A Year With George Washington
On February 14, 1778, George & Martha Washington spent Valentine’s Day together at Valley Forge.
In the early months of 1778, Martha made the arduous trip from Mount Vernon to Pennsylvania to stay with her husband at Valley Forge. General Washington had decided against traveling to her for a number of reasons. His army was in a dreadful state, being scarcely clothed, ill-fed, sickly, and perishing at an alarming rate.
Martha, herself, had her share of travails. Her younger sister and best friend, Anna Marie Bassett, had died just before Christmas. This was heartbreaking for her as she had experienced the loss of so many in her life. As a young woman, she had already parted with five of her siblings, two of her children, her father, and her first husband. Sadly, her tears would continue to trace the contours of her face in the years to come. She worried her dear George would be next.
Martha was further delayed by the birth of her and George’s second grandchild, born to her son “Jacky” and his wife on New Year’s Eve.
Though she arrived to the cheers of the soldiers, she quickly surmised that all was not well. She noticed her husband was ill at ease and not himself.
“The General is well but much worn with fatigue and anxiety,” she lamented to a friend. “I never knew him to be so anxious as now.”
Martha, though wearied by the difficult journey northward, set about immediately to ease her troubled husband’s mind and those of his men. One astonished resident of the camp recalled:
“I never in my life knew a woman so busy from early morning until late at night
as was Lady Washington, providing comforts for the sick soldiers. Every day, excepting Sunday, the wives of the officers in camp, and sometimes other women, were invited. . . to assist her in knitting socks, patching garments, and making shirts for the poor soldiers when material could be procured. Every fair day she might be seen, with basket in hand and with a single attendant, going among the keenest and most needy sufferers and giving all the comforts to them in her power.”
Martha, as she had intended, eased her husband’s suffering and buttressed his spirit in his hour of need, but, in accordance with the tenets of eighteenth-century warfare, she had to depart before the resumption of fighting upon the onset of spring.
With the departure of Martha and the coming sights and sounds of spring, Washington’s fortunes began to change. Though he had lost a great many men to various maladies that winter, the bulk of them had survived. Baron Von Steuben, who, when he first looked upon Washington’s army, was horrified at its miserable form. Through the institution of discipline and drill, he turned the ragged assortment into a lethal fighting force. The most impactful event of all was the news that France had agreed to enter the war on the side of the American patriots.
Washington and his army would have to endure three more years of misery before the French-aided victory at Yorktown, but the fulfillment of the glorious cause would come.
It has often been said of George Washington that even while hard at work in the service of his country, he forever longed to be home at his beloved Mount Vernon. It is plain and true that he treasured his beautiful estate on that majestic Potomac River bluff, but greater still, it was the woman anxiously awaiting his arrival at the door that drew him home.
