sickness spread through their quarters with fearful rapidity. "The
unfortunate soldiers," wrote Lafayette in after years, "they were
in want of everything; they had neither coats, hats, shirts nor
shoes; their feet and their legs froze till they became black, and
it was often necessary to amputate them." ... The army frequently
remained whole days without provisions, and the patient endurance
of the soldiers and officers was a miracle which each moment
served to renew ... while the country around Valley Forge was so
impoverished by the military operations of the previous summer as
to make it impossible for it to support the army. The sufferings
of the latter were chiefly owing to the inefficiency of
Congress.[1]

[Footnote 1: F.D. Stone, _Struggle for the Delaware_, vi, ch. 5.]

No one felt more keenly than did Washington the horrors, of Valley
Forge. He had not believed in forming such an encampment, and from the
start he denounced the neglect and incompetence of the commissions.
In a letter to the President of the Congress on December 3, 1777, he
wrote:

Since the month of July we have had no assistance from the
quartermaster-general, and to want of assistance from this
department the commissary-general charges great part of his
deficiency. To this I am to add, that, notwithstanding it is a
standing order, and often repeated that the troops shall always
have two days' provisions by them, that they might be ready at
any sudden call; yet an opportunity has scarcely ever offered of
taking an advantage of the enemy, that has not either been totally
obstructed or greatly impeded, on this account. And this, the