From the time of the Civil War until Roosevelt's election in 1932 Pennsylvania was blatantly Republican, yet a few Dutch counties, Berks and Northampton In particular, were Democratic islands in that Republican sea. The dumb upcountry Dutch were still voting for Andrew Jackson-that was Philadelphia's explanation. For once Philadelphia underestimated the Dutch. It was not Andrew Jackson that started these counties voting the Democratic ticket: it was the French and Indian War.
When the German and Swiss and French Huguenot immigrants firstcame to this country, they were not much interested in politics. They had had little experience in self-government. In their early years in Pennsylvania they were thankful to the Quakers for the peace and quiet they found in the colony. Compared to the rest of the world Pennsyvania was making a magnificent success of government. Furthermore there was the language barrier. To hold office a knowledge of English was necessary. For a long time the Dutch took a back seat and kept their mouths shut. Then came the French and Indian War, with the Quaker reluctance to use force to defend the frontier. Suffering and fighting side by side, the Scotch-Irish and the "church people" among the Dutch joined forces to wrest the power from the Quakers. Such an aim was not accomplished overnight; but all through the years from the French and Indian War to the Revolution it was the prime end in view.
The Quakers were able to stay in power for so many years only because of the gross inequality of representation in the Assembly. In 1760 Quaker Bucks had eight members in the Assembly and Dutch Berks only one, yet each county had virtually the same number of taxable inhabitants. This was an injustice bitterly resented. Again and again the Dutch and Scotch-Irish counties petitioned the Assembly for an increase in members, but without avail until 1771, when Berks and Northampton counties were each given one more member-insult added to injury.
The eve of the Revolution found the Pennsylvania Dutch and the Scotch-Irish demanding full representation within the colony just as Americans generally were insisting on rightful representation from Great Britain. In Pennsylvania the Revolution was both local and national. The Dutch and Scotch-Irish embraced the Revolution with ardor partly because in it they saw a means of ridding themselves once and for all of the Quaker-dominated Assembly. When the growing resistancc to Great Britain gave birth to the Continental Congress, there was at last a national body to which the Dutch and Scotch-Irish could appeal over the heads of the Assembly. In the months to come the Assembly gave ground little by little to the rebels on the frontier; and finally, on March 15, 1776, in an attempt to save its skin, it added seventeen new members. Although this reform helped to correct the glaring inequality of representation, the frontier counties were still without their fair number of members. The danger of leaving a great colony like Pennsylvania in the control of thc Quakers and their allies, the conservative Anglicans, was apparent to the Continental Congress. As Washington moved from one defeat to another, a faction so unsympathetic to the patriot cause might well be tempted to treat with Great Britain. In Common Sense Thomas Paine pointed out the danger
of permitting colonies to be governed by men who did not represent the majority of the inhabitants. Pennsylvania could not take its rightful place on the patriot side unless the people freed themselves from the Assembly and the provincial constitution that kept the conservatives in power.
On June 8, 1776 the Pcnnsylvania delegation to thc Continental Congress votcd 5 to 12 against Lee's resolution "that these united colonies are, and, of a right ought to be, free and independent states." But the Dutch and Scotch-Irish were so set on independence that they refused to accept this verdict. Day by day tempers grew hotter. On June 19 at a meeting in Carpenters' Hall, delegates approved by the various county committees declared the government of the colony incompetent and called for a provincial conference to form a new government "of the authority of the people only." To do this they revived William Penn's "Great Law" of December, 168!2) which gave every taxpayer the right to vote. The Pennsylvania delegates to the Continental Congress now attempted to win the favor of the rebel element by changing their vote on Lee's resolution to 3 in favor and 12 opposed, with 12 delegates absenting themselves. The vote in Congress had stood 6 to 6 until. Pennsylvania cast the deciding vote for independence. It was a proud moment for Pennsylvania and for the Scotch-Irish and the Pennsylvania Dutch. The effect of the Pennsylvania vote on the delegates to the Continental Congress from the other colonies was tremendous for meeting as they did in the heart of Philadelphia they could feel the full force of the revolution that was taking place within the colony against the conservative Quakers and Anglicans.
The great majority of the members for the new Pennsylvania convention elected on July 8 were naturally radicals-from the British
point of view both radicals and rebels. On July 15th that eminent radical and rebel, Benjamin Franklin, was chosen president of the new body. Delegates to represent Pennsylvania in the Continental Congress were also chosen. Later that summer a new state constitution was adopted, the most thoroughly democratic in the thirteen colonies. The opposition to this constitution was strong and bitter. Later, in 1789, a compromise was reached and some measure of harmony restored.
But Pennsylvanians have long memories. That is why in any normal eection year Berks and Northampton and some other old-frontier counties can be relied on to vote Democratic. Ask a Berks or Northampton County I)utchman what his politics are) and even today you may yet as an answer the proud words, "Luderisch un Demegraudisch verdollt sei!" [Lutheran and Democratic) I'll be damned!].
After the Revolution the temper in the counties that had formed the Old West continued radical. All for independence and for having their own way, they were opposed to a strong federal government. On the other hand, the "plain people" of Lancaster County and upper Montgomery, fearing these radicals, counted on a strong federal government to keep them in check. In the administration of John Adams trouble broke out in Northampton and Berks in the fiasco known as Fries Rebellion. When a direct tax on real property was passed in 1798 and tax collectors came to count the windows in houses, the opposition reached a head. Liberty poles were set up in Northampton and Berks, and it became great sport to shout, "Damn die President, damn die Kanggress, damn die Arischdokratz!" It was sport, too, to drink French brandy and shoot off a gun to scare the tax collectors out of town. I t was an extremely minor rebellion, if it can be called a rebellion at all; but Adams took it seriously enough and sent militia to put it
down. The soldiers came and cut down the liberty poles and arrested Fries. In Reading" they seized the editor of the local paper, the Adler who had published some inflammatory editorials, dragging him to the market and there publicly flogging him. Fries was eventually pardoned, for most people realized that this was in no sense treason; it was not a deed to hang a man for if anything could increase the opposition of the old-frontier counties to the Federalists, it was this assertion of force. Even the declaration by the National Republicans that Adams could talk Dutch did not appease them. They welcomed Jefferson with enthusiasm, recognizing him as a far truer democrat than Adams. With rare exceptions they have been loyal to his newly formed Democratic
party ever since.
For a number of years, however, the Pennsylvania Dutch did not pull their weight in state and national politics. Perhaps their distrust of lawyers had something to do with this. A story they like to tell in Berks County is a mark of this feeling. An old Berks County farmer, Jake Paffenberger, from over Bernville way died and went to heaven. At the gate he found St. Peter, who looked up in a bored sort of way. "Go right in, Jake," he said, jerking his thumb. Jake went in as directed; but just as he got inside the gate he heard a tremendous blaring of trumpets, and such a crowd of angels rushed out that he was nearly blown over. Jake went outside to take a look and see what all the hullabaloo was about. There he saw St. Peter clapping a man on the back and crowing with delight while all the angels sang loud hosannas. Jake felt a little hurt when he saw the welcome this man was getting his own reception had been pretty matter-of-fact. When at last the crowd of angels had taken the newcomer into heaven, Jake turned to St. Peter and said: "What's all the fuss about? You didn't put on such a show for me."
"Now, now, Jake, you mustn't mind that," said St. Peter, smoothing him down. II After all, we get your kind all the time. Pretty near every day one of you Berks County farmers comes up here-maybe from Maxatawny, maybe from Oley, maybe from up near Bethel. We get them right along from allover the county. But this is the first time, Jake-the very first time-we've ever had a Berks County lawyer."
In the years between the close of the French and Indian War and the outbreak of the Revolution the Pennsylvania Dutch were little affected by King George's attempts to intimidate the colonies. If they chose to drink tea, it was mint tea from the kitchen garden they imbibed and not store tea, which had always been somewhat of a rarity among them. Roasted rye took the place of coffee. Their wine was homemade, not imported from abroad; nor had they forgotten how to brew ale and beer. If rum from the West Indies was cut off, they could turn to Monongahela whisky. They could get glass from Manheim in Lancaster County or from Jersey or Maryland, and iron from the Pennsylvania forges and furnaces. Their log cabins and stone houses needed little paint; if need be, they could shift with whitewash: they had plenty of lime. Yet George Ill's acts of repression quickly stirred the Dutch to anger. Though the gentry along the coast were more moderate in their indignation, one town after another in the Pennsylvania back country passed resolutions condemning the closing of the port of Boston. Dutch farmers raised money for the relief of the poor of Boston, "who are immediate Sufferers by means of the Port being Shutt up." In York it was resolved: "That the recent action of the parliament of Great Britain is iniquitous and oppressive. ...That in the event of Great Britain attempting to force unjust laws upon us by force of arms we leave the cause to Heaven and our Rifles."
The Pennsylvania Dutch had no sentimental attachment to England, feeling that England was their second home. Nor had their life in the principalities along the Rhine or in the Swiss mountain valleys been happy that they longed to return there. America was their country, whether it was Pennsylvania, Maryland, the Valley of Virginia, or the North Carolina Piedmont. They had a fierce attachment to the valleys and hills among which they lived. Though they had been transplanted, they had sent down roots.
Except for Bethlehem the Dutch cities possessed few of the amenities and graces of Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and Charleston; but neither was there the division of loyalties so characteristic of the older cities along the coast. With the exception of the "peace churches" the Pennsylvania Dutch were ardent in support of the patriot cause. The Moravian superintendent of the church store at Bethlehem who acidly marked that he had enough rope to hang all the members of the Continental Congress was typical neither of the Moravians nor of the Pennsylvania Dutch as a whole. Nine out of every ten Pennsylvania Dutchmen supported the Revolution heart and soul, and the tenth man is either Mennonite, Amish, Brethren, Schwenkfelder, or Moravian. Trevelyan rightly speaks of them as being "almost to a man, devoted adherents of the popular party" ; while Bancroft points out that although the Germans constituted only one-twelfth of the population they formed one-eighth of the patriot army.
The gulf between the Old West of the frontier, of which much of the Dutch country was apart, and the older civilization of the coast was partly social and economic but sometimes religious as well. The contrast between the older and newer sections was more marked in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina--in all four of which colonies there was a strong Pennsylvania Dutch element in the stock along the frontier-than it was in New England. In Pennsylvania the cleavage between the two sections deepened after the Quakers lost , their hold on the "church people" among the Pennsylvania Dutch. Confronted by the alliance between the Scotch-Irish and the Dutch, the Quakers and the Anglicans turned to one another for support as never before. Trevelyan probably exaggerates when he declares that the Quakers and Anglicans of Pennsylvania "already held between
them most of the property in the colony, and all of the privileges" ; but the statement has a bottom of truth. Despite the differences in their views on theology the Quakers and the Anglicans were natural allies: the Anglicans had no wish to bear arms against the king, the Quakers had no. desire to fight at all. The Revolution in Pennsylvania was consummated not by the Quakers and Anglicans but by the people of the back country, Dutch and Scotch-Irish, with the help of the mechanics of Philadelphia.
These two peoples, the Scotch:.lrish and the Pennsylvania Dutch, were ready to back up their words with arms; and that they were soon called upon to do. It was Pennsylvania that bore much of the brunt of the Revolution. After New England was cleared of the enemy, the Yankee troops were disinclined to fight in the other colonies. Ever finding it difficult to look beyond the borders of New England, the Yankees were not much concerned with what happened west and south of the Hudson. And after the enthusiasm of the first year of war had cooled, the Southern troops showed little readiness to go to the aid of the North. Nor did much help come from New York. New York was one of the most sparsely settled of the thirteen colonies. There were settlements only at the mouth of the Hudson and in the narrow Hudson Valley and west along the Mohawk. The enormous land grants to the patroons and the unhappy fate of Queen Anne's Palatines had deterred other settlers. In 1770 the colonies of Connecticut, Maryland, and
North Carolina all had a larger population than New York. Furthermore, New York was a hotbed of Tories. It furnished more soldiers to
George III than to George Washington. Pennsylvanians were forced to defend themselves against the loyalists from New York. It was John Butler's Tory Rangers and Barry St. Leger's Loyal Greens who with the Mohawk Indians descended into Pennsylvania and massacred the inhabitants of the Wyoming Valley. When the Revolution centered in Pennsylvania, the Yankees and the Southerners were inclined to let the Pennsylvanians and the British fight it out. Pennsylvania was far too
much alone in those bleak and terrible days when defeat at Brandywine was followed by defeat at Germantown and that succeeded by defeat at Whitemarsh, and all crowned by the bitter ordeal of Valley Forge. Though Washington and his troops spent more time in Pennsylvania during the Revolution than in any other colony, few of those days were ones of hope.
The Pennsylvania Dutch were in the war almost from the start. Berks and York counties are still quarreling over the honor of having the firs company of riflemen to reach Washington at Cambridgc. Congress, by its resolution on June 14, 1775, had called for six companics of expert riflemen from Pennsylvania, two from Maryland, and two from Virginia. These were the first troops ever to be raised by authority of Congress. It was by no accident that riflemen were called for. The rifle had been introduced into Pennsylvania by the Palatincs and Swiss, and there the gunsmiths of Lancaster and Berks and one or two other Dutch counties had vastly improved the model. At the time of the Revolution the rifle was used only in Central Europe and on the American frontier from Pennsylvania south to the Carolinas. Congress well knew that these backwoodsmen with their rifles would be far more deadly than the men from the coast of New England or tidewater Virginia. The common report of their prowess was noted by John Adams in a letter he wrote at the time: "These are said to be all exquisite marksmen, and by means of their firelocks, as well as their skill in the use of them, to send sure destruction to great distances."
Within sixty days after Congress had authorized the formation of these companies 1,430 backwoodsmen had joined the army before Boston, yet not a penny had been paid to one of them. Virtually all these men were by origin or ancestry from the back country of Pennsylvania. The two Maryland companies were both from the Dutch county of Frederick, and the two Virginia companies were made up of Scotch-lrish and Dutch who had moved south from Pennsylvania into the Valley of Virginia. Even the Carolina companies, which were raised later, were of Pennsylvania stock. With rifles lighter in weight than the awkward regulation army musket, the heavy brown Bess imported from England or some local variation of it, these riflemen traveled with speed. Though handicapped by bad weather, Morgan's riflemen made the six hundred miles from Winchester, Virginia to Cambridge in twenty-one days.
The riflemen fought in almost every battle of the war from Long Island to Yorktown. At the battle of Long Island, Colonel Peter
Kichlein and his regiment from Northampton County, though suffering seventy-one casualties out of less than a hundred men, hung on
long enough to permit Washington to evacuate his forces. At Saratoga they were especially effective in picking off enemy officers. At King's Mountain they were largely responsible for the victory. The skill of the riflemen was famous throughout the colonies and in England as well, for they delighted in putting on shows of their marksmanship. To send at a distance of forty yards or more eight bullets through a small board, five by seven inches, that a comrade held in his hand or between his thighs, was one of the feats that thrilled the townspeople of Frederick and Lancaster. On the common at Cambridge they had shown that they could stand two hundred and fifty paces from a pole seven inches in diameter with a fair chance of hitting it. No other gun of the time
could shoot that far.
The uniforms the riflemen wore, if they can be called uniforms, were thoroughly backwoods like the men themselves. The hunting shirts were of coarse linen or linsey-woolsey, or buckskin for winter, often with a double cape fringed along the edges and fastened around the waist by a belt, sometimes of wampum, in which was thrust a hunting knife or even a tomahawk. Some men wore buckskin breeches; but others, even more picturesque, instead of breeches wore a breechcloth with the thighs bare and buckskin leggings reaching above the knee. Captain Morgan, even on a midwinter march, wore a breechclout like
many of his men. On their feet were buckskin moccasins, often decorated with beads and porcupine quills. From the shoulder belt hung the powder horn, bullet pouch, and canteen. The officers, to distinguish themselves from the enlisted men, wore crimson sashes over one shoulder and around the waist.
In the weeks after Lexington, company after company was formed in the Dutch country. In Berks County one composed of men over forty was known as the Company of Old Men. The same county of Berks proudly claims that it sent a larger proportion of its men to fight in Washington's armies than any other area of similar size and population in all the thirteen colonies. Though this may not be cold, sober truth, it is not far from it. Elsewhere in the other Dutch counties where the "church people" made up the bulk of the population, the story was much the same. All through the Dutch country men flocked to the colors.
One unexpected virtue of the Dutch was pointed out by Morgan when he was asked about the difference between the various stocks making up the American army: "As for the fighting part of the matter, the men of all races are pretty much alike; they fight as much as they find necessary, and no more. But, sir, for the grand essential in the composition of a good soldier, give me the 'Dutchman'-he starves well."
The Pennsylvania Dutch country was almost untouched by the fighting. There were no battles fought on its soil. Although Valley
Forge is on the edge of the Dutch country, the only British soldiers who marched along the roads of the home counties of the Dutch were prisoners. The Dutch country was the arsenal, the commissariat, and the hospital of the Continental Army. Here was Washington's main source of supplies during the darkest days of the Revolution. Although the British occupied Philadelphia and much of the Quaker country, Washington could go on fighting as long as the country to the north and west was in patriot hands: it was for this reason that he took his stand at Valley Forge. Here were the forges and furnaces and foundries smelt the ore and cast the balls and cannon, here were the gunshops to make the rifles, here were sulphur and saltpeter for gunpowder, and here were the wheat and corn from the richest farms in colonial America. Here too were the horses and wagon trains that gave Washington's army its mobility. The British, not daring to move from their base of supplies, were anchored to the ports; but Washington, with the wagons and horses of the Dutch at his command-and almost all the teams of the army were supplied by the Dutch-was able to move
almost at will through the back country, checking the advance of the British at no matter which port they appeared.
Though Washington's forces at Valley Forge were badly off, that was not wholly the fault of the Dutch. It was owing, at least in part to the commissary department's ignorance of Pennsylvania and the rich supplies in the back country. Moreover, some of the agents could get nowhere with the Dutch farmers because they could not speak Dutch and the farmers in turn could not speak English. When agents who could talk Dutch took on the job, supplies began to move toward Valley Forge. Some of the farmers, it is true, were slow to respond; thley were afraid their horses and wagons would be seized by the army once they reached Valley Forge; others hesitated to accept the Continental paper money with which they were paid; and a few were out to make as much money as possible-they would sell their goods to the highest bidder, be he American or British. Nevertheless, supplies moved down the Schuylkill Valley from Reading, the provision center of the Continental Army. The farms fifty miles around were stripped of all they could spare: flour and grain and hay, salt pork and flitch, dried fruits, homespun for clothing, leather, even axes, picks, and shovels. These were carried down to Valley Forge by six-horse Conestoga wagons, many of which were seized by the army just as the farmers had feared. Yet most of the farmers from the near-by Dutch country took their products to the markets set up in the camp. There the ragged soldiers would crowd around a Dutch farmer and chip together to buy a duck, a bag of apples, some smoked sausage, a keg of cider, or a jug of applejack.
A great many of the army stores were assembled at Bethlehem, which for a time became the chief ordnance center. On September 17, 1777, a train of thirty-eight v.ragons arrived in the town; on the 18th, twenty-four wagons; and on the 19th, nine more. These carried sulphur, gun-powder, cartridges, provisions, and whisky. Then, on the 24th of September, a gigantic train of seven hundred wagons, bearing the entire heavy baggage and stores of Washington's army, reached the town. When these wagons were unloaded, they were ordered to Trenton to bring the army stores there to Bethlehem.
Bethlehem, of course, was even more noted during the Revolution for its hospitals. The best equipped hospitals were the Moravian ones at Bethlehem and Lititz, but military hospitals were set up in many of the Dutch towns and cities. Easton, Allentown, Reading, Lancaster, Sunbury, Ephrata, Trappe, Manheim, Skippack, Falckner's Swamp, Schaefferstown, and other places as well helped to care for the sick and wounded. For miles north of the fighting zone almost every church and
meetinghouse, almost every public building was turned into a hospital at one time or another. At Reading patients were housed in the courthouse in the square. At Trappe the little Lutheran church was crammed with wounded and sick. The medical supplies were kept in the pulpit. It is only a slight exaggeration tolsay that for many of the months during the bitterest part of the war the Pennsylvania Dutch towns were the hospitals of the Revolution.
One of the towns used as a hospital center was the Moravian settlement of Lititz. The first sick, about eighty in number, reached Lititz on December 19, 1777, and were put in the Single Brethren's House. The following days fifteen more wagonloads arrived. "Putrid fever" broke out, killing off almost every other man. Some of the convalescent soldiers, fearing for their lives, became so alarmed at the appalling death rate that they fled from the hospital, only to be forced back by a blizzard raging outside. The hospital at Lititz was finally closed on August 28, 1778, when the last patients were moved to Lancaster and Yellow Springs.
These hospitals had able surgeons-in so far as there were able surgeons in those days. One of the best was Dr. Bodo Otto of Reading, a graduate of the University of Gottingen, who served as senior surgeon of the middle division of the Continental Armies in the hospitals at Trenton, Bethlehem, and Yellow Springs. Though sixty-five years of Age, he had joined the American forces in 1776 as surgeon in the Battalion of the Flying Camp.
Yet another use was made of the Pennsylvania Dutch cities, that of prison camps for the Hessians captured at Trenton and Saratoga. The captured Hessians were so pleased with their fate that those taken at Trenton were permitted to find their own way to prison quarters in the Shenandoah Valley. Washington could not spare the men to go with them. At first the Hessians were confined at Winchester, Virginia; later they were moved to Frederick, Maryland; and still later, as their numbers increased, they were sent to the Pennsylvania cities of Reading, Lancaster, and York. In Reading one of the sections of the city is still known as Hessian Camp. As all five towns were largely Pennsylvania Dutch, even though one was in Virginia and one in Maryland, the Hessians were guarded by local militia able to speak their language.
The choice of Pennsylvania Dutch communities as prison camps was by no means an advantage to the Hessians. The Pennsylvania Dutch, even more than the rest of America, cordially detested them. Recognizing the blood ties that bound the Hessians to them, the Dutch looked upon the Hessians as kinsmen who had come to fight against them. The Dutch hatred of the hired Hessians was so intense that to this very day the epithet "du verdammter Hess" remains one of the worst insults in the Dutch country. Yet it is possible to feel sorry for the hapless prisoners. General Riedesel, in command of the Brunswickers, caught the pathos of their plight in the passage in his journal describing the Hessians bivouacked in the woods of Loudoun County, Virginia, on New Year's Eve, 1778: Here Germany's sons lay in the woods, wet and cold, in snow a foot deep,with a gloomy future in store for them. Perhaps each of them thought of his home in the distant fatherland, of dear relatives and friends, of the days of his boyhood, and of the joys of former New Year's Eves, past, never to return. The fires, which were kept going with green wood, gave off scarcely any warmth. All was cold and cheerless. In that dreary primeval forest nothing was heard except the forlorn moaning of the wind among the old tree tops; and while some lay on the snow-covered ground to rest their tired and aching
limbs, others meditated sadly beside the camp fires.
A more notable prisoner than any of the Hessians was Major Andre. After his capture at St. John's, Andre made the round of the Dutch towns: Bethlehem, Reading, Lancaster, York, and finally Carlisle.
Only one of the generals of the Revolution was Pennsylvania Dutch, John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg. The most dramatic episode in his life was the one known to every American schoolchild. Pastor of a Lutheran church in a Dutch settlement at Woodstock in the Shenandoah Valley, he rose in his pulpit one Sunday at the outbreak of the war, not to preach the usual sermon, but to plead with his congregation to join the fight for freedom. Throwing aside his ministerial gown, he showed himself dressed in the uniform of an American officer. Buckling on his sword, he urged all the able-bodied men in the congregation to follow his example :
"To every thing there is a season," he declared, "and a time to every purpose under the heaven. ..a time of war and a time of peace." Thus he went on, building up to the climax that thrilled the hearts of his people: loIn the language of Holy Writ there was a time for all things-a time to pray and a time to preach-but those times have passed away; there is a time to fight, and the time to fight is here!"
As one man the congregation rose to sing Luther's stirring hymn, "Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott." Outside, at the church door, the
drums began to roll as men turned to kiss their wives and then walked down the aisle to enlist. Within half an hour 162 men were enrolled. This regiment commanded by Muhlenberg fought at Brandywine and Germantown, suffered through the winter of Valley Forge, fought again at Monmouth and Stony Point, and survived to take part in the surrender at Yorktown. As for Muhlenberg, the name the Hessians gave him, Teufel Piet (Devil Pete), gives some notion of the fear with which he inspired the enemy.
One of the folk heroes of the Revolution who was Pennsylvania Dutch was Molly Pitcher, whose maiden name was Mary Ludwig. So much in love that she insisted on accompanying her husband to the wars, she won a place for herself in American story by her bravery at the. battle of Monmouth. When her husband fell wounded beside the cannon he was firing, she took his place and for the rest of the day kept the cannon in action against the British.
An honor greatly prized by the Pennsylvania Dutch was their selection as Washington's bodyguard. The original bodyguard had to be dismissed in 1777, when it was discovered that some of the guards were planning to assassinate Washington. As his new bodyguard Washington chose the Independent Troop of Horse, made up largely of Pennsylvania Dutch recruits from Pennsylvania and Maryland. At the close of the war this guard accompanied Washington to Mount Vernon. They were the last of the Continental Army to leave him.
Many incidents of the Revolution live on as winter tales in Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouses, whether it be of the farmer who drove to Philadelphia to market and came back with the Liberty Bell in his wagon to stow it away in the cellar of the Reformed church in Allentown, or the patriot refugees who fled from Howe at Philadelphia to crowd the towns of Reading and Lancaster and York. Or the tale may be of Sergeant Everhart, who carried Lafayette to safety when the French officer was wounded at Brandywine; or of Peter Humrichouse, who by his dash from Philadelphia supplied Washington with arnmunition at Yorktown when he needed it most. But when the winter wind sweeps down from the Blue Mountains and old men draw closer to the kitchen range, it is the stories of Valley Forge above all that they delight to tell.
All the fall preceding the winter of Valley Forge the army moved about in the Dutch country from one village to another. Just behind them was the defeat at Brandywine. After this battle the army had retreated north to the safety of the Dutch country, there to rest and lick its wounds. On September 22 Washington set up Camp Pottsgrove a few miles back from the Schuylkill at Falckner's Swamp, where he was in a position to intercept Howe in case he moved against Reading to capture the supplies there. At Falckner's Swamp the Dutch farmers and their wives rallied to feed the army. When the baker-general, Christopher Ludwick, complained that there were too few bake ovens to bake enough bread, Ensign Willie Antes, glad to be back home anddietermined that his native village should not lose face before his comrades, built an enormous bakehouse, paying for it out of his own pocket.
and Willie Antes was right in thinking well of Falckner's Swamp, for the village did itself proud as host to the American Army. Cattle and pigs were butchered; chickens, ducks. geese, and turkeys were killed. The whole harvest of wheat, rye, buckwheat, corn, and oats was turned over to the anny. Everything went for the soldiers. When the army pulled out the country was bare: no cattle in the barns, no wheat in the bins, no butter in the springhouse, no snitz in the attic, no honey in the hive--but the soldiers were new men. Falckner's Swamp had put some starch Into them.
On September 26 the anny moved to Pennypacker's Mills along the Perkiomen. Here too the army ate the countryside out of house and home. Every duck, goose, chicken, and guinea hen was eaten except one old half-mad klook 1 that had stolen away to hatch out a brood come winter or the American Anny. Then, just before the attack at Germantown, a temporary camp was made along the Skippack and a few days later another at the village of Worcester. With the defeat at Germantown on October 4, the British pursued the Americans as far as Blue Bell Tavern. For three days the anny returned to Pennypacker's Mills and Skippack; then, hearing of supplies at Kulpsville and Towamencin Meeting, Washington moved there on October 8, the defeated men miserable and cold in the falling rain. Unfortunately the report of supplies was much exaggerated. On the 16th the anny was 011 the
move again, from one Dutch crossroads village to another. Only the account of the British debacle at Saratoga lightened their gloom. A new advance to Center Square, with the idea of retaking Germantown, was beaten off. Then, after an engagement at Whitemarsh, the anny settled down at Camp Hill for more than a month's stay. After this series of defeats the morale of the men had sunk so low and the army was so greatly outnumbered by the British that it was decided not to make another attack but to go into winter quarters. On November 30 Valley Forge was selected-largely to ensure the safety of the supplies at Reading. Finally, on December 12, the anny crossed the Schuylkill at Swedes Ford and with snow whirling in their faces marched along the country roads till three in the morning, when at last they made camp on the bleak slopes of Gulph Mills.
In Reading the quartennaster general, Miffiin, was plotting against Washington. This was the Conway Cabal, in which a determined effort was made to relieve Washington of his command. To many the American cause seemed doomed. The British had captured Philadelphia. Even the remnant of the defeated army that Washington had been able to hold together had little courage left.
At Valley Forge all was far from well. The men were now housed in thousand little log huts, eighteen by sixteen feet, and six feet high at the eaves; but these had neither fireplaces nor windows. In thc bitter and the men had worked with amazing speed to provide shelter fore themselves, yet it was not until the end of the first week in January at the whole encampment of eleven thousand men had roofs over their heads. The misery at Valley Forge was made worse by the bungling of the commissariat and the quartermaster corps. With the men next door to starvation, hundreds of barrels of flour were left on the banks of the Susquehanna to spoil from exposure to the weather. And while four thousand men at Valley Forge went without blankets, six thousand blankets were sent to the west of Lancaster. Furthermore, Congress seemed to be unperturbed by the wretchedness of the soldiers
Valley Forge. Faced with starvation, the men foraged for themselves and cleaned out the farms for miles around. Much of the food
sent down from the Dutch country failed to get through, for with the coming of winter many of the great Conestoga wagons bringing the food were frozen in the mud. The Reading road was lined with them. To make matters worse, the winter was one of exceptional cold. Ordinarily the winters in southeastern Pennsylvania are fairly moderate, but the winter of 1777-1778 was a Maine winter that had slipped south to Pennsylvania. Not a fence rail was left for miles around. Despite the cold the need for food was so desperate that before the winter was over the soldiers had scoured not only southeastern Pennsylvania and much of southern Jersey and practically all of Delaware but also a good part of Maryland and even the upper part of Virginia.
The most memorable day was the one early in spring when schools of shad came swimming up the Schuylkill-thousands upon thousands beautiful, fat shining shad. The whole camp turned out to catch shad. The river so swarmed with fish that each haul of the net brought hundreds. That night for the first time since the anny had moved to Valley Forge there was not a hungry man in camp; each soldier went bed with a belly stuffed with shad.
In spite of the underlying misery Valley Forge had its lighter moments. Just before St. Patrick's Day some skylarking Pennsylvania Dutchmen hung up a grotesque effigy labeled "Paddy". As the figure had been hung up during the night, the furious Irish, though out to skin the perpetrators alive, did not know on whom to turn until the jubilant Dutchmen sicked them on the Yankees. Then the row began in earnest, to be ended only when Washington stepped in and proclaimed a holiday. Other sports were more innocuous. There was bowling on the green with cannon balls-with a swig from thc opponent's canteen for the winner. There was shooting with bows and arrows and there was "playing at base," possibly the great-great-grandfather of the
great American game. During the winter there wrere even a few dances, at the King of Prussia Tavern or some other near-by inn or farmhouse these in spite of the fact that the serious Lafayette frowned on dancing in wartime as frivolous. Yet Valley Forge had little of the gaiety of Reading and York, both of which towns were bursting with refugees; and compared with Philadelphia and its Mischianza, possibly the most elaborate party in all of American history, it was drab and sober enough.
On May Day, however, Valley Forge put on a show to celebrate the treaty of alliance with France and Holland. Since it was May Day there were Maypoles, but the principal feature of the celebration was a grand review of the army. After the weary hours they had suffered on the parade grounds under von Steuben, the troops made a smart appearance. The climax came with a fusillade from right to left in the first line of troops, then from left to right in the second line, and so on through the whole army of ten thousand men. After the review reo freshments were served in the marquees that had been set up. Although there was not much food, there was plenty of hard cider and rum. The day ended with a production of that superlatively dull play, Addison's Cato. It is a pity that the play was not Farquhar's Recruiting Officer, which the officers were rehearsing when the encampment broke up, or Washington's favorite play, The Beggar's Opera; but at least Cato was better than no play at all: it made the day more of an occasion. And after the winter at Valley Forge the audience was hardened to suffering. After all they had been through, Cato was merely the bite of a gnat.