1779                          Philadelphia; Loss of Augusta, GA; victories in Indiana and Tennessee. To Middlebrook & Somerville; Pluckemin R&R.  The move north to defend the HUDSON RIVER VALLEY with HQs near West Point.  CT towns plundered.  Victory at Stony Point. Cornwallis' arrival from England with ships and 4000 troops. Then (in December) the army was moved to MORRISTOWN,  where it would soon become the toughest winter of the war !

 

Martha and George stayed at the house of Honorable Henry Laurens.  Washington remained in Philadelphia for the month of January, meeting with a Committee of Congress and taking a partial leave for a little relaxation, after almost four years of action in the field.   

On the Committee was Gouverneur Morris, James Duane, Henry Laurens, Jesse Root, and Melancthon Smith.

Congress gave a banquet and an artillery salute for the French Minister to celebrate the alliance with France.  Congress requested that George Washington sit for a portrait by Charles Wilson Peale.  He did, but the portrait was somehow destroyed in 1781.  

On January 29, Washington requested permission to return to the army at winter camp in Middlebrook, NJ.  On February 1, he sat for a 3/4 hour portrait by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere at the request of Honorable John Jay. 

Major General Marquis de la Fayette sailed on January 11 from Boston to France.  Note that this is the spelling that Washington used in his will, when he gave pistols to la Fayette.  Fayette counties; Fayetteville, NC, etc. were named for Lafayette.

Bad news ==> Augusta, GA was captured by the British on January 29.

On February 2, George and Martha set out for the shared  Wallace House near Middlebrook, NJ.  They arrived on February 5, 1779.  

Almost two weeks later, they were invited to a celebration given by General Knox and officers of the artillery - in honor of France, in Pluckemin, NJ.  About seventy ladies and three to four hundred gentlemen attended.  Sixteen cannon were fired at 4PM.  Dinner was served in a large building.  Martha was with George, but George opened the event with the first dance as a partner to Mrs. Knox.   Mrs. Washington was said to combine great dignity of manner with pleasing affability. 

Washington continued to correspond with La Fayette in Paris. 

In February, George Rogers Clark captured Fort Sackville at Vincennes, IN. And at Chattanooga, TN,   Indians allied with Britain were defeated.

On March 19, a dance was held at General Greene's quarters at the Van Veghton house [between Boundbrook and Somerville].
  General Greene wrote, 

"... His Excellency and Mrs. Greene danced upwards to three hours without once sitting down."

On March 31, Washington wrote James Warren,

" ... Nothing, I am convinced, but the depreciation of our currency, proceeding in a great measure from [decay of public virtue ...], aided by stockjobbing and party dissentions, has fed the hopes of the Enemy and kept the British arms in America to this day.  They do not scruple to declare this themselves, and add, that we shall be our own conquerors."

The winter was mild.  In like a lamb ... for most of January, February, March and April,  there was no severe weather ... scarce snow and frost.  But in the two years since 1777, money had greatly depreciated more than ten fold.

On May 2, the army was paraded before General Greene, Mrs. Washington and General Knox in honor of Don Juan Marailles of Spain and M. Gerard, the French minister.

On May 6, 1779 at Middlebrook, the troops observed fasting, humiliation and prayer.  On June 2, Washington answered an address from the ministers, elders and deacons of the Dutch Reformed Church at Raritan.

And on May 14, the brigade was paraded before a number of Indian chiefs. Washington and his mulatto servant, Bill, passed on horseback before the line and received the salute.

The British burned Norfolk, again, and Portsmouth, VA. In Britain, King George III's man, Lord North,  was still advocating a vigorous prosecution of the war.

About May 31, orders were given to General John Sullivan to move against Indian villages in a strong response to enemy atrocities inflicted by Tories and British-influenced Indians of the Six Nations.

On July 31, that campaign of chastisement was begun against Indians at Cherry Valley; Elmira, NY; those at the Genesee River; those near Fort Pitt; those in the Ohio River Valley  and those in the Tioga Point and Wyoming Valley (PA).   

Generals James Clinton, John Sullivan and Colonel Brodhead drove many Indian families from those regions and destroyed their villages.

On June 1, the British at Stoney Point opened fire across the Hudson River, and in the afternoon, captured Verplanck Point above King's Ferry on the east side of the Hudson River.

In response, on June 2, the American troops were sent north to protect West Point.  

 

On June3, GW set out from Middlebrook towards the Highlands via Morristown, Troy, Pompton and stayed at Robert Erskine's Iron Works at Ringwood Iron-Works (Passaic County, NJ).  Then the army moved north east to near Smith's Tavern at the upper end of the Clove (a level plain of rich land about 14 miles northwest of West Point). 

On June 14, Washington visited West Point until June 21.  

Then he rode to establish Headquarters at the William Ellison house of New Windsor on the Hudson River.  The next day, he again visited West Point.  

And on the 24th of June, he attended a festival for St. John the Baptist by "Masons" at the Robinson House on the east side of the river.

On June 27, at New Windsor HQ (now the site of many riverside petroleum storage tanks), he received secret letters, by the Dragon, and sent two guineas to the New York spy named C____r ... (Culper)?

On July 4, 1779, he pardoned all prisoners in his army who were under sentence of death.  He had 13 cannons fired from West Point at 1 PM to celebrate "our glorious independence."  

On July 6 and 7, he viewed enemy outposts and our outposts south of West Point. On July 9, in a letter to General Anthony Wayne, Washington stated the disagreeable aspect of "inactivity on our part."  He proposed a nighttime surprise attack upon the British fortifications at Stoney Point, NY.

The British burned and plundered New Haven on July 5, Fairfield on July 9, then Norwalk and Greenwich, CT a couple of days later.

At Fort Montgomery, Washington wrote instructing General Muhlenburg to begin moving his brigade in motion about midnight toward Stoney Point to be near in the early AM on July 16.

General Anthony Wayne's corps of light infantry, surprised and took the enemy post on July 16, 1779, at  Stoney Point, NY in a 2 AM  bayonet attack.   

His men had great success and took many prisoners.    Anthony Wayne wrote the 2AM note as, 

"Dear Genl' -- The fort & Garrison with Col. Johnson are ours.  Our officers and men behaved like men who are determined to be free. --Yours most sincerely, ANT'Y WAYNE."

On July 20, Washington reported to Congress that "[The enemy] have now brought their whole force up the river, and yesterday they landed a body at Stoney Point."  Since Stoney Point fortifications had been designed to defend from a land attack, it had been decided to destroy the works and evacuate that post.

Moore's House a mile from West Point [Washington's Valley] became the Headquarters on July 21 for over four months, until November 28.  The property contained about 1800 acres, which included the site of the present U.S. Military academy, sold to the United States by John Moore in 1790.

On July 29, Washington wrote Joseph Reed, thanking him for advising about a publication in the Maryland Journal of the Queries,' Political and Military, written by General Charles Lee in a very malignant spirit and designed to injure General Washington.  Washington wrote to Reed, 

"Without a clue, I should have been at no great loss to trace the malevolent writer."   

The orderly book of July 29 stated on the subject of prevalent swearing and using the name of -

"that Being from whose bountiful goodness we are permitted to exist ... is incessantly imprecated and profaned in a manner as wanton as it is shocking.  For the sake of religion, decency, and order, the General hopes and trusts that officers of every rank will use their influence and authority to check a vice which is as unprofitable as it is wicked and shameful.  If officers would make it an invariable rule to reprimand, and if that does not do, punish soldiers for offences of this kind, it could not fail to have the desired effect."

On August 1, 1779, Washington wrote to Edmund Randolph, 

"... we are laboring under the greatest evils, that can befall a state of war, namely, a reduced army at the beginning of a campaign, which more than probably is intended for a decisive one, and want of money, or rather a redundancy of it, by which it is become of no value."

Washington wrote to Congress on August 23, 

"I have the honor to enclose your Excellency Major Lee's report of the surprise and capture [on August 19] of the garrison of Powles Hook [Jersey City, NJ].  The Major displayed a remarkable degree of prudence, address, enterprise, and bravery, upon this occasion, which does the highest honor to himself and all the officers and men under his command."

Washington's "sources" mention the arrival of Lord Cornwallis from England and the pending arrival of a grand fleet at New York.  

The fleet arrived on August 25 with 300 or 4000 troops.  It was supposed that British General Clinton would display his intentions or orders from Britain.  

Washington greeted Chevalier de la Luzerne, minister from France to the United States, and Monsieur Marbois on their way to Congress from Boston.

Standard Uniforms was the subject of the Orderly Book on October 2, 1779.  
The new standard =

BLUE Uniform faced with WHITE  Buttons and Lining = White  for CT, NH, MA, RI

BLUE Uniform faced with BUFF    Buttons and Lining = White  for  NY and NJ

BLUE Uniform faced with RED     Buttons and Lining = White  for  PA, DE, MD, VA 

BLUE Uniform faced with BLUE    Buttons and Lining = White for  NC, SC, GA
Button Holes edged with narrow WHITE Tape or Lace

BLUE Uniform faced w. SCARLET  Buttons = YELLOW,     Linings  = SCARLET
Button Holes and Coats edged with narrow WHITE Tape or Lace ...

Hats bound with YELLOW for ARTILLERY and ARTILLERY ARTIFICERS  
       
The whole
BLUE Uniform faced with WHITE  Buttons and Linings = White  for LIGHT DRAGOONS 

At West Point by October 25, Washington had advised Congress that General Gates had intelligence that the enemy was evacuating Newport, RI.  The British departed from Stoney Point and from all of Rhode Island - to gather at New York, with plans to invade the South.

On November 24, Washington wrote to Congress, 

"I am now using my best endeavors to get things in train for putting the army in [Winter] quarters.  The instant ' matters will permit, I Shall go forward myself."

At Peekskill, he wrote on November 29,

"I am now thus far on my way to Jersey, and I shall put the Virginia Troops in motion, as soon as it can be done, for Philadelphia." 

Early in the morning of November 30, Washington crossed the Hudson River at King's Ferry, into the Jersies.

---

M O R R I S T O W N  the worst winter !

 

It was hailing, then snowing, when George Washington arrived at the MorrisTown winter encampment on December 1, 1779.

His senior officers found private homes and Washington and staff rented part of the shared-home of Theodosia Johnes Ford, Theodosia Johnes Ford, the widow of Colonel Jacob Ford, who had commanded a regiment of Morris County militia during the retreat through NJ in1776.
 ==> Headquarters, were at that house, just east of town.


Note:  In 1874, the Washington Association of New Jersey began              preservation of the Ford Mansion headquarters.  In 1931, it became part of America's first National Historical Park.  

The almost 10,000 soldiers and junior officers, at first, quartered in tents at the six-to-eight-hundred-acre "Jockey Hollow forest" about four miles southwest of MorrisTown.  Soldiers were from Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

On December 16, 1779 Washington wrote to Joseph Reed,  

"The situation of the army with respect to supplies, is beyond description, alarming. It has been five or six weeks past on half-allowance, and we have not more than three days bread at a third allowance, on hand, nor any within ... reach. ... We have never experienced a like extremity at any period of the war..."

 

General Arthur St.Clair  shared space in the Henry Wick family house, near Tempe-Wick Road. Stark's Brigade was east of there.  

The men quickly felled the surrounding trees to build rows of crude log-hut barracks and a small "hospital-hut."   The Pennsylvania Brigade camped near Sugarloaf, Cemetery and the Grand Parade Field roads. Those roads and main supply roads soon became blocked in deep snows, making reprovisioning difficult.  

The 900 soldiers of the New Jersey Brigade arrived near Hardscrabble Road on December 17.  They had moved into their huts by Christmas.

On December 27, Washington attended a festival of St. John the Evangelist held at the "American Union Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons" above the bar and commissary-  storehouse in the Morris Hotel near the Morristown green.

Near the Whippany River in MorrisTown, at Dickerson's Tavern, Benedict Arnold received a court-marshal.  He was reprimanded in public for using his position of military commander in Philadelphia for his personal gain.  Washington still maintained a basic faith in the previously wounded hero, Arnold, and promised to try to restore his esteem.

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