The Central Campaign.

While Gen. John Burgoyne's plan was being made and coming to grief, Gen. William Howe was trying to bring George Washington to battle in New Jersey and was being frustrated in the attempt. In July 1777 he sailed from New York and landed at the head of Chesapeake Bay. At the time he should have been moving up the Hudson River to relieve Burgoyne, he was brushing Washington aside at Brandywine and moving into Philadelphia. In the winter of 1777-1778 the American army endured freezing cold and starvation rations at Valley Forge while Howe was warm and well fed only thirty miles away. But the army that marched out of Valley Forge in the spring was tougher, more disciplined and more skilled due to the training efforts of the German officer Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben. On...