efficiency 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
great and crying evil, is not all. The soap, vinegar, and other
articles allowed by Congress, we see none of, nor have we seen
them, I believe, since the Battle of Brandywine. The first,
indeed, we have now little occasion for; few men having more than
one shirt, many only the moiety of one, and some none at all. In
addition to which, as a proof of the little benefit received from
a clothier-general, and as a further proof of the inability of
an army, under the circumstances of this, to perform the common
duties of soldiers, (besides a number of men confined to hospitals
for want of shoes, and others in farmers' houses on the same
account,) we have, by a field-return this day made, no less than
two thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight men now in camp unfit
for duty, because they are barefoot and otherwise naked. By the
same return it appears, that our whole strength in Continental
troops, including the eastern brigades, which have joined us since
the surrender of General Burgoyne, exclusive of the Maryland
troops sent to Wilmington, amounts to no more than eight thousand
two hundred in camp fit for duty; notwithstanding which, and that
since the 4th instant our numbers fit for duty, from the hardships
and exposures they have undergone, particularly on account of
blankets (numbers having been obliged, and still are, to sit
up all night by fires, instead of taking com