Starving at Jockey Hollow

We arrived in Morristown in December with the expectation that winter quarters would mean rest, shelter, and provisions. It meant none of those things. The march into Jockey Hollow was through snow that was already deep, and the cold was of a kind I had not experienced in all my years of service. We were told to build huts, and we did, cutting timber and notching logs in frozen ground while the wind tore through our clothing — what clothing we had, for many among us were in rags.

The huts, when finished, were tolerable in their construction but miserable as shelter. Twelve men to a hut that measured fourteen feet to a side. We slept on straw when straw was available and on the bare earth when it was not. The fireplace at one end provided smoke more than warmth, and the chinking between the logs let in the wind no matter how carefully we packed it with clay. The men nearest the fire roasted on one side and froze on the other. The men farthest from the fire simply froze.

But the cold was not the worst of it. The worst was the hunger. There were days — not one or two, but stretches of three, four, five days together — when we received nothing to eat. Nothing. I do not mean short rations or poor rations. I mean no rations at all. The commissary wagons did not come. The quartermasters had no provisions to distribute. We were told to be patient, that supplies were on the way, and then we were told nothing at all.

I ate bark. I boiled my shoes, though there was precious little leather left in them to boil. I watched men eat candle tallow and lick the grease from cartridge papers. I saw soldiers too weak from hunger to stand for roll call. I heard men weep at night — grown men, soldiers who had stood in line at Monmouth and Germantown — weeping from hunger and cold in the darkness of those huts.

The officers suffered less, as officers always do. They were quartered in farmhouses in the surrounding countryside, and while their provisions were irregular, they did not starve. We knew this. We saw them riding to and from headquarters, well-fed and warmly dressed, while we shivered and went without. I do not say this to condemn them — a man will take what comfort is available — but the contrast sharpened our misery and our anger.

There was talk of mutiny that winter. There was more than talk — there were incidents, refusals to obey orders, confrontations between soldiers and officers. The wonder is not that the Pennsylvania troops eventually mutinied but that it took as long as it did. We had been promised pay, and we received none. We had been promised food, and we received none. We had been promised that our enlistments had a definite end, and we were told they did not. At what point does a soldier owe obedience to a government that has broken every promise it made to him?

I did not mutiny. I remained with my regiment and served out the war. But I understood the men who did, and I will not condemn them for it. They were not traitors. They were men who had reached the limit of what they could endure, and that limit was generous by any human measure. What happened at Morristown was not a failure of the soldiers. It was a failure of the country they were fighting for, which asked everything of them and gave almost nothing in return.

Valley Forge has the reputation. But those of us who were at both will tell you: Morristown was worse.