By Juliana Varsalona, B.A. in History, Christopher Newport University, Class of 2025 and Sheri Shuck-Hall, PhD, Professor of History, Christopher Newport University
Wars are won or lost as much by supply wagons as by battlefield tactics. When the American Revolutionary War erupted in 1775 at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the newly formed Continental Congress faced a staggering challenge: it had to build a new nation and equip a brand-new army at the exact same time. For General George Washington, one of the most agonizing struggles of the war was simply finding enough food to keep his soldiers alive. Operating without established supply lines, the Continental Army routinely faced broken transportation networks, empty bank accounts, and brutal winter weather that left troops on the brink of starvation. This digital exhibit explores how early Americans struggled to feed their army, looks inside the desperate winter encampment at Valley Forge, and honors the frontline cooks and laborers who fueled the fight for American independence.[1]
The Logistics of Supply: The Commissary Department
At the start of the Revolution, the colonies lacked a centralized system to provide food or clothing. Instead, individual New England towns had to gather supplies from local family barns to feed nearby militias. Realizing this makeshift support could not sustain a long war, the Continental Congress created an official “Commissary Department” on July 19, 1775. Congress appointed a merchant named Joseph Trumbull as the first Commissary General, charging him with purchasing and distributing rations for the entire army. However, state rivalries, poor roads, and food hoarding made deliveries highly unpredictable.[2]
The system broke down completely in the summer of 1777 when Trumbull resigned after political arguments with Congress. In the Middle Department—the vital theater covering New Jersey and Pennsylvania—food distribution collapsed under the new agent, Carpenter Wharton. The job of feeding thousands of mobile men proved too immense for one person. In March 1777, a congressional committee investigated the department, found Wharton guilty of financial mismanagement, and fired him.[3]
To rescue the supply lines, Congress split up responsibilities by region. They appointed William Buchanan as the new overseer in August 1777, who then selected Deputy Commissary Ephraim Blaine to manage food collection across Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and parts of New York.[4] To protect soldiers from sudden food shortages, field assistants like John Chanoner and James White marched directly alongside Washington’s troops. These agents acted as a live human link between civilian farms and the fighting front.[5]
The Grand Forage of 1778: Managing the Crisis at Valley Forge
The deep cracks in the supply system collided with disaster during the winter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Washington chose this location for strategic reasons: it was close enough to British-occupied Philadelphia to monitor enemy movements, yet easily defendable. But without reliable supply routes, the camp quickly turned into a humanitarian crisis. By late December, Washington warned Congress that the army was facing total collapse due to administrative failures, writing:
“Since the month of July, we have had no assistance from the Quartermaster General, and in want of assistance from this department, the Commissary General charges a great part of his deficiency.”— General George Washington, December 1777 [6]
Fearing his army would dissolve before spring, Washington ordered a massive emergency mission known to history as the Grand Forage of 1778.[7]
For nearly six weeks, Washington sent 150 to 200 of his remaining able-bodied soldiers on an expedition sweeping through southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, Delaware, and northeastern Maryland. Their mission was to seize cattle, livestock, grain, and flour from local farms to keep the garrison alive. Letters written by supply officers at Valley Forge reveal just how desperate the situation had become. On January 20, 1778, Deputy Commissary Ephraim Blaine wrote to Washington, begging him to cut standard food portions to stretch their disappearing reserves:
“May it please your Excellency—The vast daily consumption of beef and the appearance of want of that articles induces me to present your excellency with the under mentioned queries—which if approved of may be of great service to the public—Qu. 1 would not a reduction of the rations of beef to the soldietry [sic] be a great service to the publick, suppose the ration 1 ½ flour or bread 12 ounces beef or pork, and one gill of whiskey… Flour is plenty and whiskey may be procured to supply the army, and without great assistance from the Southern and Eastern departments it will be impossible to procure beef”— Ephraim Blaine to George Washington, January 20, 1778 [8]
That same day, Blaine wrote a frantic letter to his boss, William Buchanan, warning that regional supply agents had run completely out of cash, meaning local farmers refused to sell to them:
“Sir, The vast expense in supplying the army makes the demand of cash in our department very great I made a distribution of 208 thousand dollars which was but a mere trifle among them, half my assistant purchases are not above one fourth paid they complain the want of cash is a great injury in their purchases… Indeed this is a very heavy complaint… wou’d request you to procure an order for three hundred thousand dollars and without delay forward me 250 of it, I am this moment without one shilling… those reasons with sundry others have determined me upon quitting the service…”— Ephraim Blaine to William Buchanan, January 20, 1778 [9]
The Labor of the Camp: Hannah Till and Paid Staff
While ordinary soldiers cooked their own meals in small outdoor squads, high-ranking officers relied on a dedicated staff of laborers, cooks, and artisans to run their headquarters and manage daily cooking. The life of Hannah Till provides a powerful window into the complex labor dynamics that sustained the army’s leadership.[10]
Born into bondage around 1721, Hannah Till was an enslaved woman owned by Reverend John Mason of New York. During the war, she was leased out as a cook, eventually working directly for General George Washington. However, unlike many workers at the time, Till successfully negotiated a contract during her service that allowed her to earn wages to purchase her freedom.[11]
Alongside her husband Isaac, Till managed the bustling fireplace kitchen inside the Isaac Potts House, Washington’s official headquarters at Valley Forge.[12] Working under grueling wartime conditions, Hannah and Isaac carefully saved their earnings and fully paid off their self-purchase agreements by 1780. Even after winning her liberation, Till chose to stay with Washington’s staff—and later General Lafayette’s—for the remainder of the war as a paid pastry cook, marking a remarkable personal transition from forced labor to self-determined, paid employment.[13]
Revolutionary Rations and Daily Reality
In 1775, the Continental Congress set a standard daily ration that every enlisted soldier was legally supposed to receive:
“One pound of fresh beef, or ¾ of a pound of Pork, or one pound of Salt Fish, pr diem. One pound of Bread, or Flour pr diem. Three pints of Peas, or Beans pr Week, or Vegetables equivalent… One pint of milk pr Man, pr diem, when to be had. One half pint of Rice, or one pint of Indian meal pr Man, pr Week. One quart of Spruce Beer per man, pr diem…” [14]
In reality, these items rarely reached the soldiers. By 1776, supply delays were so frequent that Washington ordered all troops to carry at least two days of provisions in their bags at all times so they wouldn’t starve during an emergency. If baked bread could not be delivered, soldiers received raw flour, which they mixed with water and baked on hot rocks over open campfires to create “firecakes.”[15]
The food soldiers did manage to find was often terrible or hazardous to their health. In his famous wartime diary, Private Joseph Plumb Martin remembered the dental hazards of eating “hardtack” biscuits during the 1776 campaign:
“We marched a short distance when he halted to refresh ourselves. Whether we had any other victuals besides hard bread I do not remember. I do remember my gnawing at the bread. It was hard enough to break the teeth of a rat.”— Private Joseph Plumb Martin, 1776 [16]
Similarly, Samuel Dewees of the 11th Pennsylvania Regiment remembered how terrible nutritional deficiencies made the soldiers sick:
“…sometimes we had one biscuit and herring per day, and often neither the one nor the other…a biscuit and a herring each day, the soldiers lived until their mouths broke out with scabs, and their throats became as sore and raw as a piece of uncooked meat.”–Samuel Dewees, 11th Pennsylvania Regiment [17]
To survive these shortages, the army relied heavily on “camp followers”—the wives, mothers, and daughters of enlisted men who marched alongside the troops. These women ran makeshift outdoor kitchens, butchered animals, and managed tight ration portions to stretch every single ingredient as far as possible.[18]
Starving for Liberty
The history of the American Revolution proves that administrative endurance is just as vital to victory as battlefield strategy. The fight for independence was won not only by generals drawing maps, but by the daily labor of supply officers, regional farmers, and camp cooks who kept the army fed under near-impossible conditions. Looking at the evolution of the supply system, from the dark days of Valley Forge to an organized national rationing system, reveals the true human cost of building early America.[19]
To explore these historical artifacts and experience the reality of Revolutionary camp life firsthand, visitors are invited to view the public exhibitions and step inside the live, interactive military encampments at the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation museums in Williamsburg and Yorktown, Virginia (https://www.jyfmuseums.org/). By walking among the tents and engaging with the period’s material history, modern audiences can truly appreciate the physical sacrifices required to lay the foundations of American liberty.[20]
Notes
[1] Joseph Boyle, My Last Shift Betwixt Us & Death: The Ephraim Blaine Letterbook 1777-1778 (Westminster, MD: Heritage Books Inc., 2016), v.
[2] Erna Risch, Supplying Washington’s Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1981), 8–12.
[3] Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, vol. 8 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1907), 500–501.
[4] Boyle, The Ephraim Blaine Letterbook, v–ix.
[5] Ibid., xi.
[6] George Washington to the President of Congress, December 23, 1777, in The Writings of George Washington, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890), 6:255.
[7] Boyle, The Ephraim Blaine Letterbook, x.
[8] Ephraim Blaine to George Washington, January 20, 1778, in Boyle, The Ephraim Blaine Letterbook, 96.
[9] Ephraim Blaine to William Buchanan, January 20, 1778, in Boyle, The Ephraim Blaine Letterbook, 96–97.
[10] Ricardo A. Herrera, Feeding Washington’s Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2023), 88–91.
[11] Michele Murphy, “Hannah Till,” Valley Forge Muster Roll, June 15, 2022, https://valleyforgemusterroll.org/hannah-till/.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Edward M. Riley, “The History of the Isaac Potts House,” The Picket Post (Valley Forge Historical Society, 1946), 22–25.
[14] Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1905), 322.
[15] Paige Gibbons Backus, “Getting Food in the Continental Army,” American Battlefield Trust, January 23, 2024, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/getting-food-continental-army.
[16] Joseph Plumb Martin, A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier: Some of the Adventures, Dangers, and Sufferings of Joseph Plumb Martin (New York: Signet Classics, 2001), 16–17.
[17] Quoted in Backus, “Getting Food in the Continental Army.”
[18] Herrera, Feeding Washington’s Army, 1–4.
[19] Risch, Supplying Washington’s Army, 28–32.
[20] On-site living history interpretation guidelines, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Educational Materials, https://www.jyfmuseums.org/.