From: Private Yankee Doodle, Being a Narrative of some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier, by Joseph Plumb Martin, Eastern Acorn Press, pg. 283
Martin, who enlisted as a militiaman in 1776, and served that
year in the defense of New York, enlisted the following year in
the Connecticut Line for the duration of the war, and was finally
discharged in late 1783. While obviously not a Jerseyman, his
experiences are typical of a Continental soldier. The deprivations
and sufferings here described are the same suffered by the New
Jersey line.
Why did the Continental Congress and state governments allow these
shortages of food, clothing and pay to happen? Remember that the
colonies had been governed by England. No one in America had experience
in creating or running a commissary or quartermaster's department.
These bureaucratic functions had to be created from the ground
up. When the various governments did find workable methodologies,
they then found they had a serious, actually catastrophic shortage
of money to pay both for the necessary material and its transport.
Both Congress and the states believed, probably wrongly, that
corruption was the cause of most of the shortages and cost. Just
before the Army entered Valley Forge for the winter of 1777-1778,
they revised the Quartermaster's Corp, resulting in the resignation
of the Quartermaster General and many of his subordinates. Much
of the suffering there was because of lack of proper management
of the supply departments.
By 1780, and the Morristown, New Jersey encampment, the Treasury
was almost completely without funds. An extremely harsh winter
making transport difficult exasperated the situation. After starving
many days upon their return to Morristown from Elizabethtown,
Martin's regiment almost mutinied that June, parading without
orders under arms and refusing to disperse on command. Eventually
after standing about arguing and complaining they did go back
to quarters and their duty.
Martin also describes here some of the debate on soldiers pensions,
created under President Monroe, who fought and was wounded at
the battle of Trenton. At the close of the war, the soldiers were
furloughed rather than discharged, because the government could
not pay them- indeed, many never received any pay. Those that
stayed to wait for certificates showing what was owed them usually
had to sell them, dirt cheap, to speculators in order to get money
to walk home, buy clothing, and make a start in civilian life.
Here Martin describes the lack of food, clothing and pay common to all Continental soldiers:
When those who engaged to serve during the war enlisted, they
were promised a hundred acres of land, each, which was to be in
their or the adjoining states. When the country had drained the
last drop of service it could screw out of the poor soldiers,
they were turned adrift like old worn-out horses, and nothing
said about land to pasture them upon. Congress did, indeed, appropriate
lands under the denomination of "Soldier's Lands", in
Ohio state, or some state, or a future state, but no care was
taken that the soldiers should get them. No agents were appointed
to see that the poor fellows ever got possession of their lands;
no one ever took the least care about it, except a pack of speculators,
who were driving about the country like so many evil spirits,
endeavoring to pluck the last feather from the soldiers. The soldiers
were ignorant of the ways and means to obtain their bounty lands,
and there was no one appointed to inform them. The truth was,
none cared for them; the county was served, and faithfully served,
and that was all that was deemed necessary. It was, soldiers,
look to yourselves; we want no more of you. I hope I shall one
day find land enough to lay my bones in. If I chance to die in
a civilized country, none will deny me that. A dead body never
begs a grave;---thanks for that.
They were likewise promised the following articles of clothing
per year. One uniform coat, a woolen and a linen waistcoat, four
shirts, four pair of shoes, four pair of stockings, a pair of
woolen and a pair of linen overalls, a hat or a leather cap, a
stock for the neck, a hunting shirt, a pair of shoe buckles, and
a blanket. Ample clothing says the reader; and ample clothing
says I. But what did we ever realize of all this ample store---why,
perhaps a coat (we generally did get that) and one or two shirts,
the same of shoes and stockings, and , indeed, the same may be
said of every other article of clothing---a few dribbled out in
a regiment, two or three times a year, never getting a whole suit
at a time, and all of the poorest quality, and blankets of thin
baize, thin enough to have straws shot through without discommoding
the threads. How often have I had to lie whole stormy, cold nights
in a wood, on a field, or a bleak hill, with such blankets and
other clothing like them, with nothing but the canopy of the heavens
to cover me. All this too in the heart of winter, when a New England
farmer, if his cattle had been in my situation, would not have
slept a wink from the sheer anxiety for them. And if I stepped
into a house to warm me, when passing, wet to the skin and almost
dead with cold, hunger, and fatigue, what scornful looks and hard
words have I experienced.
Almost every one has heard of the soldiers of the Revolution being
tracked by the blood of their feet on the frozen ground. This
is literally true, and the thousandth part of their sufferings
has not, nor ever will be told. That the country was young and
poor, at that time, I am willing to allow, but young people are
generally modest, especially females. Now, I think the country
(although of the feminine gender, for we say "she" and
"her" of it) showed but little modesty at the time alluded
to, for she appeared to think her soldiers had no private parts.
For on our march from the Valley Forge, through the Jerseys, and
at the boasted Battle of Monmouth, a fourth part of the troops
had not a scrap of anything but their ragged shirt flaps to cover
their nakedness, and were obliged to remain so long after. I had
picked up a few articles of light clothing during the past winter,
while among the Pennsylvanian farmers, or I should have been in
the same predicament. "Rub and go" was always the Revolutionary
soldier's motto.
As to provision of victuals, I have said a great deal already,
but ten times as much might be said and not get to the end of
the chapter. When we engaged in the service we promised the following
articles for a ration: one pound of good and wholesome fresh or
salt beef, or three quarters of a pound of good salt pork, a pound
of good flour, soft or hard bread, a quart of salt to every hundred
pounds of fresh beef, a quart of vinegar to a hundred rations,
a gill of run, brandy, or whiskey per day, some little soap and
candles, I have forgot how much, for I had so little of these
two articles that I never knew the quantity. And as to the article
of vinegar, I do not recollect of ever having any except a spoonful
at the famous rice and vinegar Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania, in
the year 1777. But we never received what was allowed us. Oftentimes
have I gone one, two, three, and even four days without a morsel,
unless the fields or forests might chance to afford enough to
prevent absolute starvation. Often, when I have picked the last
grain from the bones of my scanty morsel, have I eat the very
bones, as much of them as possibly could be eaten, and then have
had to perform some hard and fatiguing duty, when my stomach has
been as craving as it was before I had eaten anything at all.
If we had got our full allowance regularly, what was it? A bare
pound of fresh beef and a bare pound of bread or flour. The beef,
when it had gone through all its divisions and subdivisions, would
not be much over three quarters of a pound, and that nearly or
quite half bones. The beef that we got in the army was, generally,
not many degrees above carrion; it was much like the old Negro's
rabbit, it had not much fat upon it and very little lean. When
we drew flour, which was much of the time we were in the field
or on marches, it was of small value, being eaten half-cooked,
besides a deal of it being unavoidably wasted in the cookery.
When in the field, and often while in winter quarters, our usual
mode of drawing our provisions, when we did draw any, was as follows:---a
return being made out for all the officers and men, for seven
days, we drew four days of meat and the whole seven days of flour.
At the expiration of the four days, the other three days allowance
of beef. Now, dear reader, pray consider a moment, how were five
men in a mess, five hearty, hungry young men, to subsist four
days on twenty pounds of fresh beef (and I might say twelve or
fifteen pounds) without any vegetables or any other kind of sauce
to eke it out. In the hottest season of the year it was the same.
Though there was not much danger of our provisions putrefying,
we had none on hand long enough for that, if it did, we obliged
to eat it, or go without anything. When General Washington told
Congress, "the soldiers eat every kind of horse fodder but
hay" he might have gone a little farther and told them that
they eat considerable hog's fodder and not a trifle of dog's---when
they could get it to eat.
We were, also, promised six dollars and two thirds a month, to
be paid us monthly, and how did we fare in this particular? Why,
as we did in every other. I received the dollars and two thirds,
till ( if I remember rightly) the month of August, 1777, when
paying ceased. And what was six dollars and sixty seven cents
of this "Continental currency," as it was called, worth?
It was scarcely enough to procure a man a dinner. Government was
ashamed to tantalize the soldiers any longer with such trash,
and wisely gave it up of its own credit. I received one month's
pay in specie while on the march to Virginia, in the year 1781,
and except that, I never received and pay worth the name while
I belonged to the army. Had I been paid as I was promised be at
my engaging in the service, I needed not to have suffered as I
did, nor would I have done it; there was enough in the country
and money would have procured it if I had had it. It is provoking
to think of it. The country was rigorous in exacting my compliance
to my engagements to a punctilio, but equally careless in performing
he contracts with me, and why so? One reason was because she had
all the power in her own hands and I had none. Such things ought
not to be.
The poor soldiers had hardships enough to endure without having
to starve; the least that could be done was to give them something
to eat. "The laborer is worthy of his meat" at least,
and he ought to have it for his interest, if nothing more. How
many times have I had to lie down like a dumb animal in the field,
and bear "the pelting of the pitiless storm", cruel
enough in warm weather, but how much more so in the heart of winter.
Could I have had the benefit of a little fire, it would have been
deemed a luxury. But, when snow or rain would fall so heavy that
it was impossible to keep a spark of fire alive, to have to weather
out a long, wet, cold, tedious night in the depth of winter, with
scarcely clothes enough to keep one from freezing instantly, how
discouraging it must be, I leave to my reader to judge.
It is fatiguing, almost beyond belief, to those that never experienced
it, to be obliged to march twenty-four or forty-eight hours (as
very many times I have had to) and often more, night and day without
rest or sleep, wishing and hoping that some wood or village I
could see ahead might prove a short resting place, when, alas,
I came to it, almost tired off my legs, it proved no resting place
for me. How often have I envied the very swine their happiness,
when I have heard them quarreling in their warm dry sties, when
I was wet to the skin and wished in vain for that indulgence.
And even in dry warm weather, I have often been so beat out with
long and tedious marching that I have fallen asleep and not been
sensible of it till I have jostled against someone in the same
situation; and when permitted to stop and have the superlative
happiness to roll myself in my blanket and drop down on the ground
in the bushes, briars, thorns, or thistles, and get an hour or
two's sleep, O! how exhilarating.
Fighting the enemy is the great scarecrow to people unacquainted
with the duties of an army. To see the fire and smoke, to hear
the din of cannon and musketry and the whistling of shot, they
cannot bear the sight or hearing this. They would like the service
in an army tolerably well but for the fighting part of it. I never
was killed in the army; I never was wounded but once, I never
was a prisoner with the enemy; but I have seen many that have
undergone all these and I have many times run the risk of all
of them myself. But, reader, believe me, for I tell a solemn truth,
that I have felt more anxiety, undergone more fatigue and hardships,
suffered more every way, in performing one of those tedious marches
than ever I did in fighting the hottest battle I was ever engaged
in, with the anticipation of all other calamities I have mentioned
added to it.
It has been said by some that ought to have been better employed
that the Revolutionary army was needless, that the militia were
competent for all that the crisis required. That there was then
and now is in the militia as brave and as good men as were ever
in any army since the creation, I ham ready and willing to allow,
but there are many among them, too, I hope the citizen soldiers
will be ready to allow, who are not so good as regulars, and I
affirm that the militia would not have answered so well as standing
troops, for the following reason, among many others. They would
not have endured the sufferings the army did; they would have
considered themselves (as in reality they were and are) free citizens,
not bound by any cords that were not of their own manufacturing,
and when the hardships of fatigue, starvation, cold and nakedness,
which I have just mentioned, begun to seize upon them in such
awful array as they did on us, they would have instantly quitted
the service in disgust, and who would blame them? I am sure I
could hardly find it in my heart to do it.
That the militia did good and great service in that war, as well
as in the last, on particular occasions, I well know, for I have
fought by their side, but still I insist that they would not have
answered the end so well as regular soldiers, unless they were
very different people from what I believe and know them to be,
as well as I wish to know. Upon every exigency they would have
been to be collected, and what would the enemy have been doing
in the meantime? The regulars were there and there obliged to
be; we could not go away when we pleased without exposing ourselves
to military punishment, and we had trouble enough to undergo without
that.
It was likewise said at that time that the army was idle, did
nothing but lunge about from one station to another, eating the
country's bread and wear her clothing without rendering her anyessential
sevice ( and I wonder they did not add, spending the country's
money too, it would have been quite as consistent as the other
charges). You ought to drive on, said they, you are competent
for the business; rid the country at once of her invaders. Poor,
simple souls! It was very easy for them to build castles in the
air, but they had not felt the difficulty of making them stand
there. It was easier, with them, taking whole armies in a warm
room and by a god fire, than enduring the hardships of one cold
winters night upon a bleak hill without clothing or victuals.
If the Revolutionary army was really such a useless appendage
to the cause, such a nuisance as it was then and has since been
said to be, why was it not broken up at once; why were we not
sent off home and obliged to maintain ourselves? Surely it would
have been as well for us soldiers and, according to the reckoning
of these wiseacres, it would have been much better for
the country to have done it than for us to have been eating so
much provisions wearing out so much clothing when our services
were worse than useless. We could have make as good militia men
as though we had never seen an army at all. We should incase we
had been discharged from the army, have saved the country a world
of expense, as they said; and I say we should have saved ourselves
a world of trouble in having our constitutions broken down and
our joints dislocated by trotting after Bellona's car.
But the poor old decrepit soldiers, after all that has been said
to discourage them, have found friends in the community, and I
trust there are many, very many, that are sensible of the usefulness
of that suffering army, although perhaps, all their voices have
not been so load in its praise as the voice of slander has been
against it. President Monroe was the first of all our Presidents,
except President Washington, who ever uttered a syllable in the
" old soldiers" favor. President Washington urged the
country to do something for them and not to forget their hard
services, but President Monroe told them how to act. He had been
a soldier himself in the darkest period of the war, that point
of it that emphatically " tried men's souls," was wounded,
and knew what soldiers suffered. His good intentions being seconded
by some Revolutionary officers then in Congress, brought about
a system by which, aided by our present worthy Vice-President
[John C. Calhoun], then the Secretary at War, Heaven bless him,
many of the poor men who had spent their youthful, and consequently
their best, days in the hard service of their country, have been
enabled to eke out the fag end of their lives a little too high
for the groveling hand of envy or the long arm of poverty to reach.
Many murmur now at the apparent good fortune of the poor soldiers.
Many I have myself seen, vile enough to say that they never deserved
such favor from the country. The only wish I would bestow upon
such hardhearted wretches is that they might be compelled to go
through just such sufferings and privations as that army did,
and then if they did not sing a different tune, I should miss
my guess.
But I really hope these people will not go beside themselves.
Those men whom they wish to die on a dunghill, men, who, if they
had not ventured their lives in battle and faced poverty, disease,
and death for their country to gain and maintain that Independence
and Liberty, in the sunny beams of which, they, like reptiles,
are basking, they would, many or the most of them, be this minute
in as much need of help and succor as ever the most indigent soldier
was before he experienced his county's beneficence.
The soldiers consider it cruel to be thus vilified, and it is
cruel as the grave to any man, when he knows his own rectitude
of conduct, to have his hard services not only debased and underrated,
but scandalized and vilified. But the Revolutionary soldiers are
not the only people that endure obloquy; others, as meritorious
and perhaps more deserving than they, are forced to submit to
ungenerous treatment.
But if the old Revolutionary pensioners are really an eyesore,
a grief of mind, to any man or set of men ( and I know they are),
let me tell them that if they will exercise a very little patience,
a few years longer will put all of them beyond the power of troubling
them, for they will soon be " where the wicked cease from
troubling and weary are at rest."
Martin's account, written in his old age, is the most complete
account of the life of a Revolutionary soldier. It was written
from memory, but is remarkable for having few errors. It is a
standard, and anyone reading about the live and times of the soldiers
of the Revolution should read it.
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