09:32 AM EDT on Tuesday, June 27, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

Nathanael Greene wrote in early November 1779: The weather begins to get cold and puts us in mind of Winter quarters. It therefore becomes necessary to look out for a proper place to hut the Army in.

As quartermaster general Greene had to set up a winter quarters for an army of some 12,000 men, a good-sized village replete with housing, latrines, supply routes and streets. The camp had to be on easily defensible ground, and this year Washington demanded that it be located fairly far from New York City; the British had consolidated almost all of their northern forces in New York, about 18,000 men, and Washington was concerned that they planned a winter attack.

With this table of difficulties before me, I have been perplexed not a little to find out where to fix the Army, Greene wrote. I have rode hot and cold, wet and dry, night and day, in traversing the Country, in search of the most proper place for quartering the troops. In the whole of my research I have found only two places, that I can recommend as tolerable.

Greene's final recommendation was a camp near Morristown, N.J., in a grove called Jockey's Hollow. Washington approved of the choice on Nov. 30, 1779, and the cold was already upon them.

As soon as he got word of Washington's approval Greene wrote to an aide: Set the whole world in motion. I beg of you not to lose a moment's time in forwarding Stores of all kinds as soon as may be.

Greene's wife, Caty, -- seven months along in her fourth pregnancy -- came to camp from Coventry before it was even laid out. She took quarters in Morristown at Jacob Arnold's tavern on the village green; much to Arnold's dismay, Greene moved in with her and took over the tavern as a cramped winter quarters for him and Caty, their 3 1/2-year-old son, George, their soon-to-be-born baby and Greene's aides.

A winter of survival

The first regiments marched from West Point into Morristown on Dec. 2 as hail and snow fell around them. They pitched tents in the snow and set to work building log huts, 1,000 cabins that cleared 600 acres of trees.

On Dec. 5 a second, heavier snow fell, setting a pattern for that winter of heavy snows followed by bitter cold. In that weather snow did not melt, it just kept piling up.

Even saltwater froze a foot thick. From New York, heavy horses hauled sleighs clear across to Staten Island; in Rhode Island, according to The Papers of Nathanael Greene, some people walked from the mainland to Block Island, that's how thickly the ice was frozen.

James Thacer, a doctor with the medical corps, logged in his diary on Jan. 3, 1780: "one of the most tremendous snow-storms ever remembered; no man could endure its violence many minutes without danger of his life." Most of the soldiers were then in log huts, but those still tented "were actually covered while in their tents, and buried like sheep under the snow. . . .

"We are greatly favored in having a supply of straw for bedding. Over this we spread our blankets, and with our clothes and large fires at our feet, while four or five are crowded together, preserve ourselves from freezing. But the sufferings of the poor soldiers can scarcely be described."

Snow lay 4 feet deep with drifts three times that high. Teams could not draw sleds, let alone wagons, in snow that deep; food Greene had been able to store in magazines outside Morristown could not be hauled in, and as at Valley Forge hunger hit camp. If the commissary and quartermaster general's departments had been as broken as they'd been at Valley Forge, actual starvation would have hit Morristown in that extreme winter.

Greene wrote on Jan. 4, 1780: Our army is without Meat or Bread; and have been for two or three days past. Poor Fellows! they exhibit a picture truly distressing. More than half naked, and above two thirds starved.

"I saw several men roast their old shoes and eat them," recalled Private Joseph Plumb Martin in his memoirs, "and I was afterwards informed by one of the officer's waiters, that some of the officers killed and ate a favourite little dog that belonged to one of them. . . . The fourth day, just at dark, we obtained a half pound of lean fresh beef and a gill of wheat for each man . . . we had keen appetites."

The camp was snowbound and it is well we are, Greene wrote, for if it was good traveling, I believe the Soliders would take up their packs and march, they having been without provision two or three days. The distress of the Army is very great, and not less on account of clothing. The hour is coming, and is now come, that we have been preaching about.

A few Cattle arrivd this morning or else the Army must have been disbanded or let loose upon the Inhabitants; the latter would have been the case; but you know how cautious the Genl [Washington] is of taking desperate measures."

Plundering the countryside

Gen. George Washington was loathe to take "desperate measures" but to save his Army he would. On Jan. 7 soldiers took matters into their own hands, wading through waist deep snow to plunder Morristown's houses and farms, conduct that in other times would have brought down a lashing. On the 8th, Washington issued a circular to a dozen county magistrates, apologizing for his men's behavior and appealing for help from the residents of New Jersey:

"For a Fortnight past the Troops both Officers and Men, have been almost perishing," he wrote. He called upon the "virtuous Inhabitants" of the state to send in cattle and grain.

Washington's plea for sustenance was really a velvet fist. He couched it as a request, but backed it with the threat of force:

"But at the same time I think it my duty to inform you, that should we be disappointed in our hopes, the extremity of the case will compel us to have recourse to a different mode, which will be disagreeable to me."

Nathanael Greene also issued a flier titled: "ADDRESS TO THE INHABITANTS BETWEEN MORRISTOWN, PITTSTOWN, AND TRENTON" in which he asked not only for food but for teams of oxen and draft horse to plow or "break" the roads.

In a letter to the local militia commander, Benoni Hathaway, Greene wrote:

Provision is scarce at best; but the late terrible storm and the depth of the Snow and the drifts in the Roads, prevent the little stock from coming forward which is in readiness at the distant Magazines. This is therefore to request that you call upon the Militia Officers and people of your Battalion to turn out their teams and break the Roads between this and Hackettstown, there being a small quantity of provision there that cannot come on until this is done. The Roads must be kept open by the Inhabitants or the Army cannot be subsisted. And unless the good people immediately lend their assistance to foreward supplies the Army must disband.

The people did respond; whether from fear, or patriotism or simple humanity for fellow men in distress, the people of New Jersey sent teams to break roads, wheat flour for bread, cattle for fresh beef.

On Jan. 27, 1780, Washington wrote to Congress that the Army was now "comfortable and easy on the score of provisions." The magistrates and people of New Jersey had paid "the earliest and most chearful attention" to his plea.

In so doing, the people of New Jersey saved the American Army.

gcarbone@projo.com / (401) 277-7434

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