12. The winter at Morristown in 1779-80 was worse than that remembered at Valley Forge
The hard winter endured by the Continental Army at Morristown in 1779-80 was one of the coldest winters on record in the United States, with over two dozen measurable snowfalls, including a January blizzard which dumped more than four feet of snow on the encampment. The enduring cold ensured that the snow remained for weeks. The troops struggled through the snow and ice as they went about their routine duties, wrapped in thin blankets when they had them. The wooden huts in which they lived were drafty, chill, and damp. Food supplies were scarce, and when food was available it was often unable to deliver it to the camps, hindered by roads made impassable by the weather.
Washington informed Congress that at times his men were, “5 or Six days together without bread, at other times as many days without meat” and that there were periods when there was no food at all for the troops. As the army lost men to desertion and disease, it was reduced from the approximately 12,000 who entered the encampment to about 8,000, and Washington reported more than a third were too sick for duty. The harvest in the region had followed a drought that summer, and the reduced crops were insufficient to support the number of men encamped, even had local farmers been willing to sell to the Continentals. Most were not. Washington later said that the army at Morristown had “never experienced a like extremity at any period of the War”.