Washington at Valley Forge (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Washington at Valley Forge Elizabeth Bush Freedman, Russell Washington at Valley Forge. Holiday House, 2008 [100p] illus. with photographs ISBN 978-0-8234-2069-8 $24.95 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 5–8 Freedman and readers revisit the pivotal winter of 1777 to 1778, when newly declared independent Patriots were running long on aspirations for liberty but short on military training, provisioning, and funding. Amid calls for his demotion or resignation, commander-in-chief George Washington kept enough of his demoralized, underclothed, underfed, and underpaid soldiers engaged with the cause to hunker down through the bitterest weather and, with a little help from French and German friends, to train them into a fighting force ready to take on the British by summer. While Freedman does not minimize the heroism of the troops and Washington’s remarkable ability to lead by example, he also incorporates twenty-first-century scholarship that emphasizes the political cabals that threatened to hobble Washington’s career, the tardiness of the Continental Congress to understand field conditions, and the necessity for the general to keep mum about the diminishing size of his army, lest the British take advantage of the worn-down Continentals. The writing is smooth, with a tight focus on the encampment and a judiciously limited dose of background information. Frequent testimony from primary sources, as well as welcome attention to a larger-than-life supporting cast (coverage of the booming von Steuben and his shady past is particularly delightful), push this well beyond standard textbook fare. Plenty of artwork provides rest stops throughout the narrative and, although most of the images were produced well after the events in question, captions occasionally point out egregious romanticization. An index, a Revolutionary War timeline, a selected bibliography, and maps (which, unfortunately, fail to indicate several of the sites mentioned in the text) are included. [End Page 160] Copyright © 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois