The Winter of 1780 in Morristown New Jersey
In the winter of 1780 New York Harbor froze over, driving the British ships out to sea and offering George Washington and the Continental Army an opportunity to attack the British in New York across the ice, imitating the Swedes of more than a century before. The problem was that the winter of 1779-80 was the worst of the war, far worse than the famed winter at Valley Forge, and the ice and snow created supply problems which nearly destroyed the Continental Army. As far south as the York and James peninsulas in Virginia the rivers froze over completely or were blocked with ice floes.
The British Army in New York and the eastern tip of Long Island used sleds to transport firewood across the harbor from New Jersey and Staten Island. Couriers rode their horses across the harbor. In Philadelphia that January, the recorded temperature managed to creep over 32 degrees but once, at that for less than an hour. A clerk for the Continental Congress reported the ink in his pen frozen solid, despite being in his parlor before a good fire in mid-afternoon. Clocks and pocket watches froze as time seemingly stood still. As bad as January was, February was worse.
The frozen roads, deep snows, and extreme cold made travel virtually impossible, and supplies reached the Americans encamped at Morristown only sporadically. Food was scarce and firewood scarcer as the Continental troops sat out the winter on an exposed, windswept elevated plain, chosen for its defensive characteristics rather than potential creature comforts. In all of the diaries and surviving letters from the Americans and foreign volunteers, those who mention the weather all claim the winter to have been the worst of the their experience, the coldest they had known, whether they hailed (as some did) from Sweden, Poland, Germany, Maine, and even Russia.
Throughout the worst of the weather the Continental Army largely remained intact, the consensus being that it was better to freeze and starve together, than desert and freeze and starve alone. When the weather finally began to moderate, in early April, the number of desertions increased and the roads went from impassable blocks of snow and ice to impassable bogs of mud and mire. Supplies continued to but trickle in and that spring the Continental Army endured several mutinies among its unfed, unclothed, and unpaid troops.
Like many winters of the Little Ice Age, the winter of 1779-80 in North America was one which helped shape the history of the nation. Because of the mutinies and lapses of discipline which occurred in its wake the winter is less known among Americans than that of Valley Forge. Morristown doesn’t jibe with the American image of stoic silence and perseverance in the face of unbelievable hardship, part of the legend of the Revolution. Morristown was the worst winter of the Revolutionary War, but not the worst winter of the Little Ice Age, in either North America or Europe.