the Schuylkill.  Officers and men are chiefly in